Unite the Centre-Left (or not) II
It'd be nice if the NDP could consolidate its current wave, and attract left-leaning Liberals (would Gerard Kennedy ever fit in?), leaving the Bay Street Paul Martin-like Libs as a rump party. In trying to appeal to Bay Street Liberal voters, the Conservatives would move even more to the center, making that party's factions more unwieldy. Maybe a far-right party would splinter off. Just musing.
In any case, the NDP is rising now, and this did not happen overnight. A merger with the Liberals would be throwing a lot of work and heritage out the window.
While it didn't end up working on the right, I think progressives are more democratically-minded and would do well with a process like Manning's UA formula that generated the Canadian Alliance.
While any merger agreement would inevitably be top-down, elite-driven and centrist, the process of founding a new party through a large grassroots convention and inviting MPs from the Bloc, Greens, Liberals and New Democrats to join its caucus would have a number of advantages a merger would not:
- mobilizing, rather than de-mobilizing activists
- focusing the movement on the priorities set by an activist-driven convention rather than some kind of negotiated policy via media
- building a constituency inclusive of those not part of the two main parliamentary parties
In other words, I think the time for the NPI is now and that such a process should be the mechanism we use to bring as many Liberal, Green and Bloc MPs and supporters into a grassroots movement based on the NDP's caucus and membership.
Haven't read enough of these threads, but on mere principle HELL YES! Long as 'we' can reach out to both left and centre. Without losing our own sense of balance OR movement. Equilibrium is maybe a better word.
The Liberals are a top-down, elitist party. Their ranks are filled with people who want, more than anything else, to maintain their positions of power and prestige. Under the rules and dynamics of the Liberal Party, it is exactly these people who would need to sign off on any merger. That means that for any merger to be successful you would have to give these people--the very people most New Democrats think are at the heart of the problem with the Liberal Party--reason to believe they'd have positions of equal importance in any merged party.
On the other hand, founding a new party with the NDP membership onboard but without the elite leadership of the Liberal Party would essentially be changing the NDP's brand--at a time when we are experiencing unprecedented success--in order to entice as many progressive Liberals as possible into switching parties. That is why the UA movement failed--it was seen as little more than a Reform attempt to get people to switch parties. The difference for the Reform Party was that they had a hyper-loyal base supporting them in the West that would survive a name change, but their brand that was already toxic east of Manitoba. For Reform the calculation was that if the new party attracted enough Progressive Conservatives to symbolize a reunification of the movement, great, but otherwise they'd still get to jestison a tarnished brand. We are in nearly opposite circumstances.
I also just don't see the point in any of this. There are plenty of ways to communicate to people that we're ready to form government as Canada's dominant left-centre political party, starting with electing our next leader. There will also be plenty of opportunity to recruit disaffected, progressive Liberals into our ranks. The hardest work has already been done, frankly, as breaking the two party monopoly on power is far more difficult than winning a single election once you've become one of the two dominant parties. Lets just win, isn't that good enough people 
?
Oh dear, were we talking about the LIBERALS? I thought we wwre talking about a more unified LEFT. I change my vote then to a most emphatic NO, balanced only by the possibility of a post-election coaltion that they won't find so easy to no to -again. And an official request to that overrated apparatchik Kinsella to PLEASE stop using this already tired 'trial balloon' as yet another political cudgel. Why I nolonger tune into MY CBC or bother with the always overrated Toronto Star. Also why I nolonger listen to Ed Broadbent.
I think you have to make a distinction between rank-and-file Liberals and people in the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa Machine. In my experience the rank-and-file people are more progressive than the Machine people.
It's the likes of John Manley that worry me about the Liberals. The man is extremely conservative - a perfect fit for Harper's party. Last summer on P&P he did not rule out a run for the Liberal leadership.
I think you have to make a distinction between rank-and-file Liberals and people in the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa Machine. In my experience the rank-and-file people are more progressive than the Machine people.
Then they should switch to the NDP, it is already a "Third Way" party anyway. You never hear the NDP talk about nationalization. And they support most NATO missions. What is the difference between Liberals and the NDP (rank and file)?
What is the difference between Liberals and the NDP (rank and file)? asks knownothing.
As long as there are 'Liberals For Life' who don't want women to have the right to choose, (of which I know there are a great many), there will always be a big difference between a sustantial portion of the Liberal 'rank and file' and the NDP's.
