Federal NDP Leadership Race - What do you want out of Canada's progressive party?

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

The problem with that strategy, even though I agree with you in principle, is that most people work in provincially regulated industries so it’s a challenge to grow your support by campaigning on being pro-worker at the federal level because you can’t actually implement legislation that benefits the majority of workers.

It isn't a strategy. Take a look at the statement again.

Seriously, NDP needs to really strive to make itself a national worker's choice and move as far away as possible from single issue activists that currently plague the party.

In the same sentence it is both saying they need to stay away from single-issue activists while also becoming a single-issue party. It is simply not a serious comment.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Reading and writing comprehension are typically DF’s achilles heel.

It's tough, the keys are all right beside each other.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Wolven

In the same sentence it is both saying they need to stay away from single-issue activists while also becoming a single-issue party. It is simply not a serious comment.

That's not a single issue. It's a single constituency, and a really big one. There are innumerable issues that are of critical interest to labour, from health care to AI to tax reforms to child care to... you could go on all day. The benefit is that the whole strategy on these innumerable issues is its focus on the singular goal of improving life for a large proportion of voters.

I mean, a true blue collar labour party is far from a new concept, and as long as it's credible and remains focused, it always has a strong voter base, so you wind up with what the NDP has always had: at least a couple dozen seats and a strong minority voice, with the potential for a big swing if the political winds blow in a particular direction. imagine establishing yourself as the single party most credibly in favour of defending workers from the threat of AI taking their jobs, and what that would do as that issue becomes more important over the next decade.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Wolven

It's tough, the keys are all right beside each other.

“A…S? D?? F???… that’s not how the alphabet works! Where’s the Elemeno key??”

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

“A…S? D?? F???… that’s not how the alphabet works! Where’s the Elemeno key??”

There's no elemeno key. It's elemeno PEE.

[Badgers Nose]

LOL at the end of fossil fuels bull####. Maybe he suffered blue hair dye induced seepage brain damage. People at either extreme end of the political spectrum live in fever dream alternate realities. One side wants to marry Trump, the other side wants to have babies with China. I wish we could mag wipe their brains and copy new data over (that makes me a techno shamanist, the only true religion).

Also, speaking off annoying mind control, anyone else getting massive amounts of spam from every corner of the NDPverse?

I bought a membership to vote Nenshi, and clearly said no spam. It's been steady stream of SMS and email SPAM ever since. Unsubscribe every time. Even complained to them by email and was assured I was off the list.

Should I CASL them? Does that even work?

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Wolven

In the same sentence it is both saying they need to stay away from single-issue activists while also becoming a single-issue party. It is simply not a serious comment.

Palestine-Israel is a single issue
Being against pipeline is a single issue
Carbon tax is a single issue

Being a worker's party is not a single issue. It's a constituency with multiple issues facing it, and representing a multi faceted demographic.

Your inability to understand the difference is part of the problem in why the NDP has become so out of touch with those they claim to represent, and why the NDP is not a serious party and its supporters are out of touch as well. Working to represent workers is much more than photo ops at a picket line.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Palestine-Israel is a single issue
Being against pipeline is a single issue
Carbon tax is a single issue

Being a worker's party is not a single issue. It's a constituency with multiple issues facing it, and representing a multi faceted demographic.

Your inability to understand the difference is part of the problem in why the NDP has become so out of touch with those they claim to represent, and why the NDP is not a serious party and its supporters are out of touch as well. Working to represent workers is much more than photo ops at a picket line.

Nah man, you just don't get it. You make up a bunch of dumb #### and then try to pin it on me. Your personal attacks are boring and weak and you have done absolutely nothing to contribute to this conversation. It was really my mistake to try to be polite to you early in the thread. If I could have a do over on that first reply to you instead of saying "Hi Firebolt" I probably would have kicked off with "#### off troll, try reading and understanding what I said before trying to tell me what I do or do not know".

For example: No one is against a pipeline as a single issue and no one is for a carbon tax as a single issue. If you took a second to think about it you would see that both of those policies are a part of an environment issue. As for "genocide" as a single issue.... that's just stupid.

I get it, you are personally scared of environmentalists and threatened by their message. You seem to have absolutely no capacity to understand where they are coming from or even what their message is. You definitely cannot see past your perception of them to see that they may be able to hold more than one idea in their head at the same time.

