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Who should lead the BCNDP now? And what should it stand for next time?
May 15, 2013 - 4:09pm
Obviouslyl this leader and this strategy were total, unqualified failures. Something else and someone else are needed.
The conversation needs to start now, methinks.
typing at a library computer with very small font...sorry for the typo. Obviously, the BCNDP should take a stronger stand on spelling than I just did.
Lol!
Fixed.
I would suggest someone who does not have a connection to past NDP governments. I would pick someone around 30-50 years of age. He or she should be well spoken and knowledgeable about the issues, able to think on their feet well. They should have shown that they know that a leader has to travel to all areas of a province and know that it is part of their job to help to attract good candidates. They should be able to fight it out in a scrappy election when all will know that the main stream media is firmly against the party.
I would also suggest that platform and policy be developed close to an election call. There should be control over what is written and distributed, even within the party. Those in charge of election planning should be careful (almost paranoid) about security.
I have learned in the past that there are advantages to electing leaders who are not in the legislature so do not think that should disqualify any potential leadership candidate.
While I do not think that Dix should take long in making his intention to step down from leadership, I do not think there is a hurry to elect a new leader. Two years from now would give time necessary for serious campaigns to start. The leadership race should encourage as many "votes" as possible - the party should develop a list of supporters (and election workers) through that process.
The leadership =/= the strategy. Same strategy with a different leader will definitely lose. A smart strategy with the same leader will probably win.
I'm tired of people looking for a magic bullet. Sounds a lot like the Federal Liberals who screwed up over and over, and expected a new leader to fix everything.
Well, that's why I made this a thread about the question of the leader AND the program. Obviously, if you discuss one, you have to discuss the other. You can't just put a leader in and let her or him say "leave it all to me". That's kind of how things went off the rails THIS time, and how an election that was apparently unloseable was lost.
Having said, as you did, that there's no magic bullet(which is, of course, true)what kinds of things DO you believe need to change? Obviously, there is no case for "staying the course", since this result proves that the current leader, and the current strategy can never win an election no matter what.
My own recommendations would involve, generally
1)Actually making a positive case FOR change, rather than simply assuming that the party can win by default simply because people would want to "turf this $%&! government out". Voters won't change the government unless they are actually persuaded that the opposition has better ideas...and this means being willing to say "ok, this may sound radical to you, but here's why radical change is actually a GOOD thing". Voters don't trust a party that acts like its beliefs are something to be watered-down and hidden-that approach makes voters think that that party has a "hidden agenda". Once voters think THAT of you, you are known in the Biblical sense.
2)Responding to attack ads IMMEDIATELY. It never works to ignore smears and try to look like "the better(insert gender here)".
3)Keeping the base in the game by actually appealing to their ideals, rather than expecting them to settle for "getting the bastards out". The Right ALWAYS rewards and respects its base, while the center-left mostly treats theirs like the enemy(or, worse yet, denies that it HAS a base and insists that it must appeal solely to those who disdain the center-left's core values and its most loyal supporters). No party can prosper by sending the message "don't worry, WE look down on the people who usually vote for us, too." And if you get in that way(as Blair did)you seldom, if ever, end up doing anything that actually benefits your loyalists, so, in the end, so you lose the ability to command loyalty from those loyalists and you end up atomizing your party down to nothing but a word on election posters.
In short, campaign like you CAN win the argument. That's the only way anyone wins elections.
What should the BCNDP stand for? Anything but "Change, one practical step at a time". I've never heard a more pathetic campaign slogan from any party, anywhere, at anytime. Good grief!
-10$ a day child care
-PSE Tuition Freeze
-Co-ordinated regional public transit for lower mainland
-renationalize BC Ferries, reinstate missing routes and lower fares
-Provincial Rent and tenancy protection agency like the Régie du logement in Quebec
-nationalize lumber and gas industries
-Restore funding to K-12 education
-Raise Corporate Taxes
-Raise taxes on wealthy
-Promise to fight Harper on all his bullshit policies
And so on.
So I nominate Catchfire!
