Mulcair: stay or go?

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Stockholm wrote:

I thought the "drift to the centre" by the NDP started when the party was foujnded in 1961 with the idea of being a more mainstream party that the CCF had been, or was in when Broadbent ditched all the old policies about withdrawing from NATO and nationalizing banks, or was it under MacDonough when she travelled to london in 1997 to learn about how she could apply Tony Blair's 3rd way strategy to the NDP...

Spoken like a true NDP partisan who thinks that if only we could convince the electorate that the NDP is a centrist middle class party they will vote us. All the party ends up doing is sounding insincere and power hungry. Mulcair tried to out-liberal the Liberals and the electorate said sorry we have a Liberal party already and their leader is way cuter and not such an old fuddy duddy.

Since you put the drift start at 1961, how many more decades to you think the NDP should spend drifting to the centre right while losing? Or are you one of those types who would rather try for power and lose than try to educate the electorate and lose.

I was not taking a position for or against any of this, I as simply pointing out that the idea of moving the NDP to a more moderate place on the political spectrum did not start with Tom Mulcair, in fact every leader of the party since MJ Coldwell has been moving in a more pragmatic direction. In fact jack Layton probably moved the NDP much more to the centre than Tom Mulcair ever did. I'm just pointing out the facts.

There is pragmatic and there is unprincipled pandering and incompetence. Mulcair delivered the party into an election where the party was exposed as one panderng to the middle class without the courage to defend its key priorities while he personally claimed to be driven first and foremost by the middle class. Despite this he was unable to recognize what the middle class was or what it earned such that he missed the entire thrust of the Liberal so called "middle class" tax cut that missed the median income and went to the wealthy Canadians except for the top half of the 1%.

There is nothing pragmatic about being so incompetent that you cannot recognize how much Caandians make, how to read a tax promise, or pandering to a single so-called class while throwing out decades of being a social justice party. Mulcair is the worst NDP leader ever by far becuase he not only has fialed in an election, he has promoted a vision of the NDP that few poeple could support or want to see.

It does not matter if he can discover more petty scandals in appointments etc. He misses the point of what the NDP is and has severly damaged the NDP. He is the first NDP leader to damage the NDP so severely that after the election people are correctly asking what the party stands for and what purpose it has.

No, he has not  driven the party on the road to modern pargmatism, he drove it off a cliff and it is time NDP members see that. Layton, for all his pragmatism, never lost sight of what the NDP was, who it was for and the principles it had. It is an insult to every leader before Mulcair to pretend that Mulcair is following any trend. In fact, the trend Layton was a part of was one that may well have brought the NDP to power and brought change to the country. Mulcair is a man who sold the party's principles for the biggest election loss in the NDP's history when you consider that 2/3 of its sitting MPs failed in their re-election bids.

Now Mulcair has promoted a false choice to the NDP: leave the mainstream and no longer be a contender for power or imagine that you can be a contender while abandoning all principle and purpose the NDP ever stood for. The NDP needed a leader in the Layton tradition -- one who understood and kept to the principles of the party while bringing the party closer and closer to power. Mulcair proved that you can abandon your principles at the same time as take the party further away from power.

Mulcair is, himself, a false promise and will destroy the party entirely if left as leader beyond this year.

If a new(ish) leader of a formerly successful party manages to run that party into the ground, such that they experience a significant electoral loss, it's the duty of even those who support that party and their mission to ask the tough questions, and to not shy away from demanding real and honest answers to the question of why this happened. 

It's also not unreasonable to suggest that perhaps the crushing defeat might be a good time for that failed leader to step aside, in the interest of the principles that their party claims to stand for.  Craven attempts to hold on to power, at any cost, don't serve the electorate in any way.

ed'd to add:  whoops!  My bad.  Meant to post that here.

Debater wrote:

In the Nathan Cullen year-end interview that someone posted on another thread, Cullen seems to go out of his way to praise Mulcair and talk about how wonderful a campaign Mulcair ran and how perfect Tom is, etc.

The Huffington Post does quote several anonymous defeated NDP MP's who are critical of Mulcair, but it seems that Cullen & the rest of the elected NDP caucus aren't willing to hold Mulcair accountable.

It is also possible that Cullen has been told privately that Mulcair will step down before the next election. In that case, he would have nothing to gain by taking gratuitous shots at Mulcair.

mark_alfred wrote:

I haven't noticed a lot of defeated NDP candidates being critical.  Craig Scott certainly isn't.  He's very supportive of Mulcair.

