NDP leadership thread #117

Hoodeet wrote:

 (oops  PETA will be after me in a minute.)

PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals?

Doug wrote:

It's hard to say definitely whether Nash or Topp is running second so that makes it hard for people who want that outcome to choose the correct ranking.

Nash is running second, it's not even close. If Topp is third (which I'm not sure any objective evidence demonstrates) he's a faaaaaar distant third and it's quite plausible that he's fifth.

Not that I think the anybody-but-Mulcair movement has a plausible path to the nomination though and the more his opponents concentrate on being anti-Mulcair thethe lower their chances dip.  New Democrats want to vote for something in our own convention. Tom represents a welcome embrace to the new Quebec wing of the party, you can't beat what that symbolizes by going negative. 

CanadaApple wrote:

So, what I'm asking Mulcair supporters is, what Tom Mulcair do, as Prime Minister and as Party Leader, that in your opinion that would make it worth voting for him?

Well, I hate being cast in the role of "Mulcair supporter", but I find the constant objections to him to be so wrong-headed, I can't seem to help myself from jumping in over and over.

So let me answer your question with a question. What makes you think that any of the candidates will do anything substantially different from any of the other candidates should they win? All of them will do their best to continue on the successful track that the party laid under Jack. All of them will advocate party policy as determined at the policy convention. All of them will work together to strategise and brainstorm the proper responses to the daily slings and arrows of outrageous politics, just as they did when Jack was alive. I don't think any of them are going to do anything exceptional that would really distinguish one leadership from another. They're all going to be trying to do the same things (promote party policy, charm voters, and win the next election) and they'll all be doing these things with roughly the same team of talented New Democrats. What distinguishes them is how well they will do these things. That's why Mulcair is winning the race, because everyone already knows what the leader's going to do: continue the good work of the last ten years. What they're looking for is someone who's really good at it.

Canada Apple, by choosing Tom we indeed choose something beyond mere "winning." We chosse actually being able to be in a position to implement our platform.

Nothing in the endles debate on Babble has shown that there is any significanrt ideological differences between the candidates. So "electability" becomes more important. And that is where Tom transcends the others. 

Yesterday's Forum poll is yet another demonstration of this. Take a good look at the numbers. And don't buy into the nonsense that it only reflects "name recognition." All candidates have had five months of constant campaigning to make themselves known. If any of them haven't then that is a sad reflection on their political skills.

The historic choice facing our party as I repectfully see it is this. We elect the most left-wing Prime Minister Canada has ever had or we run the very real risk of going back to the minor leagues.

Don Newman on the leadership race:

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/03/07/don-newman-conservatives-complement-mulcair-by-attacking-him/

Conservatives complement Mulcair by attacking him
Posted on Wed, Mar 7, 2012, 5:05 am by Don Newman

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Don Newman is a highly respected Canadian journalist and award-winning broadcaster. He is a lifetime member of the Parliamentary press gallery. Over his forty year career, he has reported from Ottawa and every Canadian province, as well as from Washington, London and the United Nations. For two decades, he served as Senior Parliamentary Editor of CBC Television News as well as anchor and host of a daily politics program and special live broadcasts on its all-news network. He was named to the Order of Canada in 1999.

Now it is clear.

If the New Democrats don’t select Thomas Mulcair as their new leader at the end of this month they deserve the sorry political fate that undoubtedly awaits them.

Never mind that Mulcair has the best political skill set of any of the leadership candidates.

Never mind that he is fluently bilingual, and in Quebec seems to be a Quebecer and in the rest of the country seems not to be.

Never mind that as a former Quebec cabinet minister, and the clear leader of the Quebec wing of the party, he has the best chance of holding on to a significant number of the fifty-eight seats that somehow fell in love with Jack Layton and voted NDP in the last election.

And never mind that without Mulcair as leader most of those seats will evaporate.

Never mind that all of those things are important.

What the 130,000 New Democrats who are now beginning to cast their leadership votes should mind is this.

The Stephen Harper Conservatives are starting to attack Mulcair.