Yes, I'm sure Adrian Dix came up with that all on his own - and probably meanly quashed other, much better suggestions that were being offered - expecially by Babblers - for the months and months and months of pre-election discussion and strategizing. I'm sure there are entire Babble threads discussing exactly what's wrong with the campaign slogan and platform and why Adrian Dix's NDP will likely lose if they don't change their strategy quickly. Right? Those discussions must be all over Babble, right?
Off with his head!
The NDP should continue to show why we need to better share the pie but it also has to come up with a strong vision of how to enlarge and sustain the pie. The NDP cannot be just about social fairness, sustainability, and equality of opportunity, it has to also be the party of prosperity and economic success. The party has to establish an integrated balanced vision of prosperity, sustainability, and equality.
I would like to see the NDP maintain a fiscally conservative approach, but one that aggressively incorporates sustainable development, a green-based bottom line and recognized social responsibilities. I would like to see balanced budgets and radical initiatives.
And Adrian Dix not only should have a second chance, but should remain as leader for the near future, while the party does some soul searching. To change right now would be premature, not to mention asinine.
The NDP need to ditch the notion that the only way to win in more economically conservative ridings is to run more business friendly candidates. They need to ditch Trassolini-ism.
The NDP needs to pick candidates with an eye to attracting strong teams of volunteers to get them elected. The portion of the electorate that the NDP needs to win over by and large doesn't take time to research the local candidates in their riding; and those who won't vote for labour or environmental or other activist type candidates arn't going to vote NDP anyways.
Candidates like David Eby and George Heyman inspired people to get out and volunteer on their campaigns, and they won. Candidates like Joe Trassolini and Gabriel Yiu lost in ridings the NDP needed to win because they didn't inspire poeple to volunteer on their campaigns or get out and vote.
Candidates like Gabriel Yiu, Joe Trassolini, and George Chow turn off left of centre voters who feel quite rightly that many of the NDP's candidates are "impostors" from the business side of politics.
Also, as I said last night in the BC Election Day Reactions thread, the NDP needs to ditch the notion that they can convince business community that they are "safe" enough to get the other side to not engage in personal attacks and outright lies. It doesn't work, and it just makes the NDP look weak, as if they need the permission of the business community to do anything.
Dealing with these issues won't automatically get the NDP elected the next time round, but they do need to be addressed.
No kidding. I could nto believe it when I first heard it. A) Its too long and B)its too wimpy. I wonder what Dave Barrett thought about this slogan!
It was a boneheaded slogan. It was designed to convince voters who rightly or wrongly (mostly wrongly) see their interests as more closely alligned with business than with workers that the change on offer wouldn't affect them much. It didn't work. What it did do is convince many left of centre voters that there was not enough in the NDP platform that would make any difference to them as to make it worth their while to get out and vote.
Oh come on, folks. I didn't hear anyone attacking this wimpy slogan before the NDP's defeat. Nor did I hear them attack it when Jack Layton (or, more likely, Brian Topp) coined it for the May 2011 federal campaign:
I'm not one who normally jumps to the defense of Layton and the NDP, but in all fairness, that was just a line in the preface to their platform - not a campaign slogan.
Their slogans for that campaign were:
"Working For Families / Travaillons ensemble"
"You have a choice"
"That's Canadian Leadership"
Not great, but better than the BCNDP's turd.
I can't seem to find saying anything about it on babble, but I remember the first time I saw "One Practical Step at a Time." I was handed a placard at the BC CUPE convention and told to wave it when Dix came in. Me and my whole local looked at each other and said, you've got to be kidding me. I've certainly written my thoughts about it elsewhere. My favourite comment cae from Sean Antrim, president of COPE Vancouver: "Making Tea, one practical steep at a time."
At any rate, it embodies the "manage expectations" nonsense we've been critiquing all along.
Heh. Thanks but no thanks, Mersh. And good to see you!
Also remember that Jack embodied the idea that Canadians care for one another and that could be reflected in public policy. The specific slogans and ads and platforms all pointed back to that central theme. It sounds as if the BC NDP's promises and platforms and slogan had no such common thread to stitch them back together.
