NDP Leadership 17

Wilf Day][quote=Malcolm wrote:

All the comments about Ed Broadbent's unbeatable support ignore the fact that he endorsed Peter Tabuns for Ontario party leader in March 2009, when Tabuns came 10% behind Andrea Horwath on the first count, 21% behind her on the final count.

Who did he endorse for the provincial leadership in 1996?  (Just wondering.)

vermonster wrote:

What we will be looking for is a candidate who understands the unique political culture of Quebec and is capable of effectively campaigning for a progressive vision for Quebec and Canada in our language. Mulcair may be the right candidate to do that, but claiming that he is the only one is just as unfounded as Ed Broadbent saying that Topp is the only candidate qualified to be NPD leader.

To be fair, Edmonston didn't say Mulcair is the only candidate who gets Quebec, only that he'd support Mulcair over Topp because he feels that Mulcair gets Quebec and Topp doesn't. I don't necessarily agree with that, but it's a bit different than claiming Mulcair is the only candidate who understands Quebec.

Ever since he won the Outremont byelection in 07 Mulcair has been painted as Layton's heir apparent, especially after the breakthrough in Quebec. That was until the job fell open. Almost instantly a previously almost unknown candidate seemed to be annointed by the party establishment, a candidate who seems to have the upper hand because the party clings to a leadership selection process that reduces Quebec's vote to a ridiculously infinitessimal level.

Phil Edmonston's words have a bitter bite to them but "Shut up and look pretty" does seem to sum up the situation. You Quebecers can do the heavy lifting but now you can go sit in the back.

On the other hand, hope is better than despair. The Mulcair videos posted by Knownothing in #15, above, certainly give me hope that Mulcair can prevail despite the system on the strength of his shere political talents.

I find it a pleasure just to listen to Mulcair. He has such an easy facility with language. Unlike almost evey other politicain he absolutely avoids clicjhes. Nothing seems rehearesd. He avoids unduly simplistic langauge and pitches well above the lowest commmon denominator. He is quick-witted, compellling and even charming. He can fight off any slurs the Conservatives can fling at him.

I think we have admirable cast of candidates but none are in Mulcair's league. Even if Quebec only has 2% of the vote I think that once Mukair is put on display he can overcome all the roadblocks the party establishment seems intent on throwing in his way.

I have been to a number of delegated leadership conventions in the past and it was often disheartening to see how a block labour vote could be delivered to a preferred contender. It is different this time. The wider membership decides and before them Mucair shines.

Ken, it's not just my drumbeat. There are about a hundred previous posts that explain how the "establishment" is backing Topp. I am not going to repeat them.Go back and read them yourself. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

"He (Edmunston) says that if Mulcair is not elected leader it will mean "the NDP continues to be run by the establishment of the Canadian anglophone left and that for the Québec Members" the message would be "shut-up and look pretty."

The flip side of that is I want to be reassured that if Mulcair does win - the NDP will not be 100% focused on keeping support in Quebec and the message for New Democrats in the other nine provinces will be "shut up and look pretty".

Wilf Day wrote:

So in Quebec identity politics, Topp is more "francophone" than Mulcair.

Except that Topp actually DID grow up speakin French at home.

As to most of the rest of the discussion here, this is just getting silly.

1. Quebec has ~2% of the membership RIGHT NOW (or actually, a couple of weeks ago). It is worse than idiotic to assume that Quebec will have only ~2% of the membership six months from now. (Especially since many of those in other provinces who joined for a leadership race or for a local nomination race will not renew. SNDP membership dropped from ~14,000 to ~8,000 since 2009 and we just had several heavily contested provincial nominations.

2. Even if the Quebec membership remains low in proportion to Quebec's proportion of the population (ie, if Quebec membership ends up at <~25%), the vast majority of NDP members elsewhere will be weighing each candidate's viability in Quebec to a degree never seen before because there isn't a New Democrat in the country who isn't concerned with consolidating the gains in Quebec.

3. Anyone who belives there is one amorphous "party establishment" in the federal NDP clearly has no clue about the internal dynamics of the NDP. Topp, so far, has plugged into the quite distinct Ontario/Lewis family establishment (who backed Jack but didn't, for example, back Andrea Horwath) and to the Saskatchewan Romanow circle (which isn't really that plugged into the current leadership of the SNDP). He's well connected to the current leadership in BC. We've seen little movement for him in the Manitoba or Nova Scotia establishments.