Too bad.

If the NDP want to be the "middle class" party Mulcair made them to be, they can go for it. This does not represent me and so they won't get my vote again so long as this is the case. Members will decide at some point and I can decide if the party is something I want to ever support again.

I am not as far left as most other options so if the NDP wants to abandon its social justice roots for the current leader and solidarity with the "middle class" then I won't find any great fit elsewhere. But those other options right now are a better fit than the one that sold out its principles. I won't say Mulcair's NDP does not have shiny new principles but I can see that they are not the same as mine.

Mulcair and his NDP voted for the Liberal tax cut for the well off. This is as gutless and unprincipled as the Liberal support for C-51. The NDP do not deserve the support of people who believe in social justice.

I understand the problem individual MPs are facing. I am fine if they want to keep quiet until the convention but if they then support Mulcair and what he represents, then I cannot support them. For now if someone calls me and asks about my vote, offering the top 4-5 parties I will say "other" as not one of them deserves my vote.

mark_alfred wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Mulcair and his NDP voted for the Liberal tax cut for the well off.

I thought  Bill C-2, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, had only gone to first reading so far.  I'm unaware of any votes on it yet.

NDP voted for it in a Ways and Means motion in early December. The Liberals, with a majority, did not need the NDP's votes.

Mulcair voted for it probably for the same reason Trudeau voted for C-51: Due to lacking any spine OR principles. and not wanting to be seen to vote against due to supreme political gutlessness. That is the kind of "leadership" the NDP has right now.

And no -- the excuse that there was something to like is bullshit. There always is something to like. There was no legislative necessity to vote this way unless the NDP really does not give a shit for social justice or anyone not making a high income.

mark_alfred wrote:

I see.  In fairness to the NDP, they did advocate that the cut be applied to the first bracket rather than the second, which would have been a greater benefit to more of us riff-raff.  Anyway, I don't consider it anything equal to Bill C-51.  A piffle, in my opinion.  Best to pick your battles.

Nope. If fair taxation, dishonesty, and economic fairness from government is not a battle worth picking then what is?

The issues I am not comparing but the hypocrisy fits like a glove. The NDP had no need to vote for this bill. And the NDP is pretending that it can argue against it and vote for it? Seems just like the C-51 issue.

And this is not much of a fight. I am not an NDP supporter anymore. It is an establishment party with tons of rhetoric and no guts to stand up for its principles when it matters.

When it comes to giving another tax cut to those who do not need it paid for by people with less -- there is hardly anything you can imagine more representative.

When it comes to political hypocrisy and sellout, this is an example for the textbooks.

At least I can trust dogshit to smell like it really is.

In the past we used to have some politicians with principles who were able to muster the spine to vote against the unacceptable -- even if the single out soemthing positive to say about another portion of a bill. This is what I would have said to Trudeau na few months ago and what I have to say to Mulcair now. Except, I used to expect better from the NDP.

mark_alfred wrote:

Quote:

When it comes to giving another tax cut to those who do not need it paid for by people stronglywith less -- there is hardly anything you can imagine more representative.

Presumably it's a cut primarily benefiting those who don't really need it paid for by the uber rich, rather than paid for "by people with less".  That's the thing, when the Libs first announced this in the campaign, many here trashed the NDP for not having a similar scheme of their own.  Now, you're trashing them for not opposing it strongly enough.  The NDP cannot win here.  Anyway, everyone but the Conservatives voted for the Ways and Means motion.

I agree that this specific tax thingy is not a great policy move, but it's also not directly contradicting anything the NDP stands for.  For Conservatives, it is directly against their current stand of never raising taxes on anyone, which is why they opposed it.  But, for the NDP, the idea of taxing higher income brackets more to lower taxes on a lower income bracket isn't directly contradicting anything the NDP stands for.  So, I don't see it as hypocritical to approve the concept but to suggest a way to make it more meaningful.

I like how you start with presumably. That is like one big flashing red light telling you that the post is about to go out on thin ice.

If the tax increase on the top half of the 1% were enough to fund the decrease on the 90-99% then this would merely be irrelevant from an economic point of view although still dishonest of the Liberals for selling it that way. But this is not the case.