Which is why I know that any attempt to merge the parties will meet in abject failure, as these 'Liberals For Life' will go to the Conservatives en mass before they ever consider supporting the NDP.
Case closed.
No Merger!
Really? So you are saying it is an abortion issue that differentiates the two parties. By the way I don't want a merger, I just think the progressive Libs should join the NDP.
As I said above, I think a merger is a bad process and a non-starter. But that doesn't mean that the NDP breakthrough doesn't offer us a real chance to enlarge the tent and invigorate the base. There are certainly Liberal Party supporters who would never become part of a coalition led by social democrats. But it is faulty logic to then conclude that we should therefore stop looking for creative ways to include many progressives who have identified with the Liberals in the past in a new, more vibrant socal democratic movement.
It seems to me that people are trying to create a false binary between "the NDP's current name and structure are sacred and inalterable" and "we must include a bunch of pro-lifers and corporate shills in a centrist coalition we form." I hate both of thoe options. But as long as people cast the debate in that way, we successfully avoid any meaningful discussion of how to form a governing party out of a movement that has never won more than 45 seats in the over 200 seats comprising English Canada.
Michael den Tandt's latest thoughts on merger:
http://www.windsorstar.com/business/Dismissal+merger+only+delaying+inevitable/5705579/story.html
Worth reading in full. Here's some excerpts:
Given how little enthusiasm there is for this in the front ranks, the numbers are striking.
They suggest an emerging well of impatience for silobuilding, as Liberal and NDP partisans, together comprising more than 50 per cent of the electorate, watch the Harper government, supported by 37 per cent, move the country rightward in small but steady increments.
. . . it seems the postelection honeymoon is over. Harper has begun rolling out policies, such as the crime bill, that are drawing fire from pragmatic centrists. Suddenly, he doesn't look quite like the bigtent, "prime minister for all Canadians" he sought to project in his post-election speech.
In fairness, Harper has little choice but to fulfil clear promises made to his base. Nevertheless doing so creates a vulnerability, which the centre-left parties will certainly exploit.
Which one? Though NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel has struggled, her party's support is holding. A clear majority, 66 per cent, think the NDP is doing a good job. Meantime Liberal interim leader Rae, who has enjoyed a spate of positive media coverage this fall, isn't resonating. Only a third of respondents said they think he's doing a better job than Turmel - even though he clearly is.
. . . a weak Liberal party is one that can be groomed for a takeover, disguised as a merger of equals, just as happened to the old Progressive Conservative Party at the hands of Harper's Alliance in 2003.
But the most compelling argument for a merger, bolstered by this Ipsos poll as well as previous ones, is simply this: Liberal and NDP supporters are now, for all intents and purposes, the same kinds of people, with the same basic sets of views.
Topp is seen to represent traditional NDP values, but he's not particularly traditional; he's a pragmatic problemsolver who can read a balance sheet. Rae, for his part, is trying to shift his party rightward on economics. But he's no smallc conservative. Rae and Topp strike many similar notes, in fact. They'd get on well at a policy convention. Thomas Mulcair, Topp's most formidable leadership rival, is a former Liberal and even closer to the mainstream than Topp.
The upshot? The NDP will pick a leader in March. While that unfolds, look for Rae to succumb to a "draft Bob" movement from within his own party, making him the permanent Liberal leader within a year. Then, driven by the reality of a Conservative majority and a future with neither corporate nor government donations, the merger machinations will begin in earnest.
The party leaders may seek to avoid this. Their members will insist on it.
The reason I like Den Tandt more than almost any MSM commentator is he doesn't care what his "superiors" think. The former Globe and Mail reporter began as an editor and reporter in 1995, became a member of The Globe's and Mail's editorial board, an investigative reporter and an Ottawa parliamentary correspondent, and reported from Afghanistan. He moved to Owen Sound as editor of the Owen Sound daily, where he now holds the title of Regional Managing Editor for the chain and can enjoy himself with his three children, ages 13, 11 and 8, hike, play guitar, practice traditional Okinawan Karate-Jutsu, and still be a twice-a-week national political columnist. During the Ontario referendum he wrote in favour of MMP.
Meanwhile in the real world - why not ask Liberal voters if they would like to merge with the Conservative party to stop the NDP "socialist hordes" that are "at the gate"? I thinki that the Liberals are so moribund - alot of people who vote for them are desperate to merge with ANYONE.
