NDP Leadership 25

Quoting Cullen's announcement from the previous thread:

ottawaobserver wrote:

fitzpatrick_m Meagan Fitzpatrick
Cullen says as NDP leader he would seek "joint nomination meetings" with other parties in Tory ridings #hw
29 minutes ago

This should mean that Pat Martin's found his candidate.

A terrible idea, IMO. I don't have a problem with a parliamentary coalition after an election, but structurally, this idea is a bridge to merger. Why would a New Democrat want to breathe relevance back into the Liberal party?

FWIW, I've just reshuffled my preferential deck, and Cullen's now at the bottom.

From the previous thread [tweet links there]:

Quote:

Cullen says as NDP leader he would seek "joint nomination meetings" with other parties in Tory ridings

If its true he said this, which remains to be seen.... Nathan has grabbed on to the third rail. On that alone, there goes Nathan as a consideration for a lot of us.

Might be good enough to get Pat Martin's endorsement though.

Cross posted with Jeff if that isnt already clear.

So much fuss has been made about people "getting their cards" from federal office. If they're enrolled, they can vote, card or otherwise. Federal Office posted a bunch of jobs in the Membership department focused on Quebec six weeks ago. Do people not research things before they post them on Babble?

Byers has since repudiated that position, by the way, Ken, if you read his column for CBC.ca at the end of the last election.

Any time I've conducted a interaction with the web interface at the Federal Party's site, I've had a prompt email confirmation. Do you know that people aren't getting that?

StuartACParker wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

It also shows an amazing lack of self-confidence in the party he leads. How effective a leader would he be if he doesn't even believe in his own party?

Sounds more like a perfectly reasonable lck of confidence is Canada's electoral system, something I certainly share.

Believing your party needs to cooperate in order to beat Harper under FPTP isn't lack of confidence in our party. It is simply a recognition of the breadth of the forces that must cooperate to take Stevie down.

First of all, the Liberals are not interested in this idea, it's not going anywhere.

Second of all, the Liberal brand is in serious decline across the country, as provincial elections in the last year have shown. Even in Toronto, the Liberal fortress, they Liberal machinery lost the 2010 municipal elections and placed last among elected parties federally.

Third of all, even if there is co-operation, I don't see any indication that the Liberals can even hold off a Conservative challenge, much less defeat the Conservatives.

As for "as soon as humanly possible?" We won't have a chance to beat Harper until 2015, and things can change a great deal in between.

No, the NDP must, and can, defeat Stephen Harper on its own.

tough call.  the thing is that in many places, the lpc brand is so toxic that the ndp would be tarnished by association, moreover, these are ridings in which we may get some new democrats who we don't necessarily want.  bev desjarlais, sure, but she was actually pretty solid on most issues.  we're talking about potentially nominating candidates who'd cross the floor to the conservatives.  the upside in those cases is very low.

Stuart's clam that weighted voting wuld advance membership sales in Quebec flies in the face of all evidence.  THe more common experience would suggest it leads to "Post Office Republican" style sclerotic organization where the few members in place would prefer the disproportional influence not be diluted by new members.

But what Stuart also fails to understand is that a Quebec membership is ALREADY more attractive for the six plus leadership campaigns than one in Surrey.  Yes, the Quebec member and the Surrey member have equal votes, but (and why is this so hard for someo f you to grasp?) ALL OF THE CAMPAIGNS NEED TO DEMONSTRATE A GROUND GAME IN QUEBEC, AND THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO DO THAT IS TO PRODUCE MEMBERSHIPS.

If Nathan Cullen (just to pick someone) just sells memberships in Surrey, BC New Democrats and Saskatchewan New Democrats and Manitoba New Democrats an Nova Scotia New Democrats will all say to themselves "Cullen can't do squat in Quebec."  Not only does he not get votes in Quebec, HE LOSES VOTES EVERYWHERE ELSE TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This issue is over.  The rules are set and they are not going to be changed - howevermuch marginalized whining we see on babble.  The only thing gained by the tenacious repetition of this meme is the reinforcement o the corporate media meme.