The Liberal tax increase starts up in the stratosphere of the 1% and therefore does not come anywhere close to being enough to fund the tax cut for the non 1% wealthy. As such the decrease comes out of the overall budget meaning either that the rest of Canadians do with less from government to cope with the shortfall or there comes a new tax increase to make it up. The point is if a tax change among the very wealthy is less than revenue neutral and there is a cost we all pay for that. Perhaps that is not in new taxes but programs the government cannot afford, or oversight for things we care about. It really does not matter as the effect is the same.

As for traching the NDP -- it was recognized by a number of people to be a blunder (and it seems that it may have been given the result of the election and the fact that the Liberal promise was on heavy rotation during the middle of the campaign when the Liberals started to gain. And yes the NDP could have offered a tax policy to increase on the wealthy and providing an increased basic exemption. Just becuase one tax policy was terrible (the Liebral one) does not mean the NDP cannot be criticized for not having a better one.

As well both have served to do the same thing -- by not raising taxes on the wealthy (NDP) and the Liberals decreasing taxes on the wealthy (even partially offset by a measure at the very top), both have failed to propose policies to ensure that the Federal government has the fiscal room to provide the programs needed.

For the NDP to vote for a tax cut on the wealthy at a time of difficulty is a betrayal and symbolic of the brain-rot in the party. The excuse that there is a tax increase that will only partially offset the largess by the government is a pathetic sick joke.

There is no excuse for this anyway -- since we all attacked the Liebral party for saying it was against something and then voting for it. And this is what the NDP just did.

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Debater wrote:

In the Nathan Cullen year-end interview that someone posted on another thread, Cullen seems to go out of his way to praise Mulcair and talk about how wonderful a campaign Mulcair ran and how perfect Tom is, etc.

The Huffington Post does quote several anonymous defeated NDP MP's who are critical of Mulcair, but it seems that Cullen & the rest of the elected NDP caucus aren't willing to hold Mulcair accountable.

It is also possible that Cullen has been told privately that Mulcair will step down before the next election. In that case, he would have nothing to gain by taking gratuitous shots at Mulcair.

That's possible.

I wasn't saying that Cullen should take 'gratuitous shots' at Mulcair, but I was expecting that he and the other NDP MP's would engage in a little more constructive criticism of the NDP campaign performance & platform.

But the NDP MP's sound a lot like the Liberal MP's did after the 2006 & 2008 elections -- not really willing to engage in any serious soul-searching.  It wasn't until 2011 that the Liberal MP's finally started asking some tough questions.

I'm wondering when the NDP MP's will start doing that.

"some" could simply be one.  Perhaps it's Ryan Cleary.  Anyway, the article also quotes Nathan Cullen as saying,

Quote:

"Tom did really well. He performed well. So we can't say he dropped the football and that was the obvious moment. There was no moment that way."

While Mulcair faces a leadership vote, as per the party's constitution, in April, Cullen believes his leader should stick around and lead the party again in the 2019 election.

 Mulcair is "a strong, incredibly intelligent, incredibly principled voice that bridges the French and English divide," Cullen said. "All the things I am looking for in a leader, Tom meets.

"It's very much a mistake to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and it also isn't in our party's tradition necessarily. We tend to stick with people, especially people that we respect. And there is a great deal of respect for Tom within the party."

I notice too that a week after the election result Linda McQuaig spoke highly of the national campaign, saying that some errors were made, but she felt it was very progressive.  Her twitter page still has a picture of her with Tom.  Also, like I mentioned, Libby Davies in that podcast feels positive about the federal NDP. 

So I don't feel there's any brewing rebellion against Mulcair.  There's no Mulroney looking push Clark out.  No Martin planning a coup against Chretien. Instead, potential leadership replacements like Cullen are saying, "All the things I am looking for in a leader, Tom meets."  And Cullen is right.  Mulcair is "a strong, incredibly intelligent, incredibly principled voice" for the NDP.

Centring the blame for the campaign exclusively on Tom is a mistake.  Nora Loreto has an excellent analysis of the failings of the campaign.  Granted, she does feel that if Tom had just been himself, rather than the front that he seemed to put on, then things would have been better.  But she feels the problems ran much deeper, and in fact the issues go beyond the campaign.  It's a very good article. 

Her main thesis is:

Quote:

Progressive politics must be built, not announced. Systems were in motion for too long for the NDP to have been able to change course for this election.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/nora-loreto/2015/10/untangling-hashtagfa...