There is no greater complement the Conservatives can pay an opponent than to attack him. Just ask former Liberal leaders Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff if you don’t think that is true.

The Conservatives have used their reliable allies at the National Post to spread a story that Mulcair wanted to join the Harper government as a cabinet minister, after he quit the Jean Charest cabinet in Quebec in a policy dispute.

The Conservative spin is that no cabinet job was offered so Mulcair walked. For his part, Mulcair says the Conservatives did offer him two policy jobs, but obviously he took neither. He says he had offers from all the other federal parties when he left provincial politics.

Frankly the details of what did or did not transpire don’t matter.

What does matter is the governing party is spreading a story designed to hurt Mulcair in the eyes of New Democrats just as the membership starts to cast their leadership votes. The Conservatives don’t bother attacking rival politicians that don’t worry them.

Obviously Stephen Harper and his friends do worry about all of the above mentioned attributes listed at the beginning of this article. His multiple opponents in the leadership race have spent their time attacking Mulcair over his lack of NDP purity. They have the erroneous idea that somehow party purity won all those seats in Quebec last year and seven more in the rest of the country.

That’s just plain wrong. And if a lot of New Democrats don’t get, at least we now know the Conservatives do.

When the NDP was founded in 1961, the party selected T.C. Douglas as its first leader. At the convention in Ottawa, to celebrate the selection, delegates sang the union song; “Tommy is our Leader, we shall not be moved.”

At the leadership at the end of March in Toronto the Brother and Sisters there assembled should sing that song again

Anyone want to take a shot at dealing with the claim of "Liberal Activist" Zach Paikan Huff Post blogger that the NDP is "cozying up to Seperatists"? I am telling you, Huff Post Canada should just rename itself as Lib Canada Blog Post Central and be done with it.

Oh Boom Boom, you're always trying to spoil my fun, !

Speaking of HuffPost: Queen Elizabeth Writes Back After Getting Letter From Quebec Resident Calling For Stephen Harper To Be Fired

(sorry for the thread drift)

Listening to Niki Ashton on The Current. God she's weak. Never realized before just how weak. Nonstop stream of empty rhetoric, unable (or too chicken) to answer a straight question. I think maybe she was born into electoral politics and got involved in it too early. Never spent time in the movement, where you learn to say what you feel without always worrying about all the possible consequences.

She is not ready. Too young. This my sound really patronizing, but the other thingholding her back, just in MY opinion is just, like the rest of us, needs time to thresh out how she feels and thinks about things. Its just a natural part of the growing process. It is a comment on her other then the fact that like most of us, she still has growing to do. I mean we all do, really. Its just part of life. If this sounds patronizing, or maybe obtuse, I apologize. That is just how she has hit me from the start. For sure a bright future, but now is simply not her time.

Bärlüer wrote:

Le Devoir endorses Mulcair.

Nicky already got that scoop.

Arthur Cramer wrote:

She is not ready. Too young.

Being all grown up within the party has been demonstrated as no measure to stand by either.

DSloth wrote:

nicky wrote:

This is important.

Le Devoir endorses Thomas Mulcair !!!!!!!!!!

http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/344420/nouveau-parti-democratique-mulcair-chef

Your really can't overstate the depth and breadth of Mulcair's support in Quebec.  The chief independant media organ of the sovereigntists is endorsing a staunch Federalist politician. 

My jaw just dropped. I was surprised enough when the star endorsed the NDP last election, but I never imagined that a dipper would gain the endorsement of Le Devior. I wonder if any other papers will be a endorsing someone.

This is probably the biggest endorsement in the leadership race, I've never heard of a newspaper offering a endorsement during a leadership race before.

Brachina wrote:

My jaw just dropped. I was surprised enough when the star endorsed the NDP last election, but I never imagined that a dipper would gain the endorsement of Le Devior. I wonder if any other papers will be a endorsing someone. This is probably the biggest endorsement in the leadership race, I've never heard of a newspaper offering a endorsement during a leadership race before.

