frandroid

This post is a quick follow-up to sabotabby's podcast friday post about Conservative electoral prospects, which I agree 100% with.

Althia Raj, who writes from the Star but who I know mostly from the CBC The National's top political hot takes panel, discusses the type of political prospects that the NDP has, and the conservative nutjob harassment that they're facing, which wasn't a thing before the pandemic. Some MPs like Charlie Angus talk about how everyone says the Cons will win but that they're playing to the base rather than trying to win a larger crowd. So there's hope in that. But the number of NDP candidates who can properly talk their way out of this Conservative nonsense this well is fairly limited, and frankly the number of liberal MPs and candidates who can do this effectively is limited as well. That's the problem when you get opportunists joining a winning wave instead of people fighting tooth and nail for a seat. Not that Trudeau won on a huge wave even in 2015, but he definitely had a wave of opportunists coming in.

From south of the border, I discovered a podcast that discusses American electoral politics, namely how Democrats can defeat Republicans. It's named Words To Win By. This episode discusses in particular how a bunch of progressive Democrats turned MAGA messaging on its head, and how the Democrats won bigger than expected during the 2022 midterms.

I wish that the NDP listened to this stuff. As you can see above, some individual New Democrats get it, but the leadership remains as liberal and milquetoast as ever. I feel that the NDP, when it comes up with the wins that it has extracted from the Liberals to keep them in power, also detailed what they left on the table, telling Canadians how much better things could be if they actually ran the country*. So they could use these agreement announcements as long term campaigning events as well.

*: One of the problems is that I don't think the NDP wouldn't push the envelope that much; but as one of my NDP luminary friends recently reminded me, you better campaign left of yourself because no one ever becomes more left when they're in power.

Manitoba holiday named for Louis Riel

I just had the most marvellous idea. The federal NDP promised a few more statutory holidays, and now the NDP in Manitoba is voting one of them. Now, I can't remember the Ontario NDP promising a new holiday, while the Liberals have done just that in their current election platform. I'm thinking about how, supposing that the NDP won (won't happen, but let's speculate here, or just replace the NDP with the party of your choice), they could work on acting on their electoral promises, and then act on some promises from the other parties, like this holiday idea. Of course, it's already a challenge to live up to one party's electoral promises, but things like statutory holidays don't cost billions. Come the following election, the NDP could come to the public and say: "Vote for us! We'll live up to our promises, plus those of our opponents!"

It's a sure winner.

Trenholme Counsell [claimed] that Trudeau "speaks to us through the charter", as heard while Senate is debating same-sex bill with "frankness": thestar.com
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