The work you have done in the AI thread is way better than the garbage you bring here. Specifically because something about this topic flips a switch in your head and you cannot stop yourself from personally attacking people, especially me, in this thread.

In short, you are the CDC paste eating troll.

[Doctorfever]

You forgot to change your signature.

Signed, the tollerant leftist.

[TorqueDog]

Jesus Wolven, take another lap, would you?

If the NDP wants to matter again, that kind of clarity is exactly what it needs. No amount of you spiraling into personal attacks because you can't distinguish a constituency from a cause is going to change that, and the whole "you're scared of environmentalists" rant is a tell that you're arguing from emotion again, not substance, which is the reason you took a short vacation from your own thread in the first place.

Firebot and Corsi are both right: a workers' party can speak to healthcare, AI, taxation, training, immigration, trade, childcare, and industrial policy through a single lens. Labour is not an issue but a voter bloc with a hundred interconnected pressures.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Jesus Wolven, take another lap, would you?

If the NDP wants to matter again, that kind of clarity is exactly what it needs. No amount of you spiraling into personal attacks because you can't distinguish a constituency from a cause is going to change that, and the whole "you're scared of environmentalists" rant is a tell that you're arguing from emotion again, not substance, which is the reason you took a short vacation from your own thread in the first place.

Firebot and Corsi are both right: a workers' party can speak to healthcare, AI, taxation, training, immigration, trade, childcare, and industrial policy through a single lens. Labour is not an issue but a voter bloc with a hundred interconnected pressures.

Hey puppy dog, it was funny watching you follow me into other threads with personal potshots. "oh, I seem to recall in the distant past of two weeks ago blah blah blah".

You went down that path before me. You and Corsi both had to fixate on my age like this is some weird A/S/L chat and somehow age validates content. Making the conversation about me instead of what is being said is a crutch you need to get off of.

I took a break thinking you all could reset and get off the personal stuff. Apparently you cannot.

[Wolven]

@Corsi - I did start a reply to you and noted that you did reset away from the personal nonsense. So thanks for that.

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

That's not a single issue. It's a single constituency, and a really big one. There are innumerable issues that are of critical interest to labour, from health care to AI to tax reforms to child care to... you could go on all day. The benefit is that the whole strategy on these innumerable issues is its focus on the singular goal of improving life for a large proportion of voters.

I mean, a true blue collar labour party is far from a new concept, and as long as it's credible and remains focused, it always has a strong voter base, so you wind up with what the NDP has always had: at least a couple dozen seats and a strong minority voice, with the potential for a big swing if the political winds blow in a particular direction. imagine establishing yourself as the single party most credibly in favour of defending workers from the threat of AI taking their jobs, and what that would do as that issue becomes more important over the next decade.

For everything in your first paragraph, you could say the same thing about environment as the single issue instead of labour. One could even say that in the venn diagram of issues everything resides inside "environment". The environment gives us jobs, resources, food, energy, medicines, quality of life, life in general, etc. etc.

Note: I am not saying we need 2 green parties, I am just making an example for how the logic is the same for taking one big issue and then expanding it out to policy decisions. But, no single issue can really stand up to the complexity of running a country.

I think that the NDP is very pro-labour already and that is good. The issue I see when you say "remains focused" is that it suggests that the NDP should ignore other issues (like environment or social progress). I do not think that is not realistic (or healthy). Also, I doubt the NDP would ever be rewarded for going down that path as the people who advocate for ignoring the environment are unlikely to vote for the NDP anyway (especially in Alberta).

I would rather see the NDP go in a progressive populist direction. Guys like Trump and Poilievre have corrupted populism because they "say popular things that are all lies" and they attack the "elites" but they frame the elites as being scientists, doctors, and judges instead of billionaires.

A real populist would deliver policies that makes life better for 99.99% of people and builds guardrails around the 0.01% that own waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much and have far too much power. They should be able to win over blue collar and white collar because at the core we all are suffering from similar issues these days.

Also, as a progressive the focus would be on moving forward and advancing society (instead of conservatives who want to revisit and reverse old topics from decades ago). A labour-focused party might not care at all about advancing social issues unless it makes jobs and I think that would create blind spots for the party.

