NDP denies Andrea Horwath set to resign as leader

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Listening to people in Toronto complain that the mdia is biased against the NDP is fucking hilarious. Well DOH!!

It reminds me of people who move to the Wet Coast and after a year or so here constantly complain about the rain. I just tell them that there is a reason that their surroundings are called a rain forest.  All the MSM in Canada including the CBC exist in an corporatist world where any attack on the vested rights of the 0.1% is treated as being either akin to treason or naive.

Get over it, the media is capitalist and biased and will always be so no matter how many times the NDP goes to the Business Counsel or the Chamber and tells them they have nothing to fear because they have become a party of the centre.

The point Kropotkin, is precisely this. In fact those who are attacking Horwath because they allegedly used the wrong "pitch", right, left, or center, are simply ignoring the fact that regardless of the pitch, the establishment media are going to attack it. In this case in a particularly ruthless manner.

If the NDP is too "left" it is irrelevant because it is too radical, and one should vote Liberal, and if it is too "centerist" it is irrelevant because it is too simillar to the Liberals, and therefore you might just as well vote Liberal.

Either way, one should vote Liberal. 

Once we clear away this bit of confusion, we have to look at other factors involved. For example, I pointed out that Layton and Chow, unlike Horwath, are to a certain extent insulated from the media attack because of their status as local heros, well established in the backrooms where "opinion leaders" make their decisions. It was a lot easier to "frame" Horwath as right wing, or "too centerist", simply because she does not have the same kind of established base in the Toronto progressive scene.

Sadly, I find it hard to escape the conclusion that the attack upon Horwath in favour of Wynne, with her Toronto "grass roots" activist credentials, and her long history as a member of the Toronto "progressive" establishment, just like Layton and Chow, had as much to do with "cosmopolitan" prejudice against an outsider, as it did with anything political.

Moreover, Horwath herself apparently makes the mistake of thinking that if she uses the right "pitch" that the media are suddenly going to co-operate and come on side, and clearly articulate her position. This was naive.

In short, it is important to recognize the media bias as an essential element of the political terrain that the NDP has to confront, which neither group is willing to deal with. Campaigns structured around traditional media marketing strategies are not going to get a fair shake in the media, and any messaging is going to be distorted, so bithcing about what "messaging" Horwath used, is too fall into the same trap that Horwath fell into, just with a different flavour of failure.

Traditionally, the NDP has been able to mitigate much of the media bias against it by mobilizing a healthy grass roots campaign, supported by volunteers carrying a message through word of mouth to the public.

And it is not recognizing this, and riding rough shod over the local organizations and activists that the Horwath people made their biggest errors, not in her pitch, because they demobilized their volunteer base. There isn't any point in changing the guard at the level of the leadership, unless you bring in a leadership that is committed to making systemic changes that reinforce grass roots ownership of the party, and inspire loyalty to a party, over the centralized model that the Liberals and Conservatives use, precisely because they can depend on a relatively compliant media to play ball with their high flown "sales pitch".

The chief object of any leadership review, should be based in which leader is going to carry forth a program of democractuc renewal in the party, and build local riding associations and support measures that instutionalize their democratic integrity within the party structure.

Rokossovsky wrote:

Globe and Mail wrote:

Andrea Horwath’s office is in the midst of a shakeup following the New Democrats’ poor election result in June, with her two top aides scheduled to leave over the summer. Long-serving chief of staff Gissel Yanez and principal adviser Elliott Anderson are both heading out the door as the party regroups, sources told The Globe and Mail.

You need the context to make sense of that. Here's some of the rest of the relevant material on Giselle from the Globe piece: "Two party insiders said the NDP months ago gamed out transition plans for every possible election result. One source said Ms. Yanez and Mr. Elliott might still play active roles in the party after leaving Queen’s Park."

This is all smoke and mirrors. If Giselle is on her way out the front door, you can be sure she'll be coming in the back about thirty seconds later, wearing a spiffy new hat. Gaming is a pretty good term for how those folks view politics in its entirety.

Globe and Mail wrote:

Mr. Schein contends that, despite his loss, Ms. Horwath has done a good job broadening the party’s support in non-traditional NDP constituencies. The party gained seats in Sudbury, Oshawa and Windsor, and largely supplanted the Liberals as the dominant centre-left force in the province’s southwest.

“We have to make sure we’re speaking to a broad audience,” he said.

Rokossovsky wrote:

Bringing the grand total of defeated ONDP incumbents who are taking out their loss on Horwath overtly to a big fat zero.