Hey ODA, I wasn't attacking Layton there. In fact, that "one practical step" thing goes back to at least 2006, if not much earlier.
I was merely marvelling at the observation that I didn't see anyone here criticize the BC NDP's slogan before the election. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying I didn't see it.
Did you?
How did a campaign slogan that no one here critiqued suddenly become a key element in a surprise defeat? And how did everyone suddenly come to that conclusion overnight?
I think a wee bit more analysis is needed after the fact. Or, perhaps, a wee bit less partisan enthusiasm before the fact. Or both.
Maybe if we discuss at length the dumb slogan now, after the election, it will have the effect of reaching back in time until right before the election - when we of course had NO time to discuss the dumb slogan - and change events enough that, fast forwarding back to now, we find we have an NDP majority!
Yes, for this reason, I think we should keep discussing how dumb the slogan was.
Interesting point.
No, I didn't. Although I love B.C. and have family there, I live in Ontario, so I paid little attention to the actual campaign (since the NDP had been declared the ineluctable winners more than a year ago).
No disagreement there.
To be fair, it's not just the slogan -- it's that the slogan represented the whole approach: manage expectations, assuage fears of economically irresponsible dippers, appeal to some fantasy of "practicality" in the face of neoliberal predation. It's been a running joke with most political folk I know (see tea gag above).
I asked David Eby, who I canvassed for, why, in a climate most amenable to a progressive government in 12 years, the NDP were asking for one practical step at a time when Gordon Capbell never took any small steps when he was elected. I asked what this would mean in four years, after the Sun and Province hammer the party every day -- would we still be looking for one "practical step at a time"? He said he would fight the moderate wing of the party, which is why I tried (successfully) to get the vote out for him.
And Unionist, please don't mention 2006 to me. As you know, I was eight years old. You might as well reference the Martin administration.
Is he Carly Rae Jepsen's drummer?
Well, for two years the strategy seemed be working. It didn't fail until election day.
David Eby would be my pick for next leader of the BC NDP. He's done amazing work with the Pivot Legal society and the BC Civil Liberties Association. That said, the current powers that be in the party would try hard to keep him from becoming leader, as he's not moderate enough for them.
I really like Jenny Kwan, and it pains me to say this, but I still think there's too much anti-asian racism in this province for a Jenny Kwan-led NDP to win government. That racism I think is part of the reason the NDP got reduced to 2 seats in the 2001 rout when Ujjal Dosanjh was the leader, and sad to say that much of it is still with us.
I'm agnostic on the whether to replace the leader, but glad to see people focusing on other areas of improvement. The slogan is an interesting discusison, because I agree it's symbolic of a timid, technocratic strategy. It's one thing to mention "practical steps" for change. It's another thing to encapsulate your entire approach to government with something so timid and vague.
I think we have to demolish a few bad assumptions.
Political hacks assume that appealing to your base is exclusionary and narrow. But Conservatives do this all the time. And when it works, it doesn't just fire up the base. It also demonstrates "courage" and "conviction" and "leadership". Funny enough, trying to mush your way to the middle can turn people off, by appearing insincere, weak, or not even appearing at all.
Political hacks also assume that criticizing the other party is negative and a turnoff. But a guy like Jack Layton showed us how it's done. He knew how to talk about an opponent's record while showing personal respect. He knew how to humiliate his opponent without bullying, by relying on his sense of humor. Not that I'm trying to find a magic bullet like "charisma". It can be as simple as the tone of the advertising.
The last dangerous idea that I worry is slipping into SOME New Democrats is that you can just wait for the government to lose an election. But you can't just wait around. You have to try to win. Even when the current government looks like they've blown it and voters would put ANYONE else in office. It doesn't really work that way. You have to turn the resentment and fatigue from the current government into genuine excitement for an NDP government. That's especially true in provinces with more than two viable parties (which is most of the country).
I've said it once and I'll say it again: more than being left or right, one of the best things about the NDP brand is its reputation for being passionate reformers. I believe that the appetite for reform is so huge that the NDP would be idiots to not remind people of that.