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Nova Scotia NDP Train Wreck. What happened? What now?
October 9, 2013 - 1:59am
V
How about an informal agendaless get together Saturday 26 October or 2 November?
What comes to mind is a daytime locale in metro where people sit at tables for seperate converstations, but can also be all addressed by anyone who chooses to do that.
That this be hosted by the local babble community, but word of mouth spreads who will come.
What do people think?
Alternative suggestions?
There of course the possibility of something more structured.
It would have advantages. Personally, I don't think that would be appropriate or desirable.
[Not to mention that I would not have the heart or will to organize something like that.]
The timing is also up for suggestion.
There is no hurry. But I would be willing to bet that people would like the opportunity to talk with folks outside their usual circle of friends and acquaintances.
Two or three weeks sounds like plenty of time for the word to get around. I do not see that waiting longer achieves anything.
After some discussion of suggestions here, whether and how to do this, I am willing to oganize the venue.
It needs to be somewhere amiable, not generally busy on a mid-day Saturday. And decent acoustics. In a room with deficient acoustics it does not take many people at all for a few hard of hearing people like myself- and I've been that way since my 20s- to be effectively out of the discussion.
I would also consult on the time with at least a couple people I can think of who might like to join in, but would not want to publicly announce in advance their participation.
If this happens, I see the participants as people who are or have been involved with the NS NDP.
Anyone will be able to come. But it is guaranteed to be only a talking shop if the discussion includes much from people who have never had any time for the actually existing NSNDP.
It's not a train wreck. Get a grip and close the thread.
As is said, sometimes bad press is better than no press.
[But what would have qualified as a train wreck?]
Here is the Letter to Caucus circulated last year, and referred to by Ralph Surette as a watershed point.
When I googled for it, it was in this babble thread:
DEXTER GOVT: Managing Communications with the Base on a Diet of Austerity Budgets and Tax Cuts
The Base Bites Back
Here's a letter that went to all Caucus members. And from there has been circulating very quickly.
Significant chunks of the base are always unhappy with NDP governments. But there is a difference between being disgruntled, and being terminally pissed.
Molly Hurd and Lars Osberg
6271 Summit Street
Halifax, NS
B3L 1R6
Sunday, June 23, 2012
Dear NDP Caucus Member,
We are writing this letter - as supporters who have worked for, and donated to, the NDP
through many past elections - because we would like to support the NDP in the next Nova
Scotia provincial election, but we are now trying to see the point.
We supported the NDP, through many years, because we think Nova Scotia needs
changes. Although in many ways this is a wonderful place to live, Nova Scotia could do better.
For many years, while in opposition, the NDP spoke to the values of social justice, equality of
opportunity and environmental sustainability that we think to be important. One can only
imagine what the NDP, when in opposition, would have said about the priorities of a provincial
budget which:
• Gave (via forgivable loan) $304 Million to the Irvings
• Cut the tax rate for large corporations;
• Forced spending cuts on health care, and primary, secondary and post-secondary
education.
We recognize that building a fairer, more sustainable and more beautiful province will
take resources. However, even before the provincial budget was presented, the Premier
announced that the government's over-riding priority, once budget balance is achieved, will be to
cut the HST and reinstate the rates of provincial income and sales taxation established by the
previous Conservative government.
One cannot expect to receive public services without paying for them. The Dexter pledge
to restore the previous Conservative government's tax rate policy will tie the hands of a reelected
NDP government for the long-term. If the over-riding priority of an NDP government on
the tax side is to reinstate the tax rates of the previous Conservative government, then budget
balance implies that on the expenditure side one cannot expect that Nova Scotians will ever
receive better public services than those provided under previous Conservative and Liberal
governments.