Jonah is a nice guy who lost his seat unnecessarily because the party is run by incompetents. I guess he is to be commended for sucking it up, putting his team first and behaving in an unselfish manner that his leader will never exhibit. I feel badly for the guy. If you manage to get a recorder into a private meeting with Michael Prue, I'd be really interested in hearing if he's as collegial as that.

As for the Forum poll, I seem to remember there being a pretty broad consensus around here that Forum's IVR polling is pretty questionable. Not sure why anybody is paying any attention to this one. Regardless of issues with the method and the pollster, this kind of mushy question in a post-election environment is going to tell you pretty much exactly nothing useful.

Anyway, I only signed on here because I was annoyed with the cheerleading that claimed to represent the opinions of NDP members and the allegations from some quarters that only Liberals want  Horwath to quit. I'm about the furthest thing from a Liberal you're going to get in the NDP, and I very much want her gone. If, when all is said and done, the members of the party are content with leadership that can't even manage to look good enough to elect next to Dalton McGuinty's legacy and the Curly Joe Conservatism of Tim Hudak, I guess we've got the leadership we deserve. By any meaningful measure, this campaign was an embarrassing failure. A leader with a bit of integrity and some capacity for reflection would already be gone. Any Liberal with a scrap of sense would be posting here to argue for her continued leadership of the NDP, not calling for her ouster.

I've said what I had to say. I don't see this discussion in this forum as likely to resolve much. Probably time to go back to dropping in occasionally and catching up on what's being said by the regulars.

Cheers.

Edited for spelling and to correct the 3 Stooges reference (hey, it was late).

[double post]

According to Benzie's editorial remarks. Oh wait its the news section, so it must be true.

Corrie Sakaluk: [url=http://briarpatchmagazine.com/blog/view/what-is-to-be-done-about-the-ont... is to be done about the Ontario NDP?[/url]

Rebick provided some welcome historical perspective on past attempts to change the federal NDP from within, noting that after each one of these efforts the party actually moved to the right and oriented toward further “professionalization” and away from the grassroots. The present ONDP focus on pocketbook politics, with a platform promoting individual benefits and personal savings instead of collective solutions, is an outgrowth of that trajectory. All panelists encouraged us to move beyond the narrative of an ONDP betrayal and historic break, in favour of thinking about how to foster conditions that allow us to push the entire political terrain to the left, building new organizations in the process.

Loreto cautioned organizers against allowing the NDP to become a vacuum, sucking up the time and energy of activists, especially in small communities. Every election, she noted, dedicated activists drop their other political commitments to get involved in supporting the NDP, often with little concrete reciprocity shown for their causes between elections. She attributes NDP gains in Oshawa, Sudbury, and Windsor to the tireless groundwork of local constituents (such as the We Are Oshawa campaign) and to being places worst affected by the provincial jobs crisis (with no thanks to the advice of upper-level ONDP strategists).

Unfortunately even activist-oriented NDP MPPs like Jonah Schein (a sacrificial lamb of this election who is respected for his work with Stop Line 9) have been hesitant to seriously address issues of poverty that groups like the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) mobilize around.

“We went to Jonah Schein to talk about the Liberal cuts to the Community Start-Up and Maintenance Benefit, which is especially vital for low-income women leaving situations of domestic violence and trying to start up somewhere new,” recounts OCAP’s Liisa Schofield. “Jonah said there was nothing he could do.”

Quote:

At a Toronto post-election panel on June 14, featuring panelists David Bush, Nora Loreto, Judy Rebick, and Ritch Whyman, all agreed that the election revolved around Hudak’s agenda and that the ONDP failed to capture the anti-Hudak vote, failed to provide an inspiring platform, and failed to take advantage of the space recently opened up for more radical policies by movements such as Occupy and Idle No More.

Its quite funny how these people claim that the ONDP "failed to capture the anti-Hudak vote" yet these are the same people who attacked the ONDP for trying to take votes away from Hudak's Conservatives. These are also the same people who actively encouraged people to vote liberal to "stop Hudak"...then like a child who made a mess and won't own up to it they say "I didn't do it">

I think I have underestimated Ms. Horwath, apparently based on the summary of the criticism of her management/mismanagement of the election campaign, she is 100% responsible for the outcome, including Tim Hudak's defeat, and Wynne's victory. That is a fair amount of power, I must say.

For people who are also seemingly upset by the "cult" of the leader, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on her mystical powers.

robbie_dee wrote:

The issue is that Andrea hired these people and placed the party's future in their hands, as well as approved of the overall direction and plan they proposed. That's why she has to accept the ultimate responsibility.