The column is just plain dumb. In what way exactly does he think the "members" of the NDP or Liberals will "insist" on anything??? First of all, he cites polling data for people who happened to have voted NDP or Liberal - only about 1% of those people are MEMBERS of either party. You can be sure that NDP card-carrying members (and probably Liberal members too) are overwhelmingly against any "merger" and are well aware of the vast ocean that separates the parties. If Den Tandt is right, then proof will be if Nathan Cullen is elected NDP leader on a one issue platfomr of wanting a "non-aggression" pact with the Libs. If Cullen ends up with about 5% of the vote on the first ballot (which is what i predict) then it will mean that the other 95% want no electoral deals with the Liberals.
PS: If there is one thing that drives me NUTS its how pundits have a habit of using the terms "voters" and "members" interchangeably. Something like 4 million people voted NDP. There are currently about 80,000 card-carrying MEMBERS - in other words about one fifth of one percent of NDP voters are members and i think we can surmise that those members are not some random sampling of the NDP voters - they are far more committed and ideological and strategic.
Its almost as annoying as people who use the terms "merger", "cooperation", "coalition", "accord" interchaneably as if they are all the same thing when they are radically different.
Liberal activists who want to merge with the NDP want to do so for several reasons: (a) they want a shortcut back to power, (b) they don't know how they'll pay off their election debt on their own, (c) they think we are just a misguided idealistic version of themselves who could be brought to see "reality" with their help.
Basically they want to engineer a reverse takeover. This would involve us paying off 2 election debts, and absorbing their poisonous, toxic political culture at a time of frailty for our party (new leader nursing leadership wounds), and both of those would honestly hurt the project of defeating the Conservative government more than merging would help it along.
For these reasons, any merger proposal is a complete non-starter for me. Also, as Stuart points out, it would be elite-driven. I don't agree we need a new NPI (in fact I'm on record as thinking anything that involves the phrase "new politics" should be banned from from our political discourse; hell that's what Bob Rae is running on now), but we are in the process of signing up a lot more members right now, and will have to go through some kind of reconsolidating process ourselves to remeld the now-larger group.
Let's work on winning over the former Liberal, Bloc, and Green supporters who are open to us, and even some of the Conservative supporters who are non-ideological but want good government.
I don't disagree at all with Ottawa Obervor. If we play our cards right, particularly on the leadership, we can prevent the Liberals from getting off the canvass. If we play our cards wrong we may see them rise again.
But there is cooperation short of merger that should be considered. We might consider a limited non-agreesion pact whereby we stand down in, say, 10 ridings where the Liberal prospects are clearly better that ours and where the Liberal candidates are progressive. The Liberals of course would have to reciprocate in a commensurate number of ridings, perhaps 15 in recognition of our greater strength.
Polling could indicate where this could be best employed.
But I am guessing that you do not see making an attempt at something like that to be a high enough priority for you that you would support Nathan Cullen for Leader.It is not excactly what he proposes- but I'm sure the precise details are open.
Makes for an interesting gauge of opinion within the NDP. Because it is not just a question of what the preference of members is on any question- it is really about how much they want it. So even a question that easily stirs the hornets nest- does not necessarily tell you how high a priority it is to those taking the different sides.
Has anyone considered how the voters for those two parties might feel if, by fiat, the choice is removed? And just where they might turn to seek vengeance on election day?:)
I just put this out as option which may or may not be atractive down the road depending or a myriad of circumstances.
My leadership vote will likely not be swayed by this although I have some sympathy with Cullen's proposal.
You will remember KenS that when my preferred candidate was asked whether he was in favour of "uniting the left", he said, "I thought we did that in the last election."
That question gets overlooked by proponents. Not for lack of asking them.
Methinks falls under the remarkable capacity to project on others what is a self-evident no-brainer to me.
Like others, Mulcair flat out shut the door on any such arrangements. I figured this was not a sufficiently high priority for you [and many others] for that to matter. But I did not want to assume that to be the case.
