This thread has much merit because, frankly, there are a lot of personal views about Labor shared by many that I think are either being reinforced by a lack of experience working with a diverse array of members from our party, or are just shallow, typical partisan sentiment. In the case of the latter: that's fine. It's a political simulator, and those feelings are acceptable. Those minds are not going to be changed, and quite frankly I wouldn't want to change them. In regards to the former, though, discussions like these can help resolve some differences.
Labor came from virtually nothing, swelled to become the largest political party nominally for more than four months, and has seen a dip in its share of victories as of late. So has every other party at some point over the past six months. We organized and worked hard to increase our role in Atlasia, and we benefited from it. As a result, other parties decided that they must react to these developments, heralding in a new wave of activity in this game and a Census list that may be close to - if not already - breaking a record.
By being regionally diverse and not clumped together (which, barring one region, lined up that way by chance), we had and still have in most regions an active presence in regional legislatures. Chances are if you are in or were in a regional government in the past six months, you had to work with a Labor coalition to get things done. At one point, we held 8 out of 17 regional seats (2 in each region sans MW), so it's to be expected that some might have had strong ideological opposition to having to work with a through-and-through center-left party.
Still, this brings up an interesting point in that many of you have worked with members of Labor and found us to be perfectly reasonable in regards to governing. The only reason Labor has been as successful as it is in the IDS is due to a coalition of independent and leftist voters outside our party who make it possible. For example, The People and Labor worked together for months in the IDS Legislature, and more often than not, it was our consensus that ended up being the legislation that the Emperor signed. I can't think of one bill of ours (there might be
one) that the Emperor vetoed since we have had a 2-member presence. Likewise, in the Mideast, many with both The People and the Liberal Party have worked with Labor; they even had a super-majority coalition in the Mideast Assembly for two months, formed not by national parties, but by regional consensus. The former Chair of the Liberal Party, Scott, has publicly endorsed bore, a dedicated Assemblyman and Labor Party member who works tirelessly in the NE Assembly and wholeheartedly deserves to be sent back for another term. The Liberal-heavy Pacific was on its way to electing fuzzybigfoot as their Governor in a landslide before he suddenly left the forum.
he broke all of our heartsI guess my point is that plenty of people find us reasonable when they get to know us as individuals and not lump us all in as one big, scary monster of sorts. Ideology is ideology and those differences will always exist – and must exist for a healthy game; otherwise, it ends up becoming based on something less suitable. I hope we can continue an open dialogue about our Party, and that it begins a trend for communication by all parties on both their strengths and weaknesses.
If there's one thing you learn about this game too quickly, its that you can't trust anyone. I've held many offices around this place but I still feel like I don't know anything that's actually going on. I've really stopped trying. This place would be better off with less drama.
I quickly came to a similar conclusion, reinforced by the sheer knowledge of the forum.
I can tell from viewing "Who's Online" that Griffen is preparing a doozer. 
I spent half the time trying to find all those GIFs and getting distracted.
Then the forum went down.