Indeed, in addition to the revenue from income and sales taxes, the previous Conservative
government could, and did, spend the money from temporary increases in revenue from offshore
natural gas and equalization - revenues which are now gone. And this NDP government has also
chosen to forego over $90 Million per year in revenue by exempting home heating fuel from
sales taxation (a policy choice which provides the biggest benefits to those with the largest
houses, least insulation and highest thermostat settings). So when the NDP now promises to
return to the previous Conservative government's tax rates, one cannot expect that this will
provide enough revenue to pay for the level of public services actually provided by the previous
Conservative government, let alone honouring long-standing NDP commitments to reduce
poverty and improve healthcare and education.
houses, least insulation and highest thermostat settings). So when the NDP now promises to
return to the previous Conservative government's tax rates, one cannot expect that this will
provide enough revenue to pay for the level of public services actually provided by the previous
Conservative government, let alone honouring long-standing NDP commitments to reduce
poverty and improve healthcare and education.
We recognize that government must pay its bills. We know that if tax rates on Nova
Scotia's more fortunate citizens increase, to pay for the services which will benefit all members
of the community, then we personally will pay more taxes. We think that it is only fair that those
of us who have received greater financial benefits from the community should also pay more to
support the community - and in past elections, we worked for, and donated to, a party that we
thought shared these values of social justice and would change Nova Scotia for the better.
However, a party whose principle taxation pledge is to bring back the tax rates of the
previous government is not a party of change. And there is nothing new about the expenditure
priorities of the last NDP budget - indeed, there is a long tradition of Nova Scotia governments
throwing millions of taxpayer dollars at large industrial employers, from Clairtone to Sydney
Steel, in attempts to maintain blue collar jobs, while starving education and social services. So
if the NDP now actually stands for anything fundamentally different, for any change from
previous governments, it is hard to see what it is. And if the NDP is not a party of change in
Nova Scotia, why should those who want change support it?
Yours sincerely,
Lars Osberg and Molly Hurd
Jackie Barkley
Carl Boyd
Helen Castonguay
Milton Chew
Theresa Chu
Joeanne Coffey
Blanche and Tom Creighton
Michael Cross
Gwen Davies
Patricia De Meo
Dick Evans
Anne Marie Foote
Heather Frenette
Ruth and Herb Gamberg
Jim Guild
Judy and Larry Haiven
Jane and Steve Hart
Patricia Hawes
Barb Keddy
Marie Kettle
Pat Kipping
Winniefred Kwak
Heather MacDonald
Innis MacDonald
Margie Macdonald
Sheila MacDonald
Jane MacMillan
Leanne MacMillan
Ann Manicom
Carol Millett
Wayne Mundle
Paul O'Hara
Brian O'Neill
Donna Parker
David Roback
Olga Scibior
Linda Scherzinger
Wendy Watson Smith
Linda Snyder
Sarah Wakely
Cliff White
Rita Wilson
James Wolford
Carole Woodhall
Well they still finished 2nd in pop. vote and there wasn't any huge scandals.
They still have 7 seats in the legislature.
If they'd have got less than 20% in the pop vote, got no seats, and if people went to jail for corruption I would call it a train wreck.
In fact, nobody can even say what exactly they did wrong, except suffer from high expectations.
I still don't get why the NDP lost by such a wide margin in Nova Scotia. i ask people over and over "what was so bad about Dexter?" and the answer i always get was "he's wishy-washy"...this is a province that has had a host of bland premiers from Bob Stanfield to John Hamm - it remains a mystery to me....and i find it hard to believe that McNail the appliance repairmen is going to be any less 'wishy-washy" than Dexter was.
There are two threads to talk about what was wrong or not wrong with the NS NDP. I'm sure I've answered that question from you before Stock, let alone essentially the same ones from others. But you can put the same question tthere if you want, and I'll address it again.
I posted that letter here because its in the sprit of questioning. It isnt the same things I would have emphasised. And it was written last year.
Now we are in a place no one I know expected us to be.
Everybody outside NS has an opinion about what happened. But we here actually have to do something.
So a discussion about where to start seems in order.
I just looked at the popular vote figures and it was basically a tie between the NDP and the PC's, so while the NDP technically finished about 0.5% ahead of the PC's, to be honest that's not exactly a big 2nd place win in the popular vote.