The center and the center-left are already united in mind, spirit and intent. There's no reason at this point for any lack of confidence in their ability to make everything official. The good news is that the anticipated end result will likely entail a spiffy re-branding, just like the reformatories,
exactly - same fleas same dog
But there is cooperation short of merger that should be considered. We might consider a limited non-agreesion pact whereby we stand down in, say, 10 ridings where the Liberal prospects are clearly better that ours and where the Liberal candidates are progressive. The Liberals of course would have to reciprocate in a commensurate number of ridings, perhaps 15 in recognition of our greater strength.
I think there will be some Liberal incumbent ridings that our party will priorize a bit lower (Cape Breton, rural PEI, mainland Newfoundland) just out of a function of being non-competitive there anyway. In others we could take out the incumbent and should probably try. There will be other ridings we don't priorize because the demographic profile doesn't fit ours as well (e.g., Willowdale, Vaughan, Halton, Oakville).
So, that kind of thing will be going on already. It will probably be the lack of their own resources that keeps them from targetting our incumbents now, and after that point it will come down to candidate recruitment to determine which of the two parties looks better to win what other Conservative-held ridings now. We will probably have the upper hand on candidate recruitment at this stage, of course.
It's resources and candidate recruitment, in other words, that will do that job without needing any official accord. The Liberals are going to have to learn to focus theirs or they won't survive. Whether their membership lets them do that or can stomach what that means, is another story altogether).
Has anyone considered how the voters for those two parties might feel if, by fiat, the choice is removed? And just where they might turn to seek vengeance on election day?
I have often considered that question and do not believe that parties own votes they earn them and they are not theirs to trade away as pawns in a grand strategy. For the NDP to go down this road would be disastrous.
Liberal voters if their party ceased to run candidates in the next election would not all vote for the NDP and that breakdown is different across the country. In BC it is unlikely to help elect more NDP MP's because a large percentage of federal Liberals voters are centre right and belong to the great BC based ANYBODY BUT NDP Party.
Liberal activists who want to merge with the NDP want to do so for several reasons: (b) they don't know how they'll pay off their election debt on their own,
What can you tell us about the relative financial positions of the Liberals and the NDP? The NDP outspent the other two main parties in the last go round while raising less money.
Its almost as annoying as people who use the terms "merger", "cooperation", "coalition", "accord" interchaneably as if they are all the same thing when they are radically different.
I can't agree. There's nothing as annoying as that. I swear, if I were a violent person...
In a nutshell- and this really is the crux of it:
The NDP raises less money than the Liberals- but the Liberals operating expenses are FAR more expensive. While we do not do enough on the ground and organizing, the Liberals do less. They are wedded to a bloated administrative structure built on internal patronage and petty fiefdoms.
Ditching that bloated structure was a vital necessity 5 years ago. And they are STILL having a hard time pulling the plug on it, even with time running out. They pay as much for administration as the Conservatives, while accomplishing a fraction.
Because we have always racked up substantial ongoing operating surpluses, we can prudently take on substantial campaign debt. While it is a risky nail biter for the LPC to take on even small campaign debt.... even tho no one, Cons included, can run a breakeven national campaign on current revenues.
Side point: as these things go, we did not significantly outspend the other two parties.
For what its worth- and off topic.... the Liberals have huge obstacles to raising more money. They've been desperately trying for a few years now. And even when[if] they very belatedly trim that bloated bureaucracy- they are not going to be better off in the short term, or for who knows how long. Because the turmoil from the cost cutting will also undermine fundraising- at the same time that the public financing is dissapearing [for them, accumulated 50% starting Jan 1, and continuing to decline].
The NDP has a very solid infrastructure. Which I am thankful for. But it irritates me that given that, we have not made it a priority to boost our fundraising capability. I do not know that particular federal funraising animal close up, but still....
Seriously, the Liberals stand to be still debating what kind of administrative structure they want to have, when the mass of pink slips is in the mail because they simply cannot meet the payroll.
as these things go, we did not significantly outspend the other two parties.
Perhaps, but we spent much more than we have in the past. My back of the envelope math suggests that we may not be raising enough money to pay off the debt before 2015, even if we keep the party office effectively shut down (as it currently is). It has some pretty serious implications for our ability to do anything for the next three years and a bit.
I'd like to see some actual numbers on our financial position relative to the other parties. I know the Conservatives have no debt and cash in the bank. I wonder what the Liberals owe.
Edited to remove word duplication
You cannot just read of figure. One of the biggest reasons is that the most definitive numbers are out of date when we get them. But if you follow it over time as I do, and use the currently available less definitive numbers you can get at least a good general comparison.
Actually, the Conservatives do generaly have debt. Safe to presume they do now. They operate on a different logic.
I think it more than overstates the case to say the NDP office is shut down now. We have not cut ongoing expenses substantially. It would be more the shorter term expenditures.
It took us most of the time between elections to pay off 2008. That was not according to plan, its also something we can do without getting bit. The issue now is less paying off the current debt.
Our fundraising and general organizational capability ramped up early in Jack's tenure. I would say that the fundraising capability has been flat for a coupld years. We've been at the 'we do alright' plateau typical of many organizations.
Because our vote share incresed so much, that cancels the public funding decrease for at least a year. But it will start heading south in the near future. And we have more ambitious goals now, let alone that as the main target for the Cons, we'll sink if we dont live up that challenge. So we are running out of time where 'we're doing alright' is a deficient but still tolerable modus operandi.
The Liberals would owe a lot less than us. But they have a hard time paying down ANYTHING, in the best of times. Let alone now. And my hunch is they went ahead and gambled on a bigger campaign debt this time [unlike 2008]. While they struggle to breakeven, let alone pay down debt, as their revenues are already dropping like a stone. Meanwhile, they issue discussion papers with laudable plans of building a special fund to protect the new leader from attacks. Who needs exact numbers?
Who needs exact numbers?
Really?
I know this is drifting off topic, but the issue of the relative financial strength of the Liberals and NDP is part of the discussion of merger scenarios, so I think it's important to have the details straight.
So let me share some of those back of the envelope numbers I was scratching down.
The proposition that fundraising ramped up during Jack's leadership does not match the numbers. Jack was elected leader in 2003. The per-vote subsidy changed the nature of fundraising begining in 2004. In 2004, an election year, the party raised about $5.2 million. That was not exceeded until 2008, also an election year, at which time $5.4 million were raised. In 2009 it fell back to approximately $4 million, about where it had been prior to the 2008 election. The 2010 number showed an uptick of about $300,000. It is impossible to know what to attribute that to. It may have been the beginning of something or it may have been noise in the data. Unsurprisingly, given the election result, 2011 looks rather different. About $6 million were raised in the first three quarters.
However, we spent $3.5 million more than we did in 2008. Rebate will cover half that. Our fundraising typically runs on about 40% overhead. That means we need to raise an additonal $2.9 million to be in the same position after the 2011 election as after the 2008 event. That means the end of year fundraising total will need to be about $8.3 million. Maybe, but I think it will take some doing. And that ignores the reality that we ran a convention and are running a leadership contest in the same year.
In 2008 we got 2,515,288 votes, in 2011 4,512,489. At $2.04 per vote that translates into a quartlery subsidy of about $2.3 million, just over $1 million more than we would have received under the 2008 total. As I understand that, the full rate will be in effect only for one quarter and will fall to $1.50 in January. That means that the gain for 2012 will be a little over $400,000 per quarter or $1.2 million. So taken together, the subsidies for 2011 and 2012 will be enough to deal with the increased spending, even if the fundraising increases of 2011 to date don't hold going forward.
It's 2013 ( a little over a year from now) where things start getting ugly. Subsidies will fall to $1 per vote and it will reduce their overall worth to the party by about $600,000 from what we would get at 2008 levels of support and the full subsidy. Fundraisng will need to increase over the historic level baseline by that much to allow debt retirement and programs to continue on pace. In 2014 that figure increases to over $2.8 million. In 2015, when subsidies disappear, it's more like an additional $5 million - roughly the total that we would have raised in an election year fairly recently.
As for "effectively shut down", I don't mean to say that the lights are off. Bills are being paid. Funds are being raised. But that organizing capacity you talked about Jack having built up is nowhere to be seen. For the first time in a long time, we have gone for months without even having a director of organization. A political party is not about moving paper around. It's about organizing or nothing, at least from where I sit. What this says to me is that somebody in the position to act did the same math as me and paniced.
I believe we can do what needs to be done to address the situation. I have serious doubts about the current management team's ability to get it done without alienating the party from its membership.
Anyway, that's a very longwinded way of saying that I wouldn't be overly smug about the Liberal's financial difficulties. We have our own challenges.
I think you would generalize what I said as also "we have challenges".
