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Author Topic: Now article - NDP, lose your illusions
Cameron W
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posted 20 October 2007 09:14 AM      Profile for Cameron W   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
NDP, lose your illusions

After the author said this:

quote:
The Green party, which barely existed in 1990, scored huge popular-support gains pushing the environment, an issue NDP supporters thought their party owned.

...and this...

quote:
Party members should be horrified that the NDP finished behind the Greens in any ridings at all, and ashamed of the series of 2,000-to- 3,000-vote finishes its candidates endured across Ontario. This is a party in crisis, no longer the default choice of those who want to protest or even change things. Voters aren't rejecting NDP ideas of public services and defending the environment, they're rejecting the NDP.

...they went on to list '10 ways to rescue the NDP'. They seem like sound suggestions, although a couple of them are posed somewhat rudely. I'd like to know what others here think of the list.


From: Left Coast | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 20 October 2007 09:15 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
we did this already. It was fun. But that was then.
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Cameron W
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posted 20 October 2007 09:22 AM      Profile for Cameron W   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
was this already in another thread?

If so, I apologize.


From: Left Coast | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged
scott
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posted 20 October 2007 10:01 AM      Profile for scott   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Cameron W:
was this already in another thread?

Yeah, but its closed (and stupid). A good example of a thread that could have gone somewhere useful, but didn't.

[ 20 October 2007: Message edited by: scott ]


From: Kootenays BC | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 20 October 2007 10:24 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by scott:

Yeah, but its closed (and stupid). A good example of a thread that could have gone somewhere useful, but didn't.

[ 20 October 2007: Message edited by: scott ]



Ok. Well now is your chance.


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
scott
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posted 20 October 2007 11:02 AM      Profile for scott   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, here are my picks from the article.

quote:
2. Stop whining and sell a vision of hope. Watch Mr. Smith Goes To Washington 100 times. People love dreams and dreamers. Offer more sizzle and less grimy ground beef.

3. Don't accept "career candidates," lovable losers who keep running in no-chance ridings. Try recruiting exciting new faces who might actually break through instead of repeating past defeats.

4. Create think tanks of progressives – no, screw that, throw loud parties for appropriate activists – and get like-minded people who haven't been around the party for years to give their take on why they've lost interest and how the party can again be a choice.

6. Never use the term "working families" again. Who isn't for working families? And using the word "working" so front-and-centre and so often just feels like, you know, work.

7. Remember the party's agrarian roots. Farmers and urbanites in Ontario could come together around preserving agricultural land, creating safe farming practices and providing healthy, local food for cities.

9. Reach out. Spend less time at the Labour Day march at the CNE and more at V Fest on Centre Island next Labour Day weekend. The NDP will find more potential new voters at events like rock fests than it will waging shadow-puppet battles at tired and nostalgic labour movement events.

10. Get the progressive pickle out of your ass and smile when you say that, pardner. Lighten the fuck up and sell some more dreams and less detail-drenched strategy.


I think that the NDP would do well to adapt any or all of these. Thinking differently needs to be on the agenda. The NDP needs to resonate with youth. NDP gatherings in my area look more and more like someones retirement party. (see 2,4,9&10 above)


From: Kootenays BC | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stockholm
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posted 20 October 2007 12:25 PM      Profile for Stockholm     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I for one went to the last NDP convention in Quebec City and it was a sea of young faces there. I also saw tons of young people involved in the NDP campaign in Outremont and if anyone wants to check out an NDP election night party in downtown Toronto, you will also see lots of young faces.

Its nice that NOW magazine has also these useful tips on how the NDP can go from 70% support among the kinds of people who read now magazine - to 80% - and i suppose it would be nice if the NDP could win the downtown Toronto ridings they already have by slightly wider margins - but people have to wake up to the fact that making massive gains in popularity across Canada will involve slightly more sophisticated strategies than having a few slightly "groovier" people like George Stromboulopoulos running for the NDP.


From: Toronto | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged
Sineed
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posted 20 October 2007 02:38 PM      Profile for Sineed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well-written article.
quote:
The NDP's campaign – and it's the same situation for the federal party – sounds like you've heard it before. It didn't sell then, so why would it sell now? NDP leaders drone on about the rights of "working families" and invoke other compromise-created, flat phrases to deaden the passion of their potential politics of hope.

Dalton McGuinty looked compassionate, John Tory and Frank De Jong came across as visionary and passionate, while Hampton and his NDP were dull and dreary, the good-for-you medicine nobody wanted to take.