Amen. I would only add that the senior staff are/were where they are because they accurately reflect Horwath's ideology (to the extent that she has one), ethics (to the extent that she has any) and character (which is unfortunate).

There's an awful lot of cherry-picking going on in the discussion that's being posted here. Here are a few general observations.

Both the NDP and Liberals "fear-mongered" about Hudak. Why wouldn't they? He was proposing an extreme agenda that people could see good reason to fear. Both had other aspects to their campaign which featured prominently, so neither was exclusively a "Stop Hudak camapign". The Liberals had a well developed, positive campaign on the theme of investing in Ontario's future. It was unclear at the outset how a campaign that came across as strongly in favour of spending, deficits and taxes would fly with the electorate. It was not a populist agenda. It also includes a number of regressive measures that should not have appealled to progressive voters and which were ignored or downplayed during the campaign. They managed their message to emphasize the progressive elements and/or voters decided the balance was to their liking and they won a majority. The NDP had an assortment of policy positions, but no coherent over-arching vision. They also leaned very heavily on the negatives of the Liberal record; why would they not? It could fairly be described as reliant on populist proposals. They did not manage their message(s) and/or voters decided they didn't much care for it and they finished in last place.

The Liberals executed their campaign strategy very well. The NDP campaign execution was dreadful; for the first three weeks it was unbelievably dreadful.

All campaigns include a mix of factors affecting how people vote in their local polling station. The extent to which leadership, provincial issues, local issues, local candidates and other considerations figure in final results varies from campaign to campaign, from riding to riding and from poll to poll. To know how, you actually have to look at the overall results, or a representative subsample) on a poll by poll basis and apply some knowledge of events.

In the article posted by onlinediscoutanvils this quote appears: "She attributes NDP gains in Oshawa, Sudbury, and Windsor to the tireless groundwork of local constituents (such as the We Are Oshawa campaign) and to being places worst affected by the provincial jobs crisis (with no thanks to the advice of upper-level ONDP strategists)."

In fact, there are no staff or executive within the ONDP who could realistically be called "upper-level ONDP strategists". There is no strategy. Just a bunch of disconnected tactics. The ONDP central office is actually well-staffed with people who are tactically solid. It's the main reason we do so well in by-elections. The absence of any strategic sense came through in technicolor during this past election.

It is unfortunate that there is no fly on the caucus-room wall right now with an itty-bitty GoPro camera. I am dead certain that what we would see would be a very unpleasant beating-up of Dinovo and Tabuns for daring to question the leader. The leader would not be involved. She generally prefers to let her minions do the dirty work for her. It would be a couple of her loyalists huffing and puffing and red in the face about disloyalty and generally being nasty. In this caucus it is probably a couple of the boys. Maybe Bisson and Natyshak. At most, 2 or 3 of the others would be willing to come to the defence of the caucus members under attack, for fear of the inevitable petty retribution. That's life in Andrea Horwath's NDP.

Frozen Snowshoe wrote:

It is unfortunate that there is no fly on the caucus-room wall right now with an itty-bitty GoPro camera. I am dead certain that what we would see would be a very unpleasant beating-up of Dinovo and Tabuns for daring to question the leader. The leader would not be involved. She generally prefers to let her minions do the dirty work for her. It would be a couple of her loyalists huffing and puffing and red in the face about disloyalty and generally being nasty. In this caucus it is probably a couple of the boys. Maybe Bisson and Natyshak. At most, 2 or 3 of the others would be willing to come to the defence of the caucus members under attack, for fear of the inevitable petty retribution. That's life in Andrea Horwath's NDP.

So, you are saying that the caucus is united in support of Horwath? Astonishing! And here I was thinking she was divisive.

Speaking of cherry picking, I suggest that you go through the latest Benzie's hit piece in the Star, and read what Tabuns actually said. He actually echo DiNovo much at all -- he was far less sharp. His comments were just backend loaded into the piece in order to create the impression that he was onside with DinNovo and heavily contextualized in Benzie's heavily loaded op-ed about Horwath "finally acknowledging the shortcomings" of the campaign. 

Toronto Muckrakers wrote:

“I would say that the party’s got a lot of reflecting to do on what happened in that campaign,” Tabuns told reporters on Tuesday.

“We had a very difficult time in Toronto. I don’t think our message was one that was crafted for Toronto. We need to have a message here that makes sense here in Toronto,” he said, noting the party’s transit plan didn’t get much attention.