It's seats that matter in the eyes of the public and party position. The PC's were smarter than I thought they would be. They realized they wouldn't win but chose a small number of NDP seats to focus on and were able to take enough away in order to move up to Official Opposition. I notice that all 3 Pictou seats (Centre, East & West) were NDP before - and all 3 went PC. That was efficient regional targeting of seats by the PC's.
My point was that it wasn't a massacre and they still have lots of support from which to build. Second place by .5% is still second place. These are not polls we are talking about but election results.
Governments don't last forever, especially not NDP ones
We have a venue, a date [November 2], and a professional in restorative justice as facilitator. [So that it is not just a blame session, and everyone feels safe to participate.]
Details as this gets finalized. But looking at that Saturday evening, maybe beginning with a potluck.
V
Story here, in which Howard Epstein said the same.
Which is why the restorative justice approach is required for the November 2nd meeting.
We have to be able to talk about what happened. But determining who was responsible is an endless finger pointing chimera, and all it gets is entrenching circle the wagons defensiveness from the infrastructure of the NDP.
If you want to discuss what is actually in that story, please do it in one of the threads where the NS experience and its lessones are being discussed.
Why did Graham Steele and Howard Epstein not run again? It might have improved NDP prospects if they had.
Answer to your question in this other thread.
What happened? Another false majority government.
Liberal voters cast 45.5% of the ballots, but elected 64 per cent of the MLAs: a manufactured majority for a one-party government.
Our first-past-the-post electoral system has a clever way of obscuring what really happened at the ballot box, says a political scientist.
What now? Will the Nova Scotia NDP finally get around to talking about proportional representation? It's only 13 months since the Electoral Boundaries Commission said:
Darrell Dexter speaks out for the first time since the N.S. election
Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter held his last cabinet meeting Tuesday morning, one week after he lost his seat in the provincial election and saw the NDP government defeated.
“We all came together to do a job and that's now over, so we move on to what is next,” says Dexter.
Dexter says he hasn’t had a lot of time for self-reflection and did not have a clear answer when asked about his future as leader of the party.
“I'm going to deal with all of these things in due course, but no, I have no plans of resigning as leader today,” says Dexter.
-----
Video Story:
http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/darrell-dexter-speaks-out-for-the-first-time-...
Good Lord...there's the possibility he'd actually try to stay on as leader? Does he want to get the REST of his MLA's out of the legislature NEXT time, just so nobody can form a future NSNDP government and show the man up?
This settles it...the NSNDP has to dump the guy, and now.
Even when Dave Barrett stayed on as BCNDP leader after losing his seat, the party was still the official opposition in the BC legislature and had actually maintained the same vote share in defeat in '75 that it held when it won in '72(with an increase in its raw vote count of over 100,000 votes).
Dont worry. There is no doubt that Dexter is leaving. He's just observing the formalities of "talking to the party Exec first".... as if he ever bothered with that.
The other reason to say for a couple weeks that he has not decided, is that even though no one in NS believes it, going through the motions slows reporters from jumping in to the shell shocked remnants with questions of "what now?"
There is no chance he is staying on as leader as he did not even ask for a recount of his Cole Harbour-Portland Valley riding loss by only 21 votes even though Jim Morton is asking for a recount for a 32 vote loss. In other words, he isn't interested in staying on as MLA, let alone leader, in view of the enormity of the loss. I am sure he is just giving the party a little time to get organized for a leadership race.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1159966-dexter-rules-out-recount
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/jim-morton-requests-recount-in...
I think Dexter's opting for no recount was an attempt to preserve a little bit of dignity. Recounts are humbling affairs that often don't change the end result.
I dont know, if you want to look at a humbling affair: Maureen MacDonald won her seat, now she has to stick around.
There are two threads for discussing the election and the substance of what happened to the NS NDP.
What lessons should the Federal NDP take from the Nova Scotia experience/coming nightmare?
Nova Scotia election drumbeat
Please leave this thread for discussing the workshop below, or some alternatives.