This is it, really. In an era where we've got neo-cons running the country itching to get their majority and lay seige to our social programs, we've got these dull-as-dishwater folks bleating on about "working families." Where's the fire in the belly, the impassioned rhetoric? Does social injustice not exist anymore?

From: # 668 - neighbour of the beast | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Lord Palmerston
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posted 20 October 2007 02:40 PM      Profile for Lord Palmerston     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Of course they don't mention the NDP failed to articulate a progressive position of religious school funding.

And the stuff about tired old labor day parades is pretty ridiculous.


From: Toronto | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 20 October 2007 02:47 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Dalton McGuinty looked compassionate, John Tory and Frank De Jong came across as visionary and passionate, while Hampton and his NDP were dull and dreary, the good-for-you medicine nobody wanted to take.

I don't know where this guy was sitting, but aside from actually showing up for the leader's debate and being on the defensive for all of it, Dalton McGuinty was invisible throughout the campaign. McGuilty made a grand total of two public appearances: the "cancer guy" incident and the one where he proved he can't drive a farm tractor!

Dalton "PSYCHO" McGuilty has 22 percent of eligible voter support under him and 100% of power. There are assassinated and deposed Latin American presidents more legitimate than our invisible premier in Ontario. Democracy is dead in Ontario. God help us for the next four years.

[ 20 October 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 20 October 2007 04:59 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I know some babblers don't like the "working families" line, or "ordinary families", but the fact is that on any given person's list of priorities in life "family" scores in the stratosphere. Families really are the backbone of society.

I also like rehabilitating the discussion on "family values", away from the nonsense anti-human crap bilged out by the socons.


From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sineed
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posted 20 October 2007 05:56 PM      Profile for Sineed     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Fidel, I think Dalton is going with Bill Davis' "bland works" approach (though maybe not by conscious choice).

And as catchphrases go, isn't "working families" just about as gag-worthy as "family values?" The NDP need to work harder at shaking the whole earnest do-gooder image and show they're qualified to run the province.


From: # 668 - neighbour of the beast | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 20 October 2007 06:02 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Coyote:
I know some babblers don't like the "working families" line, or "ordinary families", but the fact is that on any given person's list of priorities in life "family" scores in the stratosphere. Families really are the backbone of society.

I also like rehabilitating the discussion on "family values", away from the nonsense anti-human crap bilged out by the socons.


I think this theme is worthy of a thread on its own - and probably more than one. During the last Quebec election, I remember more than one local radio host (I live in Quebec City) saying that of the three party leaders - Charest, Boisclair and Dumont - only Mario Dumont really understood what life was like for people who were trying to raise a family.

And look at the federal scene: Harper wins the 'average family guy' vote pretty much by default - he's the only federal leader who has kids. (eta: okay, Stéphane Dion has a daughter. Memo to Stéphane Dion: more photo ops might not be a bad idea.)

This is definitely not a battlefield in which progressives should yield without a fight.

[ 20 October 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
Sara Mayo
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posted 20 October 2007 06:56 PM      Profile for Sara Mayo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
he's the only federal leader who has kids.

Jack has two kids. Yes, they're adults now but so is Dion's daughter.


From: "Highways are monuments to inequality" - Enrique Penalosa | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 20 October 2007 07:05 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
Ah. Who knew?
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Fidel
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posted 20 October 2007 07:14 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
NDPers?
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 20 October 2007 07:22 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
A huge percentage of Canadians are single. If I'm not mistaken, I think the Census people recently reported that married couples now constitute a minority in this country. This talk of families can have the unintended consequence of alienating all those people who feel left out when the phrase "families" is used like some mantra to silence us single folk.

Single parents need more help than "families". That's where a lot of the poverty is in this country.

Yea, yea, I know. Single parents are "families" as well. But sometimes I think this talk of "families " is designed precisely to exclude such single parent "families", etc. If people mean "parents of children" then why not just goddam say so? Unless, of course, the intent is to exclude some by using the expression "families" ...

[ 20 October 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Coyote
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posted 20 October 2007 07:26 PM      Profile for Coyote   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I'm single. I have a family. It is the most important thing in my life. Period.
From: O’ for a good life, we just might have to weaken. | Registered: Jan 2004  |  IP: Logged
N.Beltov
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posted 20 October 2007 07:37 PM      Profile for N.Beltov   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
That's another definition of "family" which may not match the political marketing slogan of the NDP (or any other political party for that matter).

There's the family that includes my siblings and parents and is my "family" forever; there's the "family" that includes my partner and our children; and so on. There are many definitions of "family" and none are wrong. But the use of this term is like a mantra sometimes; it seems to be used to stop thinking altogether as many political buzz words and slogans have this sort of effect ...


From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged

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