“People were very concerned that they didn’t hear a Toronto voice. They didn’t hear a strong message on transit. We put out a message on transit, we didn’t get coverage on it."

Hardly a full out assault on Horwath, in fact pointing out that the NDP transit message "didn't get coverage," on its message, not that the message wasn't there. 

They did the same thing to Marchese when they suggested in a headline that he said that the party campaigned "to the right". He said no such thing, and in fact defended the ONDP position on election night, saying that the ONDP had not lost an iota of its basic principles.

It is getting to the point where ONDP MPPs can't speak to the Star without having their comments re-contextualized and turned into an attack on the party.

I know. We should never challenge are betters in the Liberal party, to do so is to invite a spanking from the Conservatives.

cassius wrote:

Platform is one thing; judgment another. Ms. Horwath called the election because she felt the ONDP could leapfrog over a shattered Liberal Party to form the official opposition, meaning the PCs would form the next government. No one in the party seriously believed Horwath and company had the numbers to form a government. The cry would be "corruption" as it was with Jack Layton. That gave us the NDP as the official opposition and the most right-wing federal government in our history. Going, going gone are the post office, the CBC, medicare, and thousands of civil service jobs and services. Horwath wanted to see the same happen in Ontario. Fortunately, Wynne played the fear card and it trumped Horwath's corruption card. Now that the party's lost its hold on the balance of power, there's no one to hold Wynne accountable. That's why Horwath should go. She showed callous indifference to those who would be victims of PC rule - the poor, the working poor, labour and many others. If ONDP members want to let the leader stay on to avoid the ugliness of a fight, fine. But in 4 years time, after languishing in obscurity in the basement at Queen's Park, they will see things differently.    

You have it backwards.

Horwath understood that with only a year before an election that propping up the Liberals, once again, would increase the likelihood of a PC victory in 2015 by further running the clock on a tired Liberal party and a premier (and that premier’s agenda, and 180 shift from the previous Liberal agenda) that had ruled for three years without ever facing a general election.

What Horwath misjudged was platforms; both her own, and its ability to influence voters (particularly in the GTA), and Wynne’s, by assuming the budget wasn't an election platform and instead was crafted to get NDP support.

What Howarth also misjudged was how the public judges credibility, particularly their willingness to find credibility in the premier's agenda despite the government's policy and financial misadventures over the past ten years, and not find the same credibility in her own.

If one’s raison d’etre is to keep out the PCs, the best thing that’s ever happened to this province in the last five years is Horwath.

Under Horwath the NDP has siphoned PC support from ridings in the southwest, London, Waterloo, Niagara, Oshawa, while triggering an election not in the haze of McGuinty's unpopular minority, not when the two opposition leaders would face an unknown and untested Liberal, and not once that leader had been straightjacketed by her own legacy, but instead at the exact moment the PCs were the weakest.

On this count Horwath has had stellar political judgment.

"You can't back a Liberal slate then blame the people who you didn't support for not winning."

^^ This.

Some of the support/criticism of Horwath has been quite disingenuous.

There's a lot of criticism of Horwath, strangely, from camps that seem to be relatively happy with the outcome.  A "progressive" Liberal leads a majority government that is about to implement "the most progressive budget in a generation" that borrows heavily from the issues the NDP has supported over the past five years, in effect priming the public and setting the agenda for the next for years.

The anti-PC crowd should be happy too.  The election was a rout for the PCs, they lost seats, they returned no new blood or potential new leadership dynamos, they have no chance at implementing anything for the next four-five years, their party is left in disarray with no discernable direction yet the election returned a strong NDP presence and solidified the NDP as the main PC rivals in a number of areas where the Liberals are no longer a factor.  There have been few elections in which a majority Liberal government has been elected that didn't result in nearly wiping the NDP off the map.

Yet those who have been least critical - party syncophants – gloss over the NDP's inability to take advantage of the most politically fertile election dynamics since 1990, with the most damaged leaders and most liked NDP leader and public open to some of the NDP’s agenda for the first time in 20 years, and yet the NDP ends up with the same amount of seats, only one honestly notable gain – Oshawa – significant losses – Prue, Schein - and minimal prospects for growth in Toronto or the broader GTA.

It is baffling.  This is the crap that makes people tune out of politics.

Is Sears in the NDP?

I was more concerned about the organizational flaws in the campaign, as opposed to the positioning. There seems to be a problem with trying to stage manage and micromanage everything in the party. Failure to properly delegate or trust people to execute a plan, is a serious flaw.

