It feels like this has been going on forever. Who's actually leading the odds at this point?
There was actually disagreement on the timeline for the race at the onset. Apparently some people wanted the race to be longer than it is in order to have more time to engage more Canadians. The NDP party leadership wanted a much shorter race... I am not sure what the benefit of their argument was. In the end this was the compromised timeline.
The last assessment I heard is that Heather and Avi are the front runners and Rob has fallen away since his little AI goof up. Leading at this point, I think it is Avi. There was a recent communication pointing to fundraising dollars and he is leading Heather by a healthy amount (apparently he has almost raised as much money as the other 4 candidates combined).
My opinion on Rob's bid: One thing hurting Rob's bid is that Avi and Rob occupy a lot of the same space (Progressive Populist, Pro-Worker, Class war champion) but Avi is more prepared, brings more policies to the discussion, and can connect those policies back to how it would benefit Canadians. Rob still struggles to do that which makes Rob look unprepared (but I do still like his vibe). I would hope that even if Rob doesn't win the leadership race that he joins the NDP in the next election to secure a seat but my feeling is that Rob is a "leader or nothing" kind of guy, which turns me off a little bit. It is one thing for Carney to have that approach to the Liberals but I feel like an NDP candidate should be willing to run even if they are not the leader.
My take on Heather: Heather is still a very strong choice. It helps that she is a sitting MP with some feathers in her cap and I would hope that her sitting in Alberta with an endorsement from Notley would help bring more Albertans back to the party. (Alberta desperately needs to learn how to stop voting blue out of habit.)
My issue with Heather is that I think she is a bit too centrist / neoliberal / incrementalist, and may not do enough to differentiate from the Liberals or Conservatives. Because of that I view her as the status quo option that won't significantly change enough in how the party behaves, how they are viewed by Canadians, or the results of how many votes they get. I do think she would be better than Singh, and definitely better than Mulcair (as he was a terrible leader), but in this one area I like both Rob and Avi more because they are more willing to change the party vibe.
Perhaps the NDP can learn from his election campaign. More importantly, will be interesting to see how well New York does under his leadership. Might be telling for what we could expect in Canada if the NDP is elected or has more influence on the government like it has in the past.
I agree with this. I think that this is the punchline of Lewis' campaign to focus on "big ideas" and "straight talk" and try to follow in the footsteps of Mamdani.
Here is a video from the Rational National that did a breakdown on the last debate and supports Avi's side of the race between "Big Ideas (Avi) vs. Big Tent (Heather)".
It is a good video and a lot shorter than the debate(s).
Some of my notes for those of you who do not have time to watch:
1) When you get into the ~5 minute mark he talks about how having a public option in these industries will force the prices down because the public option does not prioritize profits or CEO bonuses. Lewis is now advocating for public options in:
Public Grocer
Public Mobility
Public Internet
Public Insurance
Public Care economy (long term care, child care, health care, education)
Public Banking
Note: the argument is not to have the public option be the only option but to have the public option join the competition with the private options and force the prices down, like in Saskatchewan telco industry as prices are lower there because of Sasktel. Also, Saskatchewan pays 1/3 of the insurance rates of Albertans because they have a public option for car insurance. The benefits are proven.
2) I like the ~14 minute mark where they discuss the Singh-Trudeau Supply and Confidence agreement and how Heather and Avi would do that differently. Lewis does a good job of criticizing how that was handled because of the lack of "straight talk" to explain the situation to the public and how he would show up with 1 demand from the NDP: electoral reform (to proportional representation).
3) What I really like about the Rational National is that he takes the time to provide source material for his content. Here are the sources for this video:
