NDP going to LEAP off a cliff?

[The Green Barbarian]

I laughed heartily when I read this idiotic story. Certain NDP boneheads, including uber-bonehead Avi Lewis (who now describes himself as a "film-maker" as he has been fired from every news network he ever worked for) are still pushing the brainless "LEAP manifesto" that was made public during the election, and was one of the main factors for torpedoing the NDP lead in the polls. Of course, these guys have no clue. Will the NDP adopt this idiotic "manifesto"? I hope they do, as it will make them even less relevant than the stupid Green Party in Canada. Go Avi go!!

The federal NDP should embrace values contained in a dramatic plan for change — including a call to shift the country off fossil fuels — but the party must take ownership of this agenda through an internal process, according to a joint proposal developed ahead of the party's convention in oil-rich Alberta.

The idea is being floated in a letter by former MPs Libby Davies and Craig Scott, the head of a provincial riding association and filmmaker Avi Lewis as party supporters prepare to gather in Edmonton this weekend.

That's where discussion and debate is expected to take place surrounding issues including the so-called Leap Manifesto — a policy blueprint designed to be non-partisan that has a wide range of supporters, including actors, labour unions and environmentalists.

Nearly two dozen NDP riding associations are urging the party to embrace the manifesto's plan at the convention as rank-and-file members think about the future following October's disappointing election results.

Lewis, one of the key drivers behind the manifesto, said he's been working with Davies, Scott and others inside the NDP to help craft a procedural path for the ideas due to increased interest.

Those behind the pitch do not expect political parties and institutions to adopt it without engaging in their own review, he said.

"We have come up with this ... composite resolution that includes language from one (riding) Toronto—Danforth that calls on the party to debate it at the riding level and for it to feed into the next policy conference," Lewis said in an interview.

http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-st ... htm#162305

[Rwede]

Wow, I thought they were trying to distance themselves from that commie manifesto.

Apparently not.

The NDP is a mess.

[Omnitheo]

Please explain to me what the Leap Manifesto has to do with Communism.

[The Green Barbarian]

Wow, I thought they were trying to distance themselves from that commie manifesto.

Apparently not.

The NDP is a mess.

There's a hard-core contingent in the NDP that truly believe that they lost the last election because they weren't "left enough". That's how delusional these morons are. And this hard-core group is going to knife Mulcair in the back. And this is why I've predicted that one day Mulcair would be a lieutenant in the Trudeau government. Mulcair is too centrist for the true lunatics that are the foundations of the diseased NDP.

Mulcair was tolerated by this hard-core group of lunatics because he was delivering a lead in the polls and was tremendously popular. After he was trounced in the last election, he's lost any worth, and will no longer be tolerated.

Here is a typical left-wing NDP'er, who has hated Mulcair from the start, all because he has the audacity to be "a conservative auto-crat". Yes, how dare Mulcair care about fiscal responsibility. For shame.

If Mulcair Survives Next Week’s Review, the NDP Is Doomed

Can the NDP see the writing on the wall? More than 1,500 delegates will be heading to the federal NDP’s Edmonton convention next Friday. Do they realize how critical their vote on their party leader will be?

If delegates recognize that the party faces an existential crisis, they will reject Thomas Mulcair and confront the hard reality that Justin Trudeau is making the NDP irrelevant.

It’s an intriguing paradigm shift. For 10 years, Stephen Harper fantasized about condemning the Liberal party to irrelevancy. Now the Liberals are in a position to destroy the NDP, sending the party, like Social Credit, into the dustbin of history.

The chances that the party can find its way out of this crisis are slim. Getting rid of Mulcair is just one step. The party would still have to find a new leader who embodies the social democratic values of the founders of the CCF/NDP. That will be hard, because the process requires a politically engaged membership who actually own their own party.

And that’s a problem, one that goes back to when the CCF — the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation — joined with the labour movement to form the NDP in 1961.

That’s when the party embraced professionals to run what had been a genuine movement. For the last 55 years, members have become increasingly marginalized, called upon only to donate and knock on doors during election campaigns. That approach reached its apex under Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair.

Now the NDP has to grapple with a disastrous situation. Party members made a deal with the devil when they chose a conservative autocrat as leader — one who now apparently believes he can lead the party to victory into the next election.