Sorry.  I'm a New Democrat.  Not interested in playing your game.

ottawaobserver wrote:

 

It was from a reporter covering his news conference, and the news release was easily discoverable. Sheesh.

http://www.nathancullen.ca/en/media/nathan-cullen-asks-for-mandate-to-co...

Just saying- but I voted for the NDP candidate in my riding because he was neither a Conservative, OR a Liberal.   I doubt I was alone.

Robert Chisholm on Power & Politics panel. Wonder if Solomon will ask about the leadership.

Life, the universe, everything wrote:

Just saying- but I voted for the NDP candidate in my riding because he was neither a Conservative, OR a Liberal.   I doubt I was alone.

Ditto for me...but with Cullen's proposal, you could speak out against any proposal by your riding association to have a joint candidate and hopefully you would win the day and the riding association would not vote to do it. In the end it all comes down to what the NDP members in a given riding want to do.

One benefit of Cullen's proposal (not that i support it) is that it would motivate NDP riding associations to sign up more members in order to make sure that a New democrat won the nomination.

I am in favour of post-election coalitions, after the voters have had a chance to have their say, but I find official non-compete agreements fundamentally undemocratic, and I can't support them under any circumstances. (I will compromise on many of my preferred positions in choosing a leader, but my views on democracy are sacred.)

On the other hand, what Stockholm says is undoubtedly true--it would be very unlikely to happen even if Cullen were to become leader. So though this development means I certainly can't even consider supporting Cullen with my vote, I won't vilify him about it. And if it gets a few left-leaning Liberal voters to join the party in order to vote for him, I don't see the downside to having it on the table in the race.

Boom Boom wrote:

Son of a gun. Is Mulcair really saying he supports NAFTA???  If he is, he just lost my support.

If my memory serves me well a Conservative win in Quebec and Alberta is what gave us free trade in the first place. Has the average Quebec voter changed their mind on NAFTA

He supports NAFTA and NATO and it is no surprise to me.  It begs the question given the restrictions those boxes place on the actions of the federal government what can be changed? 

Jack Layton was calling for the "renegotiation" of NAFTA in 2008 to protect Canadian jobs. No one has called for abrogation of NAFTA, to my recollection, since the Liberals promised to tear up the FTA if elected in the 1988 election.

If any leadership candidate has a different take on NAFTA than Mulcair, perhaps they should state it publicly. Otherwise, I would imagine they all share his slavish attitude, with differences of degree or nuance.

Personally I'm more opposed to Cullen's election riding strategy than what Mulcair has said about NAFTA, who probably toes the party line on renegotiating NAFTA anyways. The mere prospect of having only a Liberal nominated in my riding, to face a Conservative, makes me ill, and I woudn't bother to vote.  

dacckon wrote:

I'm sorry Nathan Cullen, but if we did your electoral strategy, we would have never taken so many seats in Quebec. 

Exactly. The NDP won 103 seats and broke through in Quebec by running on their own platform, providing a different alternative, and not by cutting deals with the Liberals.

dacckon wrote:

I'm sorry Nathan Cullen, but if we did your electoral strategy, we would have never taken so many seats in Quebec.

Keep in mind that Cullen is proposing only that NDP and Liberal and Green riding associations be allowed to consider having a joint nomination IF THEY CHOOSE and only in ridings with Tory incumbents. The Tories only had 11 seats in QC before the last election and all of them were in seats where the conventional wisdom was that the Liberals were a distant fourth and the NDP a distant third - I doubt if any "deals" would have been made and in any case, if the NDP members in  - say - Jonquiere-Alma decided democratically that they would rather run Clause Patry on their own than have a joint nomination meeting with the Liberals in that riding - that would have been the end of the story.

On the bright side, you could have a joint nomination meeting in Edmonton Centre and if the NDP candidate won the nomination, he or she could have a chance to go mano-a-mano against Laurie Hawn without a Liberal on the ballot potentially siphoning off votes from the NDP.

Again, its all academic because it will never happen - but realistically its the Liberals who would reject this immediately and would have the most to lose since they are by far the weaker party.

Well... if the end result is a situation that is improved for "the vast majority who have been left behind since NAFTA came into effect in 1994", isn't that close enough to replacing NAFTA with what should have been there all along?

I am not assured in the least that Cullen's proposal is so gimmicky that it would probably never fly.