But the Liberals have to bail frantically to keep from sinking. We have a ton of slack- they burnt theirs off long ago.
Later for more.
@Ken S:
Could't have said it better myself; actually could't have come even close to saying it as well. Thanks for this!
I believe we can do what needs to be done to address the situation. I have serious doubts about the current management team's ability to get it done without alienating the party from its membership.
I already said that I think the problem is long term lack of leadership, not management teams. On that front, Jack was the best we ever had. But that isnt saying much, and even Jack wasnt good enough. [Although I still think that it could come from elsewhere than the Leader. 'Could'. The only way to be sure is getting it from the Leader.]
I dont see the danger of alienating the membership. And cant guess where you see it.
It requires things like the Leader saying it is time to seperate from the sections- at least to go completely our own way, if not seperating. I think Jack and Brad's ideas of what counts as acting on our own was/is rather pitiful actually.
Make no mistake- dealing with the flak from that kind of stuff will be arduous. But let the section elites scream [and many influential individuals among them will dissent and say 'high time'], the membership will see the logic if leadership is shown.
+++++++++++
If some leadership candidate were to whisper in my ear that he ar she does not want to make enemies now, but is going to make the break with the sections if they are leader.... I would be tempted to support them for that alone.
But that organizing capacity you talked about Jack having built up is nowhere to be seen. For the first time in a long time, we have gone for months without even having a director of organization. A political party is not about moving paper around. It's about organizing or nothing, at least from where I sit. What this says to me is that somebody in the position to act did the same math as me and paniced. I believe we can do what needs to be done to address the situation. I have serious doubts about the current management team's ability to get it done without alienating the party from its membership.
Here is my take.
In the first place, I dont think [and did not mean to say] that Jack built up our organizing capacity.
Under Jack's leadership, we have a more capable organization. What it does, it does better. But 'doing more' I think turned out to be largely talk from Jack. It isnt that he didnt mean it- or in my opinion that people got in the way of getting it done. I think it boils down to- he didnt make it happen. He made a lot of things happen. And he thought it was important. But basically, on this front, he didnt show sufficient leadership. And the NDP has 'cultural aspects' that mean a drive for that is not likely to come from somewhere else in the organization.... as is the case with the Conservatives.
I think you are entirely reading in that someone has read the numbers in the same way and paniced, pulling the plug. The way the NDP has maintained its capacity to fight elections above what would seem to be its financial limits, is by being a lean machine. That has meant pulling back after every election. And I can see reasons- given that tendency- why some of the longer term stuff was pulled back even before the election. We have a lot of slack, but we are very conservative about using it. I would be willing to bet the brain trust did not like how long it took to pay down the 2008 election debt... and wanted to avoid doing that again.
I think the reason the organization is still on slow speed is simply because there is not a plan. I dont think the fitful approach to building organizing capacity was only a matter of available funds. Its not an easy thing to do with financial efficiency [the Cons can learn through throwing money at everything to see what works best, not an option for us].
We dont have a long term plan how to build organizational capacity in a sustainable fashion. [Not helped by the ball and cahain dependency on the provincial sections.] Since we dont have a long term plan to guide investing in oranizing, it makes sense to use the slack available to rebuild the finances- which we ALWAYS do as fast as possible. [The recovery from the 1993 disaster was amazing testimony to that.]
Jack's illness and death exacerbated that, now the leadership race is even more reason to put things on hold. It would be nice if the staff and volunteer leadership was beavering away on a plan for ramping up the organization to present to the new Leader.... like their predesesors in 1993 presented the new leader with a financial recovery. And maybe, but I rather doubt it.
Anyway, I dont think there is any panic, just a lack of leadership, which unfortunately existed already and is only exacerbated by Jack's death.
Nonetheless, the year plus out from now issues are the same: the organization and fundraising grow, or we get flattened by the Conservatives.
I disagree with full breaks from the provincial sections. Brad struck the right balance in terms of hiring his own organizers, if you ask me. I think Ken is just sour on the NS provincial section, and that's coloured his thinking on it. The alternative is to create parallel federal wings in each province, just like the Liberals did with their PTAs, and that way lies way too much spending on overhead.
Another thing for people to think about - just because you don't see any evidence of planning, doesn't mean it's not going on. I remember on any number of occasions in the past, we would ask here "why aren't they saying anything on issues XYZ", and it would turn out that Jack was widely canvassing and consulting people on what to do, considering his strategy, doing communications planning, and would come out of hiding with a big strategic move that was a game-changer.
