[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Would you join the party to vote for him?
If he were the leader, would you vote for the NDP in a general election?

I don't join parties. And the federal NDP as it currently stands today is the furthest ideologically to my own of major parties, with distinct non starters where they would actively destroy my livelihood in lieu of self-gratifying grandstanding. I am very glad to see the Alberta NDP (a party I do support) work to cut ties to the severely out of touch federal NDP and need to go further. Rob Ashton would need to do a complete 180 with the party as Carney has effectively done with the Liberals, but I can't see the NDP elites ever allowing that.

My hot take is that this race is likely to come down to Rob v. Avi and I think either way you are upgrading on Singh (who was already an upgrade on Muclair). I am super curious how Rob's platform will look as he starts to release it.

Avi Lewis is most certainly not an upgrade on Singh. Lewis is the original Singh before Singh could even get started on his champagne socialism campaign. Singh for all his warts is incredibly charismatic and a strong speaker. The problem is the direction he led the NDP and sacrificing the party's fortunes to give himself a feather in the cap. Singh may have destroyed the party while being the face of it, but someone like Lewis has done more irreparable harm than anyone else.

Most of the criticism I am hearing from the guys who hate Avi in this thread is fluffy. A lot of focus on what he drinks which drowns out the few points about his policy proposals. To me, if Avi were to deliver electoral reform, I could forgive him for enjoying Lattes over black cups of coffee. However, I admit I have a lot more I need to learn about him as I wasn't aware of his opinion of the A-NDP.

Then, when I see the american-owned national post attacking Avi, it actually makes me think higher of him. The speed in which they are trying to link Avi to Singh is almost as fast as they moved to make Carney into the same person as Trudeau. It makes me wonder why they would bother to take the time to attack him and none of the other NDP leadership candidates.

This is Avi Lewis

https://macleans.ca/news/canada/avi-...eap-manifesto/

Q: When the manifesto was released in the middle of last fall’s election, critics branded it “utopian” and “anti-capitalist.” Were you surprised by the response?
A: We weren’t surprised in the slightest that pre-paleolithic climate-denying curmudgeons like Rex Murphy and Conrad Black would seize upon our radical and idealistic vision with glee. We know this is an ideological battle. What we did misjudge was how this would be used against the NDP. That was certainly not our intent. Maybe we were a bit naive. People have said it’s the NDP’s left flank attacking Mulcair. That’s not true, but we lost control of that narrative.

Q: It was pitched as non-partisan, but it does come from the left. Did you give Tom Mulcair or his people any input, or at least a heads up?
A: Absolutely not. They were in the middle of running an election campaign and we were a broad group of Canadians who felt that the absence of climate as a central issue, and the centrist, cautious tone of the campaign, was a massive disconnect from the way Canadians felt. We hoped to reach people and build some urgency for more ambitious policy. Indeed, we got 20,000 signatures in 10 days.

Q: You mentioned Alberta. Rachel Notley calls the manifesto “naïve and tone deaf,” while her environment minister says it’s a “betrayal.” Is there a way to bridge that gap?
A: I think what we’re seeing is more a reflection of Alberta politics than a schism on the left. Their gusto in attacking the manifesto suggests that it’s practical for them to do so at this moment. But there might be a danger in carrying it too far. Most of what’s in the document is already NDP policy. There’s one demand out of 15—that there be no new fossil fuel infrastructure—that has been a grenade. We get it: Alberta politics is brutal. It’s an oil province, and the government feels it needs a new pipeline. But there were lots of Albertans in the room when the Leap Manifesto was born. And there are many different economic interests in Alberta and Canada. The science says we’re past the point where we need to get off fossil fuels and our political debates are stuck in the 1970s.

https://globalnews.ca/news/2644036/n...rachel-notley/

“We do not believe that it was a particularly thoughtful document. We believe that it was naïve,” Notley said. “We believe that it was ill-considered and, quite frankly, very tone-deaf to the economic realities that are being experienced in Alberta.”

https://twitter.com/user/status/1072531022120652801

He purposely sabotaged the NDP during the 2015 election, an election that prior to his Leap Manifesto release under Mulcair was leading the polls and slight favourite to become the governing party of Canada (let that sink in), solely because he felt the NDP was too far centrist in its platform and wanted to blow it wide open for the far left populists elements within the party to take back the party. The Leap Manifesto disaster was a significant factor into why the NDP fell all the way to under 18% by election day. It directly alienated Canadians and regions.

Since Avi Lewis has played his hand and his far left clique booted Mulcair out of the party, the NDP went from a party that was polling as high as 40% in late 2015 (yet that high) to 5% today. He also deliberately antagonized the Alberta NDP at at time when they were making headways in progress within Alberta, at a time when the province oil royalty review was a hot topic. He's been significantly criticized even within his own party and for very valid reasons. The Alberta NDP dared to actually rationalize oil royalties (deeming them adequate after review), and Notley was shunned and demonized by the NDP elitists


You have presented your case as to why you specifically would want Avi Lewis as your leader while simultaneously admitted you have been woefully underinformed about him (while resorting to bash any of his critics). But you have made an incredibly poor job in selling why Canadians as a whole would ever want to have someone like that be leader and why the NDP deserved better then the 5% they now are polling at if they go out and chose someone like him.