From all that I have heard, it is here that the main problem of the campaign lies, not the failure to center "social justice" issues. This is a serious, but all too common flaw.

Stockholm wrote:

The problem was not that the NDP voted against the supposedly "progressive" Liberal budget - we now know that the budget is actually loaded with rightwing poison pills - what i find unforgiveable is that Horwath voted down the budget and refused to actually criticize it - she basically all but said "I like everything in this budget but i don't trust the Liberals to implement it" - that is the most laughably weak argument I've ever heard in  my life for forcing an election.

^^^THIS^^^. Yes.

Quote:

My issue with "the 34" has little to do with the substance of their letter. i agree with parts of it. but purposely releasing a letter like that to the media in the middle of an election campaign was an act of outright sabotage that makes me think that Judy Rebick was likely cooperating with people in the liberal war room to try to inflict maximum damage.

Wrong. Rebick specifically denied releasing it. She said it was intended to be private. And guess what - I believe her.

Horwath, on the other hand, is an unprincipled and unsuccessful pragmatist. She followed advice of braindead unprincipled advisers. And it is [b]those advisers[/b] - if not Horwath's direct order - that leaked the letter, thinking it would fit right into their "strategy" of eating Hudak's lunch. As the ONDP now hopefully understands, being attacked by honest progressive activists just isn't enough to convince right-wing types that you should be given the keys to Queen's Park.

Unionist wrote:

Stockholm wrote:

My issue with "the 34" has little to do with the substance of their letter. i agree with parts of it. but purposely releasing a letter like that to the media in the middle of an election campaign was an act of outright sabotage that makes me think that Judy Rebick was likely cooperating with people in the liberal war room to try to inflict maximum damage.

Wrong. Rebick specifically denied releasing it. She said it was intended to be private. And guess what - I believe her.

As do I. As did more than a few Dippers when - for a brief moment - they believed the NDP were surging in the polls thanks to a campaign brilliantly designed to remove all doubt that this was still their grandparents' NDP.

Of course that all changed once the results came in.

Unionist, I think you are crediting Andrea's inner circle with too much guile to suggest they leaked the letter to convince Conservative voters that the NDP was safe.

I can tell you what I have been told by a couple people who worked on the central campaign.

1. The letter was NOT leaked by Andrea's team.

2. Only FIVE of the Group of 34 were actually party members.

3. Although some of them may be genuinely mortified that it was leaked, others of them deliberately leaked it.

4. It caused a lot of damage, especially in Toronto.

I have no problem with internal dissent but there are avenues for it. To go public during an election campaign is an act of sabotage.

Confirmation bias much? What does Judy Rebick have to do with "Grandad's NDP"? She thinks campaigning against privatization, for corporate tax increases, and for cutting regressive consumption taxation is right wing, and that supporting the opposite as presented in the Liberal budget makes it the "most progressive budget in a years".

Here is the the truth, Tommy Douglas increased taxes on business in order to fund public service. and cut regressive consumption taxes -- those were the essential principles of the 2014 ONDP program.

The Liberal budget was classic "third way" supply side economics with a social conscience (supposedly).

So assuming Andrea needs to walk the plank, how do people feel about Catherine Fife? She seems to be very well-respected both within the party and within the constituency, and the fact that even before being elected she polled way ahead of the party suggests she knows a thing or two about winning.

Rokossovsky wrote:

So, you are saying that the caucus is united in support of Horwath? Astonishing! And here I was thinking she was divisive.

This comment reveals a charming outlook on how politics is done in the ONDP big leagues that brought a smile to my lips. Would that it were so. You should try to spend a little time working in proximity to Horwath and her posse. It will harden your heart. Or break it. You will also understand that it takes a certain, special kind of nerve to speak truth to that particularly nasty kind of power. In the caucus meeting I describe, the majority position will be embarrassed silence.

Rokossovsky wrote:

Speaking of cherry picking, I suggest that you go through the latest Benzie's hit piece in the Star, and read what Tabuns actually said. He actually echo DiNovo much at all -- he was far less sharp. His comments were just backend loaded into the piece in order to create the impression that he was onside with DinNovo and heavily contextualized in Benzie's heavily loaded op-ed about Horwath "finally acknowledging the shortcomings" of the campaign. 

Toronto Muckrakers wrote:

“I would say that the party’s got a lot of reflecting to do on what happened in that campaign,” Tabuns told reporters on Tuesday.

“We had a very difficult time in Toronto. I don’t think our message was one that was crafted for Toronto. We need to have a message here that makes sense here in Toronto,” he said, noting the party’s transit plan didn’t get much attention.