This is the downtime for the party. There has just been a historic election, followed by a convention, followed by a sick leader, the installation of an interim leader, the transition involved in that, massive hiring and re-organization on the Hill, the death of a leader, a state funeral, seven-count 'em-seven provincial or territorial elections, and a leadership race to run. Oh, and the House of Commons is back.
Give me a fucking break.
I dont see the danger of alienating the membership. And cant guess where you see it.
It requires things like the Leader saying it is time to seperate from the sections- at least to go completely our own way, if not seperating. I think Jack and Brad's ideas of what counts as acting on our own was/is rather pitiful actually.
Make no mistake- dealing with the flak from that kind of stuff will be arduous. But let the section elites scream [and many influential individuals among them will dissent and say 'high time'], the membership will see the logic if leadership is shown.
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On the issue of alienating the membership, the problem comes down to how one goes about organizing locally without them. On another thread, you and I have gone back and forth about the need to build a culture of permanent organizing. It is extremely difficult to imagine how that happens without building an energized and motivated membership base. Among the principle functions of field organizers are building local capacity, facilitating communication between the centre and the local organizations, dealing with resentments before they become toxic, and generally keeping everybody on the same page. No amount of organizing will get rid of all the local groups with unanswered questions, grievances against the party, odd misconceptions, strange agendas, and a backlog of perfectly legitimate problems that they can't solve on their own, but a lack of organization will guarantee that all of these proliferate. This kind of organizing is probably less important for the Conservatives, because an abundance of cash can smooth out a lot of those sorts of things, but they still do it more and better than we do.
Couple all that with the propensity for the current brain trust to substitute organizing with pissing off huge swaths of the membership through failed initiatives like changing the party's name and amending the constitution by stealth and the potential for alienation is not small.
The hiring of full-time organizers was not Brad's project. He was a caucus staffer when it was instituted, not a party employee. His Wikipedia entry is wrong; Joanne Deer was the party's Director of Communications between 2004 and 2008. Eric was National Director (actually, it was Federal Secretary until Brad took over after the 2008 election) at the time, and the project was very much Jack's. I don't know all the details, but it appeared to be entrenching itself in the party culture pretty well, with widespread expectations it would continue to develop, until the 2008 election. It was loved by the ridings in my neck of the woods. Whether the failed coalition threw priorities off centre or whether the wholesale change at the top of the party bureaucracy explains it, the focus appeared to be lost after that.
Regardless, Jack's project failed to develop into the sort of programme many of us would have liked to see, but it made an enormous difference in places. Quebec in 2011 was largely a matter of the right leader, with the right message, at the right time but an enormous amount of legwork also prepared our way for the success there. Ask any of the Ontario caucus whether the growth we have seen since 2006 would have been remotely possible without the full-time, permanent organizing effort that had been in place since then. The people who did that work built up an enormous reservoir of goodwill with ridings, useful knowledge and contacts that is now gone. Let me emphasize that it is not just organizers we lack at the moment, we don't even have a staffer in the federal hq whose responsibility is primarily organization. That is new and different. It is also dumb in a political environment where our first priority has to be building organizational capacity in incumbent ridings where we have nothing on the ground. Yeah, I know, rumour has it they're keeping some kind of organizing capacity in Quebec. How does that integrate with the federal party agenda when there is nobody in the federal office who understands what's required? Whatever the limitations of what we had, it was a damned site better than what we've got now – which is squat.
And the cultural biases that ultimately killed the initiative did not emerge from the sections, they were expressed by senior staff, advisors and executives in the federal party. The only way to confront that is to call them out.
I don't buy that there was no panic. I think it was prompted by the belief that the Conservative majority was going to kill the subsidy right away rather than phase it out, but the precipitousness with which certain decisions were made does not speak to calmness and deliberation. I don't think anybody had seriously entertained the possibility of a majority government and people had palpitations when they thought about what it meant.
I don't disagree that it's about leadership. We could use some.
The hiring of full-time organizers was not Brad's project. He was a caucus staffer when it was instituted, not a party employee. His Wikipedia entry is wrong; Joanne Deer was the party's Director of Communications between 2004 and 2008. Eric was National Director (actually, it was Federal Secretary until Brad took over after the 2008 election) at the time, and the project was very much Jack's.