It’s amazing Mulcair has not been called to account for his post-election musings denying that he or anyone in the NDP hierarchy is responsible for the party’s disastrous drubbing. First, the official party messaging argued the only reason the NDP did so badly was its principled stand on the niqab issue (though Trudeau took a similar position). Then the party reminded members that despite the loss of opposition status and over half the NDP’s seats, the outcome was the party’s “second-best result” ever.

Mulcair finally faced the national media three months after the election on Jan 18. He wanted to talk policy, but the media wanted to know about his future.

“It wasn’t there for us this time,” Mulcair said. “As a team, we haven’t been to the finals very often, and I can tell you that we learned a lot. Next time, we’ll be there to get the cup.”

Seriously? A hockey analogy? “Next time” isn’t the game next week, it’s four years away.

And it’s notable that the response was in the passive voice: “It wasn’t there for us.” What we didn’t hear, and should have, was “We completely bungled the election and betrayed our supporters and the thousands of people who worked their butts off for months and gave us millions of dollars to campaign for their values. I am resigning.”

When asked what support he needed at the party convention to stay on as leader, Mulcair said any result over 50 per cent. What leader dedicated to his party would continue to stay in the job if almost half of the convention delegates rejected his leadership?

Mulcair’s musings reveal a disturbing inability to think about what is best for the party. It’s all about him. Asked in the same interview if he had ever thought about stepping down, Mulcair replied never — “It’s not in my nature.”

In a self-serving interview with The Canadian Press, Mulcair described the moment he “decided” to stay on as leader.

“I finished that evening; Chantale (Chantale Turgeon, his deputy chief of staff) was with me, we drove back to Montreal and I said, ‘We are going to continue the fight.'” There was no hint of awareness that this might not be his decision to make, or that his feelings were secondary to what the party needed.

For almost four months Mulcair refused to accept any responsibility for one of the most catastrophic election debacles in Canadian history. It wasn’t until Feb. 10 that he sent a letter to party members saying “our campaign came up short. As leader, I take full responsibility for these shortcomings.”

SNIP

To its credit, this week the party released a frank report on the election that identified the campaign’s weaknesses, basically confirming what most commentators had already observed. But no one will likely be held responsible in any meaningful way.

Mulcair’s responses to the election loss suggest a sort of political post-traumatic stress disorder and an inability to grasp reality.

But the federal budget day delivered a fatal blow to the notion the party could survive with Mulcair as leader. Trudeau brought down what Armine Yalnizyan of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called “the most progressive budget in 40 years.”

Tossing out the “run from the left and govern from the right” formula the Liberals have relied on for decades, Trudeau moved the Canadian political centre a huge step to the left, leaving the NDP completely stranded. The NDP cannot craft a credible response to this budget given its platform and Mulcair’s deeply conservative politics. It can’t come back from where it is today.

The party’s recent missive to its members — “Top 10 ways Budget 2016 shortchanges Canadians” — reveals how trapped Mulcair is.

The response is cynical and misleading. “The Liberals’ budget was long on rhetoric but short on dollars when it came to keeping their promises to Canadians,” the NDP claimed.

How a leader whose platform promised a balanced budget (which was not party policy) could pen this line with a straight face is beyond me. Should the Liberals have racked up a $50-billion deficit so they could keep all their promises? The NDP — which should support virtually every Liberal expenditure — would have had zero dollars for new programs.

The party document then lists unkept (so far) Liberal promises without acknowledging the long list the new government has kept.

Pundits and NDP members alike should have been confident by now that the party would reject Mulcair and commit to returning to its social democratic roots and its traditional role as a party of big ideas.

But this is the NDP, and many commentators have noted the party hasn’t traditionally dumped its leaders for losing. The implication is that this is admirable. I am not so sure.

I remember heated arguments with an NDP friend in Saskatchewan who dismissed my involvement in “useless” social movement organizations. I suggested, only half kidding, that the NDP was not so much a political party as a cult. There was a siege mentality in the NDP rooted in feelings of ideological marginalization reinforced by a hostile media. They hated social and economic justice groups working outside the political system because they couldn’t control them. Any criticism was tantamount to heresy — and disloyalty.