If they did go full labour (and only labour) I would still support it but I think they can do better.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The environment isn't a single issue either, although it is a more narrowly focused set of issues. For example, there are certain tax policy questions that intersect with environmental issues, but there aren't a ton of health care questions that do. When it comes to labour issues - i.e., everything that the working class would care about - the issue set is much broader - it engages with almost every conceivable area of policy to some degree (arguably aside from defence), which is why a "labour party" is a tried and true concept.

I do think that the NDP should de-prioritize environmental or social justice issues, except where those issues can be clearly framed from the perspective of the working class. Doing otherwise creates exactly the problems they've suffered from to date - confusing and conflicting messaging and priorities and for the same reason, a fractured party with different competing goals.

Again, this is my just my personal view about what would make the NDP successful in the sense of establishing a baseline level of reliable support that would guard against the current situation happening again where they're effectively irrelevant and bordering on extinct, and successful in the sense of championing clear policy priorities and thereby acting as an effective opposition that gets #### done.

As for the "personal nonsense", there's simply no way around the fact that different people at different stages of life (i.e., early 20s versus early 40s versus retirement age), or from different backgrounds, or who are only hearing from a particular subset of the electorate (i.e., if you spend all your time on certain subreddits) are going to end up with a skewed understanding of what is actually likely to work for a national party that's trying to return to relevance. If my pointing out that your posts suggest that your perspective is skewed as a result of some of these factors and you should be less certitudinous and more open to the possibility that those factors are creating biases you're not adequately correcting for is just going to be dismissed as "personal nonsense", I guess any further pleas for introspection are going to fall on deaf ears, so we'll leave it at that.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

The environment isn't a single issue either, although it is a more narrowly focused set of issues. For example, there are certain tax policy questions that intersect with environmental issues, but there aren't a ton of health care questions that do. When it comes to labour issues - i.e., everything that the working class would care about - the issue set is much broader - it engages with almost every conceivable area of policy to some degree (arguably aside from defence), which is why a "labour party" is a tried and true concept.

I do think that the NDP should de-prioritize environmental or social justice issues, except where those issues can be clearly framed from the perspective of the working class. Doing otherwise creates exactly the problems they've suffered from to date - confusing and conflicting messaging and priorities and for the same reason, a fractured party with different competing goals.

Again, this is my just my personal view about what would make the NDP successful in the sense of establishing a baseline level of reliable support that would guard against the current situation happening again where they're effectively irrelevant and bordering on extinct, and successful in the sense of championing clear policy priorities and thereby acting as an effective opposition that gets #### done.

I guess it depends on what you think tanked the NDP over the last decade.

I would blame the 2015 crash on Mulcair trying to shift the party into a neoliberal centrist party at the exact same time Trudeau came online and went more progressive. Muclair talked about balanced budgets and being fiscally responsible and Trudeau talked about spending money, building social services, and legalizing weed. Essentially Trudeau dummied Muclair at the NDP's own game and formed a majority government because of it.

When Singh took over there was definitely some excitement about it (he won on the first ballot) but I do not think he did enough to push the party back from the liberal-lite position Mulcair got them into. By this last election, he really was struggling with his "I will fight for you" messaging and even though I thought he was good in the debates the party wasn't resonating with the people and it was easy to sacrifice them on the alter of "stop the conservatives".

So I think it is agreed that the party needs a proper reset and there is a big effort needed for them to bounce back.

From an opportunity standpoint, I think the path forward for the NDP should be focused on

• Affordability (cost of living)
• Jobs & Economy
• Housing affordability & accessibility,
• Protecting Canada from the US,
• Healthcare

Those are the top 5 issues in the polls, in order, and should be the NDP wheelhouse of wanting to be a party of the people of Canada that defends and supports the people of Canada.

When you look up the top growing industries in the world you get: AI, Renewable Energy, Healthcare, Cybersecurity, and EVs. This is great because two of those top growth industries makes it easy to connect "Environment" to jobs (for the progressives that need a pro-environment policy). Renewable energy can also be easily framed as an opportunity for affordability and reducing the cost of living (win-win).

The punchline for the NDP is that if affordability is the #1 issue then you are going to need to prioritize social policies that may not be purely labour focused. If the NDP cannot make affordability the #1 priority of the party with multiple proposals to address affordability then they cannot win.