Brad has been quoted in several places saying that they switched things so that the organizers were directly creatures of the federal party rather than the provincial sections, which presumably took place under his watch. He was Director of Communications at Federal Office when Jamey Heath was Director of Communications for the caucus, I do know that. Then he moved up to the Hill in that capacity, is what I thought.
Brad has been quoted in several places saying that they switched things so that the organizers were directly creatures of the federal party rather than the provincial sections, which presumably took place under his watch. He was Director of Communications at Federal Office when Jamey Heath was Director of Communications for the caucus, I do know that. Then he moved up to the Hill in that capacity, is what I thought.
The organizers were hired in 2006, at which time Eric Hebert (now Eric Hebert-Daly) was Federal Secretary. That is is also the year that Jamey left and I guess that's when Brad moved into the caucus comms position. It would have been Brad's job to communicate about the hirings, but he was not the guy who made the hires. That would have been the responsibility of Eric and the Director of Organization (Heather MacKenzie, I think) or maybe the assistant director, who would have been Brad Field. I was at Quebec Convention that year when the organizers were introduced as new hires and their role explained to delegates. I met most of them at that time and was thrilled with the concept, the people and the potential.
ETA: Sorry, I just went back and reread the original post. Joanne would have come on in 2006 as well, not 2004. Mea culpa.
OK, so there's this thing that happens when you get old, where your synapses drift apart and the memories they encode become disconnected and you remember a once familiar face but only associate a forename, no matter how hard you try to recall the family appellation. Sometimes the drift brings the synapses into contact with new and unrelated synapses and you recall an old acquaintance by the proper given name and a random surname.
Fortunately, the disconnects are not always entire. And so, while walking the dog under a misted, late autumn moon on crunching, frosted sedges I thought to myself, apropos of absolutely nothing at all in the context of the moment, "Fraser. Not MacKenzie, Fraser."
The name of the Director of Organization in 2006 was Heather Fraser. I never could keep the clans straight. I remember meeting her at some function or other and thinking she was obviously very motivated and very sharp. I think she's related to Ed Broadbent somehow, if memory serves (which isn't a given, obviously).
Between my knees, my back and my memory, I have come to appreciate that growing old is not for the faint of heart. On the plus side, my memory is so pathetic that I sometimes forget my age. At some point it becomes all about the silver linings.
As Ken has noted in the Mission 2015 thread, a discussion that started with comments and questions about the relative financial circumstances of the parties has morphed into a converation about organizational issues that would be more at home over there.
I'll post anything else I have to say about it there.
I'm on record as thinking anything that involves the phrase "new politics" should be banned from from our political discourse;
Sorry, I must have missed that. I thought Jack Layton was practising the new politics, even on his death bed, but earlier too:
New Democrat leader Jack Layton, after slamming Prime Minister Harper for his dismissal of Parliament, today set out constructive proposals for reform, including new rules for prorogation.“Stephen Harper won the election with the promise of a new day in Ottawa – more open, more transparent, more accountable,” said Layton. “But that new day never dawned. Instead we have more secrets, more arrogance and more disdain for the elected House of the people of Canada. We have more of the old politics; the old way of doing things in Ottawa.”
“There’s a new politics; a grassroots politics driven by Canadians. Ordinary Canadians coming together to organize town halls and rallies; joining social networking groups, making their voices heard in new media. But the new politics needs new rules to make Parliament stronger.”
http://www.ndp.ca/democracyworks
I’ve always believed – our caucus has always believed – that the House of Commons can and should be a constructive place.While there are many points of disagreement between the parties, there is much that we can and do accomplish by working with each other respectfully.
But when the doors are locked tight, the House of Commons cannot do its job.
When that happens, Canada is not performing at its best.
Limiting accountability, shutting down Parliament without cause – that’s the old politics.
Canadians are tired of the old politics; they are demanding new politics.
We urge the Prime Minister to listen to Canadians.
Unlock these doors . . .
http://www.ndp.ca/press/statement-by-jack-layton-prior-to-new-democrat-c...
Bravo, Wilf.
It never sounded canned when Jack said it, he didn't use it to death, and he never made it his slogan (or at least not in my recent memory).
But, I will take my rebuke gracefully. Thanks, Wilf.