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Some people are so much in denial about the last campaign that somehow they imagine Mulcair coming back from this even though such a return is so rare (if ever) that it is completely implasible.

Sean, current polling has Trudeau's approval rating almost as high among NDP supporters as Mulcair. Are you aware of a precedent in Canadian politics where supporters of one party have almost as high an approval of a different leader as they do their own?

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Some people are so much in denial about the last campaign that somehow they imagine Mulcair coming back from this even though such a return is so rare (if ever) that it is completely implasible.

Sean, current polling has Trudeau's approval rating almost as high among NDP supporters as Mulcair. Are you aware of a precedent in Canadian politics where supporters of one party have almost as high an approval of a different leader as they do their own?

I think the real story is the number of people who will not even be counted as NDP supporters now. The carcass of the party can pretend all they like that nothing is wrong and that they are now suddenly just a smaller party as if the rapture is part way through, but the reality is that likely it is 3/4 of what was the support for the NDP a few months ago that now prefers Trudeau and that does not even count people like me who have no use for Trudeau. I will never become a Liberal. Now I expect that I will look to the smaller parties to see if there is anything worthy of a vote.

Mulcair is either supremely selfish or delusional if he cannot see what he has done to the NDP. But really the effectiveness of it is that most people who used to care now don't and perhaps he has pissed off people to the point that his opposition will just leave the party to him rather than even both fighting him. We do know that much of what is left of the NDP seems to share the delusion. When he gets ten or fewer seats in 2019 hopefully people who used to care about the NDP will have built a new party.

Ken Burch wrote:

I think that may have happened in the first months after Trudeau Pere won his majority, or again with him after the October Crisis(if PET had called a snap election on his handling of that situation, he'd likely have been re-elected with a sharply increased majority and the NDP miight have lost official party status for it's lonely, principled opposition to his tactics), but probably not with anyone since.

Yes-- we can remember the time when the NDP lost on principle. Now the party has proven that it can lose just as badly without having any principles at all.

And yes, we should include a whole host of people so drunk on the ddrug of the middle class that they missed the party positioning itself to no longer represent sopcial justice and equality to chase the middle class as its priority.

And if you think I am pissed this is a reaction from going to the NDP site a couple months ago to see Mulcair's quote saying the reason he was there was for the middle class.

So many in the party accept this trade of principles for unprincipled defeat. Fuck them all.And Fuckevery single NDP MP that voted for Trudeau's fraudulent gift to the wealthy

Hopefully there are enough people left in this country to build an option that rests on social justice and start again.

Plenty of articles had the following (ranging from two days before the election to as long ago as a year before the election)

Quote:

Meanwhile, he says Conservatives and Liberals have doled out "tax cuts by the billions" to the largest, most profitable corporations — cuts he has promised an NDP government would roll back.

"Today, the only ones in our society not paying their fair share are corporations," Mulcair says.

[..]

Mulcair talked about fighting climate change, protecting health care and creating jobs. He promised to repeal Bill C-51, provide $15 per day child care and "make corporations pay their fair share."

IMO, that should have won the election.  Yet it didn't.  Would replacing Mulcair as the one delivering this message with someone else work?  I'm beginning to suspect not.  The message was consistent.  It's been the NDP's message for a long time.  Maybe Canadians will never accept such policies.

mark_alfred wrote:

Plenty of articles had the following (ranging from two days before the election to as long ago as a year before the election)

Quote:

Meanwhile, he says Conservatives and Liberals have doled out "tax cuts by the billions" to the largest, most profitable corporations — cuts he has promised an NDP government would roll back.

"Today, the only ones in our society not paying their fair share are corporations," Mulcair says.

[..]

Mulcair talked about fighting climate change, protecting health care and creating jobs. He promised to repeal Bill C-51, provide $15 per day child care and "make corporations pay their fair share."

IMO, that should have won the election.  Yet it didn't.  Would replacing Mulcair as the one delivering this message with someone else work?  I'm beginning to suspect not.  The message was consistent.  It's been the NDP's message for a long time.  Maybe Canadians will never accept such policies.

Not consistent: now Mulcair has voted for the Liberal tax cut to the wealthy.