“People were very concerned that they didn’t hear a Toronto voice. They didn’t hear a strong message on transit. We put out a message on transit, we didn’t get coverage on it."

Hardly a full out assault on Horwath, in fact pointing out that the NDP transit message "didn't get coverage," on its message, not that the message wasn't there. 

They did the same thing to Marchese when they suggested in a headline that he said that the party campaigned "to the right". He said no such thing, and in fact defended the ONDP position on election night, saying that the ONDP had not lost an iota of its basic principles.

It is getting to the point where ONDP MPPs can't speak to the Star without having their comments re-contextualized and turned into an attack on the party.

I read it. It would take much less than that to get him skewered by the Horwath loyalists at the moment. There is nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast that thinks it's being attacked. Horwath is the sort who could sees enemies among the children touring Queen's Park.

The most public manifestation of the Horwath method was the Giambrone by-election nomination. It was ham-fisted, it was dishonest, it was in violation of party rules, it was contemptuous of members, it was ruthless and it was pointless (as the result made clear). There are too many other lesser-known examples of the same approach for it to be written off as a mistake. That's who you're cheering on.

Frozen Snowshoe wrote:

Rokossovsky wrote:

So, you are saying that the caucus is united in support of Horwath? Astonishing! And here I was thinking she was divisive.

This comment reveals a charming outlook on how politics is done in the ONDP big leagues that brought a smile to my lips. Would that it were so. You should try to spend a little time working in proximity to Horwath and her posse. It will harden your heart. Or break it. You will also understand that it takes a certain, special kind of nerve to speak truth to that particularly nasty kind of power. In the caucus meeting I describe, the majority position will be embarrassed silence.

Rokossovsky wrote:

Speaking of cherry picking, I suggest that you go through the latest Benzie's hit piece in the Star, and read what Tabuns actually said. He actually echo DiNovo much at all -- he was far less sharp. His comments were just backend loaded into the piece in order to create the impression that he was onside with DinNovo and heavily contextualized in Benzie's heavily loaded op-ed about Horwath "finally acknowledging the shortcomings" of the campaign. 

Toronto Muckrakers wrote:

“I would say that the party’s got a lot of reflecting to do on what happened in that campaign,” Tabuns told reporters on Tuesday.

“We had a very difficult time in Toronto. I don’t think our message was one that was crafted for Toronto. We need to have a message here that makes sense here in Toronto,” he said, noting the party’s transit plan didn’t get much attention.

“People were very concerned that they didn’t hear a Toronto voice. They didn’t hear a strong message on transit. We put out a message on transit, we didn’t get coverage on it."

Hardly a full out assault on Horwath, in fact pointing out that the NDP transit message "didn't get coverage," on its message, not that the message wasn't there. 

They did the same thing to Marchese when they suggested in a headline that he said that the party campaigned "to the right". He said no such thing, and in fact defended the ONDP position on election night, saying that the ONDP had not lost an iota of its basic principles.

It is getting to the point where ONDP MPPs can't speak to the Star without having their comments re-contextualized and turned into an attack on the party.

I read it. It would take much less than that to get him skewered by the Horwath loyalists at the moment. There is nothing more dangerous than a wounded beast that thinks it's being attacked. Horwath is the sort who could sees enemies among the children touring Queen's Park.

The most public manifestation of the Horwath method was the Giambrone by-election nomination. It was ham-fisted, it was dishonest, it was in violation of party rules, it was contemptuous of members, it was ruthless and it was pointless (as the result made clear). There are too many other lesser-known examples of the same approach for it to be written off as a mistake. That's who you're cheering on.

I know; "failure to denounce" loudly enough equates with "cheering on" the "enemies of the people". Sorry comrade. My mistake.

What does any of that have to do with the Toronto Star misrepresenting what was said by Tabuns, regardless of your belief that he is sycophantic parrot that fears the Jacobin guillotine, and that Horwath is making hostages of his children, or whatever other Machiavellian intrigues she deploys to get her caucus to stay in line.

What has been written in the press has been contextualized politically in order to misrepresent it.

Your assumptions about the reign of terror in the ONDP have no bearing on that.

Pretty much sums up the whole campaign really when viewed through the lens of Toronto Star reportage. TorStar summarizing what the ONDP is really saying, or should be saying, or would be saying, if it were not for the dastardly Horwath, and not reporting what the ONDP was actually saying on things like transit, which Tabuns observes didn't get "coverage".