Newspapers commonly endorse during leadership races.  In the 2006 Liberal Leadership race, for example, Le Devoir officially backed Ignatieff, while the Toronto Star endorsed Rae, and both the Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette endorsed Dion.  (The Toronto Sun issued a joint endorsement of Dion and Martha Hall Findlay.)

The fact that Le Devoir is endorsing Mulcair for the leadership doesn't mean that they support the NDP or want him as Prime Minister.  (Obviously, the Toronto Sun didn't want Dion as PM when they endorsed him.)

It's worth noting that in the United States, newspapers regularly endorse candidates for both the Democratic and Republican primaries; in 2008, for instance, the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and John McCain for the Republican nomination (and ended up endorsing Barack Obama in the general election).

Cullen as NDP leader will probably lead to a meltdown of NDP support in Quebec. But that's probably true of all the candidates except Mulcair, and maybe Topp.

from the devoir endorsement:

Des sept candidats toujours en lice, Topp et Mulcair sont les deux seuls choix à retenir. Parmi les autres, la Torontoise Peggy Nash est ce qu'on peut qualifier de bonne tête, mais sans le charisme nécessaire à cette fonction. Paul Dewar est de la même trempe, mais contrairement à celle-ci, il maîtrise mal le français, qu'il n'a jamais pris la peine d'apprendre bien qu'il soit né et ait fait toute sa carrière à Ottawa, à quelques lieues de la frontière québécoise qu'il n'a jamais franchie culturellement.

translation:

of the seven candidates still in the race, topp and mulcair are the only two serious options.  peggy nash has a good head, but lacks the charm necessary for this to matter.  paul dewar suffers from the same problem but, in contrast with nash, has a poor mastery of french, a language that he never bothered to learn though he was born and made his career in ottawa, on the quebec border that he has never breached culturally.

...the horrible thing is that if by some act of willful madness and self-destructive stubbornness, we do elect dewar (or nash or cullen), we'll certainly deserve the collective betrayal felt by quebecois (and subsequent electoral decimation at their hands), but beyond this narrow ecosphere, the consequences for canadians of all types will be cataclysmic.

i want to say something like "it's our moment, let's be up to the challenge", but that doesn't even approach the historical (and ethical) task before us.

^ no chance.  i'm still not certain he'll win at all.

If this is the way young leaders think and write, we're in trouble:

Young leaders wrote:

Many of us are first-time NDP members who have joined to support Peggy.

Think about that. What a reason to join a political party.

Quote:

We believe she is the only choice to connect with and inspire our generation.

Do they mean that, or is it just rhetoric? The "only choice"? So if Peggy loses, they're gone? No, I guess it's just empty overheated rhetoric.

But that's what races for Overlord of the Party produce and encourage.

i just don't get how people can get excited by nash?  what am i missing?

flight from kamakura wrote:

<p>i just don't get how people can get excited by nash?&nbsp; what am i missing?</p>

Nash has a great public record. She's highly consistent on both economic and social issues (and they are often one and the same, despite what Conservatives tell you). She's been an MP for several years and been active in the party even longer. If you live in Toronto, let alone Parkdale, you've seen her work extremely hard for her constituents. She's extremely likeable, and she's engaged with nonprofits, activists, unions, and all shades of organizations that focus on social justice. To meet with her IS to get excited about a politician who genuinely gives a shit, and genuinely knows what work needs to be done (both on her side and on your side).

I've been disappointed by her campaign. I feel like she'd be more than capable as a Prime Minister -- in the election and after the election. But she hasn't done a good job of showing it in the past few months, which is stopping me from marking her first on my ballot.

Saganash endorsing Tom???

http://www.abitibiexpress.ca/Actualit%C3%A9s/Politique/2012-03-07/articl...

The news keeps getting better for Tom.  first the Forum poll then LeDevoir and now Romeo.

DSloth wrote:

Saganash endorsing Tom???

 

http://www.abitibiexpress.ca/Actualit%C3%A9s/Politique/2012-03-07/articl...

!!!!!!

This is indeed huge!

With both Leadership candidates that have dropped out now supporting him, I'm convinced, more than ever, that Mulcair stands a reasonable change of winning on the 1st ballot.