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NSNDP Get up off the mat!
November 9, 2013 - 3:53pm
I invite members of the Nova Scotia NDP to share what we do, starting November 10, 2013, to get back up and get back in the game. If you attend a constituency or a regional retrospective meeting, what strikes you as good counsel for going forward?
In the spirit of the development method known as Scrum, let's avoid trashing individuals and work on sharing lessons learned. What worked in the campaign, what should we drop as a bad idea, and--especially--what are the issues we need to concentrate on going forward?
Our constutuency (Annapolis) executive is meeting November 12 to plan next steps. I'll update y'all on Wednesday with any useful observations that come out.
As I noted in another thread, we have been away from NS for many years, and just moved back at the end of May. We were not eligible to vote in the October election, but we volunteered in the campaign in a number of ways. I have been away too long to have any opinions about the recent management or leadership of the party, but I have an avid interest in living where the NDP is a strong voice for equity, justice, and sane economic development.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1167561-dexter-appears-poised-to...
The Annapolis riding association had a retrospective on the campaign this week. To sum up the energetic conversation, I would say the group was proud of some efforts: website, locally-produced flyers, sign campaign, radio ads, fundraising. The big handicap was not having a candidate nominated until the campaign was actually under way--we should have had our candidate visible and active, and been building our campaign, six months or a year before the writ was dropped.
Our other big knock was the slowness of the central campaign to provide information and resources, and the party's inability to fight back as the Liberals stole the NDP platform plank by plank.
The next big opportunity to get the flywheel going is in preparing for the federal election in 2015. The provincial leadership campaign, whenever that happens, will also be an opportunity to talk both principles and electability. I have been reading Brad Lavigne's "Building the Orange Wave", and making notes--the rise of Jack Layton and the NDP only looks inevitable in hindsight, and only became fact through lots of stumbling, lots of patient effort, and lots of believing that Canada can have a happier future than that which the other two parties offer.
Darrell Dexter has resigned as NS NDP leader.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/darrell-dexter-resigns-as-leader-of-the-n...
Finally. Let's hope he didn't spend the last few weeks throwing enough spanners into the works to make a comeback under the next leader impossible.
Remember, Dexter has a personal vested interest in seeing the party NOT do well at the next election...especially under a new leader that rejects his policies or even his disdainful attitude towards the party base.
DD's only interest- vested or otherwise- is in saying goodbye.
He has just been staying in the wings so that business can be organized as much as usual as can be pulled off.
Now with all the [anemic] little ducklings lined up [more or less], he walks off stage as the [underapprecited] legacy is praised... and we tell ourselves it was just poor communication and an "inability to fight" [cough].
We'd all love to hear why you think the NDP lost. Care to share, Ken?
ETA: Do you think the Liberals running over a quarter of a million dollars in attack ads for months with near silence from the NDP in response had anything to do with the loss? You don't think the Liberals defined Darrell and the NDP in the mind of voters? You don't think the Liberals poisoned the well?
Another post that demonstrates Ken Burch has zero understanding of Nova Scotia politics and Darrell Dexter.
now that dexter is gone, who is gonna take over? maybe Lenore Zann or someone outside of caucus?
Three names mentioned the most... Dave Wilson, Lenore Zann, and Tanis Crosby.
Crosby is being mentioned quite a bit with an impressive list of people lining up to support her if she runs.
Anybody going to the regional retrospective meetings? I am going to try to make it to the one in Wolfville (for "the Valley") December 9 and the one in Digby (for "the outer regions") January 7.
In case anyone is wondering, these are the dates and locations I see for the retrospective meetings:
December
January 2014
Happy to see Maureen MacDonalkd as interim leader. She is smart, savvy and accomplished.
How do we get up off the mat?
I think we need to highlight the triumphs of the Dexter government and elect a leader that can be trusted the social justice framework.
i hope lenore zann runs for the leadership. she could be our ronald reagan. politics reversed of course. can anyone tell me her pros and cons?
"Retrospective meetings" that discuss the shortcomings of the campaign, how to highlight the Dexter legacy and how we failed to do that.
Predictable.
When there is a big sign on the door that says "We realize the problems with the NSNDP may be systemic in nature; and we will do whatever is necessary to encourage a fulsome discussion of what needs to happen...." then I will think about coming.
Ken. Can you outline what you think are the systemic problems with the party?
#1 Extreme stystemic lack of openess.
It may not seem like that when you can say anything you want at Council for example. But things said once or twice just roll off. If you, or a group of people have a point to make in a sustained fashion, you will come up against the sign that says
Most people just give up as individuals. On that level it never looks harsh or personal, so it tends to not attract a lot of attention. You just will never get anywhere. But if you dont give up, you get ever more overt resistance.
For the relatively short period of time that the NS NDP had a coherent core of dissidents- who cut right across the ideological spectrum by the way- we managed to include ourselves in the real processes of the party. This would be about 2001 to 2005/6. But we left one at a time. I may have stuck with being active in the workings of the party for the longest. For sticking with it, doing the collective work, and keeping dissent "in house".... what I got in the end was really nasty personal attacks. In other words- the longer you worked for the team despite not aggreeing with a lot of the decisions, the more unwelcome you were made.
Drive enough people away, and that hightens the isolation of the core group running the party.
Add Darrel Dexter's hyper-centralizing nature to the mix, and that isolation becomes a train wreck waiting to happen.
It looks like most practitioners of what really ran the NS NDP for the last 10 plus years are now gone.
But I think it is now built into the culture.
The systemic shutting out of dissent is no longer required. So the successor to it will look nicer, and have all the trappings of inclusiveness. [Mind you, the NS NDP even at its worst always has the trappings- the pretty words- of inclusiveness.]
So even without dissent, or even latent dissent, there is still a circle the wagons narrative ostensibly about what went wrong. Didnt fight, Liberals played unfair, didnt sell the accomplishments, etc.
I have been thinking the root issue, masked by annoyances about tactical failures, was the drift of the party away from traditional NDP principles and practices and the consequent alienation of supporters. However, after a recent NDP meeting where we talked over some of the frustrations of the campaign, one of the smartest people I know began wondering who paid the staff at the central office to run things so badly. Is it time to also start thinking about subersion in high places?
Evidently at the Provincial Council meeting, those from the central office who presented reports seemed to think that everything had gone just fine. Council members, I gather, said "hell, no" quite loudly. I think there is momentum building to shake things up and shake the moths out of the blanket.
KenS, I remember the exclusionary attitude of the Cape Breton folks in the party back in the Jeremy Akerman days. It summed up as, "We're the only guys who know how to get elected, so piss off." This is an attitude that seeps in as soon as there is enough of a structure for there to be the possibility of insiders; we have to fight it continually.