Mulcair was also wrong on corporate tax -- he believed that a minor adjustment (that would keep the corporate tax below average of what it was during Harper's time) would be enough. Also he was wrong to not add a tax on the most wealthy. He is now wrong on agreeing to provide a tax break for the well off that we all know cannot be paid by an increase on the top sliver of super rich.

Muylcair is wrong on policy and he is wrong on principle. He is also incompetent on the file. He has no credibility to go after Trudeau on this now -- as I am sure Trudeau will delight in reminding him that he voted for the policy in the House.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

What we are seeing is wholesale panic as New Democrats reach for the anchor instead of a life preserver or having the guts to swim to shore.

They saw how effectively the Manitoba NDP establishment squashed a party rebellion there and they think the same thing would happen were it to be tried federally.

Effectively? The party is about to be wiped out in the province. Yep, I guess that is effective.

They burned the house down and that is exactly what they seem keen to do in Ottawa.

nicky wrote:

If there ever were a time when polling should be ignored it is now. Trudeau is in his honeymoon, aided by an adulatory MSM. It is an artificial environment. Let' see what the polls say in a few months. I remember when 67% said they would vote NDP during the Bob Rae honeymoon. Anyone remember how that worked out?

nicky, of course people shouldn't believe everything they see in honeymoon polls.  Of course some of these numbers will change over time as the government goes through ups & downs.

But your own track record of predictions isn't so great.

You predicted that Trudeau would crash & burn and never become PM.

Your own bias is preventing you from seeing the valid points Sean is making about the NDP numbers.

..it's not enough any more to just say the ndp is better than the libs and cons. or even that the libs are better than the cons. you have to provide a real defence to the attack coming from capital. and then provide alternatives with a deadline. the ndp is not the best tool today. no matter what their potential is..it has to be today. the movements are where the real struggle is on the ground. and they are far from weak. an example : i posted this in the pipeline thread. no matter who you vote for join the movements as well if you aren't doing that already. if you want solutions to our problems this is where the main focus should be not parliment.

In the 2015 federal election the Conservatives experienced a net loss of fewer than 235,000 votes across the country. But they took heavy damage in British Columbia, especially in coastal communities. In fact, the Tories lost more votes (- 96,524) in ridings touching the Pacific Ocean than in the other nine provinces and three territories combined. Our research at Dogwood suggests the Harper government’s aggressive promotion of pipeline and oil tanker proposals was a significant factor in how the election played out in B.C.

..txs sean

yup because we out here in BC think so much the same as all you back east.....oh right the Conservatives gained votes if not seats in QC.

Thanks epaulo13.  Interesting post.  A lot of what you're saying echoes what Nora Loreto also said in her article on the NDP campaign that I posted above (link).  That being, building from the community upward.  The greater loss of the Cons in BC is interesting, and I'm sure you're right, that it is due to work from activists around the pipelines (though I'm surprised Dix lost, primarily, I understand, due to economic concerns that he would be too environmentally friendly and not promote enough resource based jobs -- I've likely got this wrong though, since I know little about BC).

My concern though is that the whole it (IE, the NDP) must be from the ground up approach seems a bit overbearing.  One thing Loreto said in her article was,

Quote:

The Liberals, as one of two governing parties in Ottawa, have the luxury to turn left or right at the whims of central command. They don't need to be in direct contact with their members. They can change their policies with the predictions of the pollsters and they won't be punished. In fact, they'll be lauded, if the gamble pays off.

The principal failure of the NDP was to form a strategy premised on the notion that they had this ability too. But they aren't the Liberals. They probably would have been skewered by the press if they had promised to run a $30 billion deficit.

It was the combination of a failure to communicate a progressive vision that was firm enough to convince Canadians that the NDP could beat Harper, and a failure of organizing between elections that sank the NDP.

You yourself mentioned,

epaulo wrote:

it [a progressive party] needs to be a part of the struggle not a mediator between capital and the population. it needs to be democratic internally as well as externally.

Okay, so, according to Loreto, the NDP allegedly tried to run a campaign centrally controlled like the Cons and Libs, rather than spending time working from the ground up.  Thus, the NDP were ignoring the fact the Cons and Libs don't originate from either labour unions or from the CCF, and thus these two parties can change shit on the fly during a campaign (or even after they're elected -- IE, Libs can toss their "Red Book" into the "Blue Box" and govern even more right than the Cons would have, and still get elected next time), whereas the NDP can't without pissing off a lot of members and subsequently incurring the notice of media.