To date, most of the "analysis" here has been an amalgam of the media's content-and-context-free surmises and a whole lot of conspiracy theorizing. I suggest people take off their tin foil hats and await actual developments.

Re Shirley Douglas endoresment:

The news release was provided to media Saturday night under the condition that it not be published until 11 a.m. Sunday, which is two hours before NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre) is expected to launch his own campaign at a hotel in downtown Ottawa.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/provincialelection/article/1063230--ndp-s-brian-topp-gets-star-endorsement?bn=1

Brian, I know you read Babble. You should know that this kind of stunt leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I suspect many others.It is one thing to try to wrong-foot a politician from another party but it hardly seems appropraite for someone who purports to have helped write Jack's last letter.

Note that the Topp campaign announced the Libby Davies endorsement on the same day as the Cullen launch, and now they announce the Shirley Douglas endorsement on the same day as the Dewar launch.  It's obvious that they are partaking in a strategy to suck media coverage away from opponents.

I wouldn't be surprised if Topp has some endorsers that he's hiding away with the plan to unveil them to conflict with potential future launches by Julian and Mulcair.

TheArchitect wrote:

Note that the Topp campaign announced the Libby Davies endorsement on the same day as the Cullen launch, and now they announce the Shirley Douglas endorsement on the same day as the Dewar launch.  It's obvious that they are partaking in a strategy to suck media coverage away from opponents.

I wouldn't be surprised if Topp has some endorsers that he's hiding away with the plan to unveil them to conflict with potential future launches by Julian and Mulcair.

On the bright side - it also shows that Topp is a very shrewd and aggressive strategist who is very tactical. These are important skills in a leader!

Unionist wrote:

Lou Arab wrote:

He [Cullen] seems comfortable in French, although to my (highly untrained) ear, I sense a strong accent. Others will correct me if I'm wrong.

I won't correct you there, Lou. It's painful listening to him. But he is fluid, if not fluent.

Sounds like you are describing an English version of Dion.  Would that be about right?  

I remember the first time I heard Jack speak French I joked to a friend at the BB'Q that Jack's french needed work because he was talking slow enough that I could understand him. (My French is not good enough to follow a normally paced conversation)

dacckon wrote:

http://pauldewar.ca/  (the spots drive me mad, it makes me think my screen is dirty)

Does anyone have video of his announcement?

 

I agree, the spots on Dewar's website are hideous—they make me feel like I need to clean my computer screen.  I don't know what the web designer who put them on there was thinking.

Thanks for dropping in, Brian! Look forward to hearing a lot more from you (not necessarily here - I know you're busy) as the campaign evolves.

Ok, babblers: How do we get the other candidates to sign up here and engage in this discussion?

Unionist wrote:

Ok, babblers: How do we get the other candidates to sign up here and engage in this discussion?

I'm sure they're either reading themselves or have their people doing so. This is by far the best discussion about the leadership race going on right now, and people know it.

On a tangent, Brian Topp would be smart to get an MP to give him their seat. The reason for this is that were he to win, the MP would resign and that would force the party directly into a byelection campaign. When election campaigns happen, critics shut-up and largely get behind the party. So if Brian Topp was running in a byelection, people that didn't support him would at least hold their tongues, and if he won a large victory it would give him some instant credibility.

In an ideal world, I would have Topp run in the general election in a seat the NDP currently does not hold. Given that I have read he lives in Toronto, I would presume he would run there. Is there any chance he lives in a seat like Toronto Centre where his candidacy could be a flashpoint for taking on the NDP's rivals? In that same ideal world, I would have Topp face a byelection in a riding in Western Canada. That way he could show his/the NDP's competitiveness in the West and give confidence to Central Liberals (and others) to switch their affiliations or hold firm (e.g. in Québec). Topp running in a Québec byelection would add little to the NDP's strength there.

ETA: To be clear, what I am advocating is that Brian Topp NOT run in Toronto-Danforth (assuming he doesn't live there), but name the Toronto riding where he will run in a general and hold off on announcing (until after the race) a byelection where he will run in the West.

ETA2: If she is interested in running I would like to see Marilyn Churley contest Toronto-Danforth. Otherwise, it would be nice to see some new blood.

dacckon wrote:

Video of Paul Dewar /w a crowd

Like to see more of these from all the candidates.

