Quote:
Originally Posted by Canadianman
This boils down to a marketing problem by the ANDP. They ARE the center/moderate party. They just need to acknowledge that and change their name.
My hope is Nenshi wins the leadership election. Merges with the Alberta Party for their name and crushes it in the next election. Then the super left-leaning Dippers can leave to form a new party if they want, but at least we will get one 4 year period to try to undo some of the mess the UCP is creating.
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Yeah. And Nenshi is a pragmatist, not a true believer leftist, so he'd be vastly more willing to do that I suspect.
Reputational inertia is a powerful thing. People still think the UCP is the old PC party, and they still think the ANDP is Grant Notley's group of labour lefties. If the ANDP wants to be the government on a regular basis they need to not be that party and instead be perceived as moderate and sensible. If they could be the Alberta Party with "the common sense party" as a tagline they'd win a lot of votes, and it would give them a platform to contrast basic blocking and tackling governance with the tire-fire of the UCP. They need to do both to win - show the UCP are idiots AND say what they would do better. Nenshi is clearly the communicator for that role, imo. The other choices are worse than Notley - NDP lifer/true believer types but without her name recognition.