Here's the image that comes to my mind:  there's a road race, and the Con and Lib runners put on their sweatshop running shoes, while the NDP runner puts on heavy work boots and wears a ball and chain for good measure.  Or, thought # 2 is evolution, where the species that can adapt the fastest to the environment will generally win.  So if the NDP (or another progressive party borne of community egalitarian efforts like the CCF or the CLC) needs to use more resources to get electoral support than its competition (IE, Cons or Libs), then it will never win.  And so far, the NDP hasn't.

I dunno.  I think it would make a huge difference to have the NDP win federally.  That is where the financial clout of the country is (rather than in the provinces w/ provincial gov'ts).  Provincial governments are more limited in what they can do (though certainly some good has come from NDP gov'ts provincially and some of the provincial gov'ts in Quebec too).  In the past it was possible for the NDP to occasionally pressure the Liberals into enacting progressive legislation.  Those days are gone.  The Liberals of today are way way way too right wing.

I see the example of BC results, where the Cons lost more than elsewhere in the country, due to activism against the pipelines.  I think when people have a vested interest in a result, and see that a party is not representing that interest, then they vote strongly against that party.  Activism obviously helped. 

For the Libs, they supplied kind of a quick vested interest in money now (tax cut, child benefit) while casting the NDP's child care program as being both unaffordable and much later.  So, quick cash payouts rather than services seems to be the friend of right-wing governments like the Libs and Cons (the infrastructure spending now via deficit financing also fit this). 

Hmm.  I dunno.  Hard things to tackle.  I appreciate your ideas, though I'm still not sure if the increased focus on a game from the ground up (IE, being a greater part of the struggle) is the way to go.  Like I said, seems like it could hinder electoral success even further.  To succeed, perhaps quicker adaptation to the public mood may be necessary.  I dunno.  I'm just kinda thinking out loud. 

The NDP game plan of focussing on the Cons only, and on their poor financial record (eight deficits in a row!) while ignoring the Liberals, with the NDP offering some very progressive change, seemed good.  The Libs quickly adapted by proclaiming deficits (aka investments) as the key, making it difficult to keep vilifying the Cons for their financial record, and thus difficult to keep the focus on the NDP as the alternative to the Cons.  So, low corporate taxes, along w/ the questionable commitments to the environment, CPP, electoral reform, and child care, continues.

Anyway, I do feel activism is important, and shall be volunteering with Fair Vote (and I've continued to support OCAP, an anti-poverty direct action group in Toronto).  Mind you, I'm a political junkie, so I do focus on political parties, and feel the NDP is a good potential tool for making society a better place.  Of course, they need to win once in a blue moon to do that.

Anyway, thanks again for your post.  I appreciate considering different ideas.

off-the-radar wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..it's not enough any more to just say the ndp is better than the libs and cons. or even that the libs are better than the cons. you have to provide a real defence to the attack coming from capital. and then provide alternatives with a deadline. the ndp is not the best tool today. no matter what their potential is..it has to be today. the movements are where the real struggle is on the ground. and they are far from weak. an example : i posted this in the pipeline thread. no matter who you vote for join the movements as well if you aren't doing that already. if you want solutions to our problems this is where the main focus should be not parliment.

In the 2015 federal election the Conservatives experienced a net loss of fewer than 235,000 votes across the country. But they took heavy damage in British Columbia, especially in coastal communities. In fact, the Tories lost more votes (- 96,524) in ridings touching the Pacific Ocean than in the other nine provinces and three territories combined. Our research at Dogwood suggests the Harper government’s aggressive promotion of pipeline and oil tanker proposals was a significant factor in how the election played out in B.C.

Really great points, it is about us (the people) reclaiming our society through getting active and organized in movements. 

Great graphic by the way!  And that most of that loss was in BC's coastal/Island ridings.

..exactly!

Can you share with us what your provinance in the party might be, Off the Readar?

Many of those calling for Tom's head never were supporters of the party so we can assess thyie comments in that light. You are new to Babble and it is hard  to discern whether you are part of the anti-NDP group that is so eager to give us advice on the leadership. If you have a history in the party  and have paid your dues  that would put you in a different category. 

Andrew Perez: The NDP needs to stake out its territory if it's to survive

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/andrew-perez-the-ndp-needs-t...