Nice launch. For an anglo, Dewar nailed the French. Good for him. Of course it was meticuously scripted, but he is clearly more at ease in it than Cullen. Dewar probably catches extra knocks on his French because he lives in such a bilingual riding. Still reserving judgment...

Also I like Cullen's general campaign message (in English) about unity, about the grassroots... It is delivered with charisma and gravitas. The French however, is not there.

Curious. Even the people on this board who had no problem with the timing of Brian Topp's recent endorsement announcements seemed to acknowledge that they were timed to coincide with the campaign launch announcements of other candidates.

But Topp's post above says, or at the very least strongly implies, that the timing was a coincidence. Presumbly this is true in both cases--I don't think Topp is suggesting that he was deliberately trying to interfer with Cullen's announcement, but it was just a coincidence with Dewar. And let's assume there's a good explanation for why the media were asked to hold news of the second endorsement until 11:00am Sunday, two hours before Dewar's announcement.

If that's the case, knowing as early as Wednesday that these two announcements were coming and that you had an event scheduled Saturday night that couldn't be changed, as a party strategist wouldn't you at least delay the Libby Davies endorsement until Monday to ensure it didn't appear that this was done deliberately to interfer with the other campaigns' launch announcements?

On merger with the Liberals:

One student questioned Mulcair about a potential merger with the Liberal party, and whether it would be make sense to "unite the left." Mulcair received a round of applause when he replied, "We did unite the left."

http://www.thesheaf.com/news/2011/10/02/mulcair-will-announce-leadership...

Stockholm wrote:

On the bright side - it also shows that Topp is a very shrewd and aggressive strategist who is very tactical. These are important skills in a leader!

They're also attritubes that can win a leadership and lose a party. Paul Martin comes to mind.

knownothing wrote:

dacckon wrote:

A snippet of Topp and Libby discussing pressure, establishment's choice/man.

Harsh video!

What's wrong with the video?

Howard wrote:

;One of the more effective things I thought Jack did when he first took over the NDP leadership was to stop blaming the media for all the NDP's woes.

Goodness, yes. The whole Topp thing aside, we may have our problems with the media, but we need to understand the ways in which media outlets function and act to produce our desired result. The media have all sorts of biases--and some media commentators/oulets have overt political points of view--but they general don't "make stuff up" or "push a hidden agenda". Their behaviour is the product of pretty predictable mechanics.

Within that, at the federal level, the media's greatest bias against the NDP has traditionally been that reporters cover news and the positions or opinions of third parties are not considered as newsworthy as those of larger parties. Right now we're suffering from the fact that the media have seen the Liberals as the most important party in Canadian for decades--basically as long as anyone working in media has been alive. That doesn't go away overnight, but we've already seen a vast improvement in that regard.

It's fine to point out when an unfair media marrative is the product of spin, groupthink or one of any number biases, but our aim should be to identify how we can avert such problems in the future, not lament the machine as a whole.

AnonymousMouse wrote:

The whole Topp thing aside, we may have our problems with the media, but we need to understand the ways in which media outlets function and act to produce our desired result. The media have all sorts of biases--and some media commentators/oulets have overt political points of view--but they general don't "make stuff up" or "push a hidden agenda". Their behaviour is the product of pretty predictable mechanics. Within that, at the federal level, the media's greatest bias against the NDP has traditionally been that reporters cover news and the positions or opinions of third parties are not considered as newsworthy as those of larger parties. Right now we're suffering from the fact that the media have seen the Liberals as the most important party in Canadian for decades--basically as long as anyone working in media has been alive. That doesn't go away overnight, but we've already seen a vast improvement in that regard. It's fine to point out when an unfair media marrative is the product of spin, groupthink or one of any number biases, but our aim should be to identify how we can avert such problems in the future, not lament the machine as a whole.

Not too long ago right-wingers were just as bitterly complaining about a "liberal" bias in the Canadian media, and yes, it's just as tiresome and irritating. They actually figured out that instead of whining about the media, they figured out how to get their message and win over supporters by going through the media filters. Rob Ford could actually present a solid case that he was not treated fairly by Toronto media, but instead of whining about it, (and to give credit where credit is due) he knew how to get around that. We need to do the same.