In fact decades of observing the NDP from the outside has convinced me that loyalty is far and away the most important principle in the party’s culture. It is more important than political philosophy, party democracy, member engagement, and even more important than winning. In the NDP, it seems, so long as you have been a loyal member since you were 14 you will likely never be held accountable, no matter what mistakes you make.

Loyalty is an important principle in any party. And if the NDP had a leader who knew when to get off the stage, it need not be a problem for the party.

But when a leader like Mulcair is prepared to exploit it to cling to power, it is tantamount to a political suicide pact.

http://murraydobbin.ca/2016/04/01/if-mu ... is-doomed/

[The Green Barbarian]

Please explain to me what the Leap Manifesto has to do with Communism.

Good point. It is mind-numbingly stupid, as are the people proposing it, but it isn't communism. Though some of the goals are definitely shared, including destroying the current economy and punishing anybody who has the audacity to have more stuff than anyone else.

[Urbane]

The NDP may want to leap off a tall building after seeing the latest national poll results and adopting the "Leaf Manifesto" certainly isn't going to help them:

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/ ... 1_2016.pdf

[The Green Barbarian]

The NDP may want to leap off a tall building after seeing the latest national poll results and adopting the "Leaf Manifesto" certainly isn't going to help them:

http://www.ekospolitics.com/wp-content/ ... 1_2016.pdf

It's the LEAP manifesto - ie - Leap further into insanity. Anytime you have a complete loser like Avi Lewis dictating your policies you might as well pack up and go home.

Wow - looking at those numbers, I can't see Mulcair surviving a leadership review. Avi Lewis for head of the NDP!! Man that would be hilarious.

[Urbane]

^^ My fingers let me down there . . . yes, LEAP Manifesto.

[Rwede]

There's a hard-core contingent in the NDP that truly believe that they lost the last election because they weren't "left enough". That's how delusional these morons are. And this hard-core group is going to knife Mulcair in the back. And this is why I've predicted that one day Mulcair would be a lieutenant in the Trudeau government. Mulcair is too centrist for the true lunatics that are the foundations of the diseased NDP.

Mulcair was tolerated by this hard-core group of lunatics because he was delivering a lead in the polls and was tremendously popular. After he was trounced in the last election, he's lost any worth, and will no longer be tolerated.

I think you're bang on.

Mulcair will find the same fate as Carole James.

Unfortunately, the owners of the NDP simply won't tolerate any change toward moderation, and that means they keep losing elections.

It's especially unfortunate here in BC, where we have a ditz like CC flogging all NDP challengers like rented mules. BC's voters are truly screwed when it comes to election time - there's simply no alternate choice available on the ballot at this time, and there hasn't been for nigh on 25 years.

[Rosemary1]

Does the NDP have a lemming as its mascot?

[Donald G]

From what I have seen over the years the NDP should forget about the LEAP Manifesto and carry on with their old tried and true WITH Manifesto ... wandering in the hills.

[The Green Barbarian]

Does the NDP have a lemming as its mascot?

a lemming would be a perfect mascot. Also it seems to be that lemmings have infiltrated their highest ranks of policy too.

[Rwede]

*removed*

[The Green Barbarian]

Will Angry Tom get the 70% he needs? Will crazy Avi and his gang of leaping losers unseat him?

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he believes a 70 per cent result at his leadership review this week would give him the moral authority to stay on.

Mulcair tells The Canadian Press he is aware he needs a good score and that the 70 per cent mentioned by party president Rebecca Blaikie is the number he's been hearing across the country.

Mulcair also believes he has the support of major labour federations, even though Canadian Labour Congress president Hassan Yussuff says the party needs a new leader.

Yussuff tells The Canadian Press in an interview the NDP's performance in last year's election was a devastating loss and that his desire for a new leader is not personal.

The leadership review vote will be held in Edmonton on Sunday.

Mulcair says he will continue to work as hard as possible until then to get as much as support as possible.

[driveangry]

Will Angry Tom get the 70% he needs? Will crazy Avi and his gang of leaping losers unseat him?

IMO,,,,, I don't think 70% is high enough, not just for the NDP but for all parties.