Riding by riding non-compete agreements ARE the paved road to merger. Adding a local democractic veto does not change that- it just takes out the draconian element of shoving things down riding associations that is an absolute non-starter in the NDP.

I'll buy that his gimmick puts some added zip into the discussion. The gratitude he gets is, as Jeff put it, that he is now my bottom choice and I cannot imagine what it would take to move him from there.

We'll see if anyone can rival Nathan for Third Rail prize during the race.

This Hill Times piece will be upsetting "the frontrunners", I imagine.

http://hilltimes.com/news/politics/2011/10/18/ndp-leadership-hopeful-dew...

It's become clear that the Dewar campaign has some organizational chops.

And while I'm at it, Cullen's proposal for pre-election joint nominations is stupid from the get go and assumes that people will follow the direction of party elites.  I don't know how many times I've presented the case against all the various forms of "strategic" voting and electoral "co-operation," but if necessary I'll do it again.

What this shows is that Nathan Cullen is either confused about basic politics or about basic arithmetic.

Unionist wrote:

theleftyinvestor wrote:

Well... if the end result is a situation that is improved for "the vast majority who have been left behind since NAFTA came into effect in 1994", isn't that close enough to replacing NAFTA with what should have been there all along?

No. It's mostly unverifiable rhetoric, noble distant future aims. Scrapping NAFTA would be an eminently verifiable stand. That's why I'm curious as to whether any of the NDP candidates would propose that. I doubt it.

I'm of two minds on how to approach NAFTA. My understanding is that it is by definition impossible for Canada to take a stronger stand under a "renegotiated" NAFTA. Having said that, if this issue is handled correctly, then if the re-negotiation fails, then that would make scrapping NAFTA an easier sell politically, becuase the NDP would be in a position to say, "we tried to negotiate better terms, it didn't work, so we need to scrap NAFTA entirely."

Quite apart from that, Ari, the whole idea fails to grasp that Liberal Green and NDP voters are not necessarily prepared to support each other's candidates.  Lots of them, absent a candidate of their preferred party, would stay home.  There is a significant cadre of Liberal voters who, absent a Liberal candidate, would prefer to vote Conservative.  There is a smaller but still significant cadre of New Democrat voters who would chose a Conservative over a Liberal - particularly in the Prairies, the BC interior and parts of Nova Scotia.  At the end of the day, it would take an average NET retention in the order of 70% to make a significant difference in the Tory seat count.  And that's no small accomplishment. 

I don't imagine that I'd ever go so far as to vote Conservative, but if I had a Liberal candidate and no New Democrat (which would be mind-numbingly stupid where I live), I'd most likely spoil my ballot.

(By net retention, I mean that the number of votes retained would need to be greater than the sum of the original margin PLUS the other party supporters who switched to the Conservatives PLUS 1.  For example, assume a margin of 1,000 and a total of 2,000 Liberal and Green voters.  If 25% of those stayed home, that leaves 1,500 "coalition" voters.  If more 250 of those choose to vote Conservative, the Conservatives win.  In this scenario, the NET retention of 50% actually requires a real retention of 62.5%)

Malcolm wrote:

There is a significant cadre of Liberal voters who, absent a Liberal candidate, would prefer to vote Conservative.

I'm sure you remember Harper's plea to right Liberals in the GTA to stop the socialist hordes that took place in the spring election? Remind me how effective a tactic that was for Harper?

Stockholm wrote:

We also learned in the recent provincial elections in Manitoba and Ontario that you can have both the Liberals and the NDP running full slates of candidates and the Conservatives can still lose. All it takes is FEWER people voting Conservative - as opposed to all these gimmicky schemes to try to game the system.

This is actually a very important point that Stockholm has made.

It reminds us that the Conservative block of votes is not fixed - an assumption that is being made in the Cullen proposal and many others.

By the next election, the Conservative government is going to look old, tired, gimmicky and meanspirited, not to mention that a lot of the provinces where we've historically been strong, but are out of government right now, will also be in different stages of their political cycle.

The stars are aligning for the NDP in 2015, with the right federal leader, and so I see no need to get involved with very defensive schemes like Cullen's clunker.