2012 NDP leadership convention

[Linus Van Pelt]

Sibboleth is right. Except "those people" will determine OO in 2015 and who will form government when the pendulum swings in '19 or '23.

I'm surprised you of all people would say this, given your knowledge of your home province; I take it you don't think the people who gave 50+ seats repeatedly to a party led by Gilles Duceppe think that a union past is a major negative. And regardless of what the Anglo soft Liberal voter thinks of unions, it will be exceptionally hard for the NDP to be in third place in the absence of a major swing away from it in Quebec.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Usual suspects, at a guess. Meaningless.

More to the point, the linked article says Topp was booed only for continuing to speak after the moderator told him his time was up, and it doesn't contain any mention of Mulcair being booed at all.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Page 2, in its entirety:

[quote]That Topp and Muclair, who have been labelled as “top-tier” in the media, have already built strident factions in the race is no surprise. But neither seemed to resonate as deeply as expected with many audience members surveyed by the Vancouver Observer, most of whom were still uncertain in their choice.
 
Among some we spoke with, Topp gained admiration among many for his economic equality platform and association with Jack Layton; Mulcair, meanwhile, earned praise for his relaxed but passionate style and appeal to broaden the NDP's base. But it might come as a surprise that many in the audience chose Niki Ashton as a “surprisingly successful” speaker and second-choice candidate – much as she had been in the first official debate last week in Ottawa by other candidates.
 
Many delegates were left, as yet, undecided.
 
“What I found was it is going to be a really tough decision,” said party member Sukh Jhangri. “I can't really say there was a clear winner.

“The playing field is still too close to coming out of the gate -- it's still neck and neck. It'll take a few months to find key differences between the candidates.”

[Linus Van Pelt]

Even restricting ourselves to economic issues there are at least three significant issues here, and assimilating them all to a single left vs. right spectrum is not helpful:

a) how much taxation and spending there is;

b) whether the government owns enterprises, or in a milder version, whether it at least supports and subsidizes certain industries;

c) how much labour market regulation there is; i.e. how restricted is hiring and firing, how much role does labour have in corporate governance.

These don't always match up by any means. Contrast, say, (a) and (b) in present-day Scandinavia with early 1980's France. In Scandinavia the % of GDP in the public sector is much higher than in Anglophone countries, and the welfare state correspondingly more generous, but the government doesn't own all that much, and even services we normally think of as public are often privatized. In Denmark for example private companies provide most local fire rescue services, and the post office is quasi-privatized (though the government still holds a stock). France, by contrast, never developed the comprehensive welfare state of present-day Denmark, but prior to the privatizations of the mid-1980's Mitterrand/Chirac cohabitation, the central government owned all kinds of firms that strike us as weird to be state-owned: the auto manufacturer Renault, the materials manufacturer Saint-Gobain, the advertising firm Havas, the bank Société Générale, etc. For (c) consider that Germany, even under Angela Merkel, has lots of labour involvement in corporate governance that would seem quite radical in Canada: for example corporate boards of directors are elected partially by shareholders and partially by employees rather than purely by shareholders.

Topp and (less aggressively) Mulcair seem to basically want to concentrate on (a) while being less interested in (b) and (c). Nash seems more open in her rhetoric to some combination of (b) and (c), though it's hard to tell exactly what combination given that she (like the others) hasn't come out with a detailed economic policy platform.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Can someone explain why it isn't a clear mistake to pick a candidate whose French is painful to listen to, whose rhetoric is full of middle-class-public-sector earnestness without any hint of working-class populism, and whose policies nevertheless lack any Mulcair-style centrist economics? I thought we learned in the 1990's that this combination didn't work so well.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Moving back a topic, here's what I take to be the case for Topp, as I understand it. (I'm not, just to be clear, saying I'm endorsing this - more trying to understand what's going on. But to be honest I don't reject it as vehemently as the rest of the forum either). There are a couple of aspects of this.

The first thing to understand, which I think a lot of people don't, is that Topp very much comes across as a Quebecois when speaking French, in terms of his accent and his general understanding of the province's history. Which is unsurprising, given that he grew up there with one parent of each language, just like Trudeau, Charest and Mulcair. Now ask yourself: is the party's position in Quebec sufficiently secure and policy-based that we can be confident it will survive someone like Peggy Nash who knows the language but is obviously an Anglo outsider? Suppose you think the answer is "no". So most of the field, from this perspective, doesn't look so good. But suppose further you joined the NDP in 1977 since it was the party that stood for economic egalitarianism and the elimination of poverty, and you maybe don't think that Liberal-plus-actually-doing-something-about-climate-change instead-of-merely-talking-about-it is a maximally attractive governing programme. Uh oh! But then here's this guy Brian Topp, who, you think, can go on Quebec TV and tell folksy stories about his upbringing in St-Lambert, all the while being closely tied to the traditional western party and serious about reducing inequality and poverty. Looks pretty good!

The other thing, meanwhile, is Topp's distinctive emphasis on raising taxes on the wealthy, and generally being up-front about the fact that expanding the welfare state actually costs money. Now, leaving aside winning elections for a second and looking at policy on the merits, this is, in fact, much better than a lot of what we have seen from the traditional Anglo side of the party in recent years. It is better than Paul Dewar going around promising initiatives with no idea how to pay for them, and it is better than Andrea Horwath going around promising random minor cost-of-living modifications. So, that probably counts for something. But even moving away from policy merits back to winning elections, there's at least an argument to be made that the real problem with the party's economic image in Ontario especially stems from the massive Rae deficits, and getting a serious reputation for deficit-tackling is worth the unpleasantness of "I will raise taxes".

And maybe, just maybe, if you're an MP from New Westminster or Surrey and your narrow re-election over the Conservatives depends on a large turnout from certain people who are maybe not so interested in the boreal forest and gay marriage and the Atlas Forum, you think it's actually an electoral positive for the news to be dominated by the question whether people in the bracket over $ 250,000 should pay more tax...

Anyway, I'm not too sure what to think of all this. But it has a certain logic, from a certain perspective, which at least explains where all these endorsements are coming from.

[Linus Van Pelt]

TGP: I understand the case as well, but forgive me for thinking that Topp would at least be moving the party to Layton's tactical left (can't recall Layton using the words "tax increase" WRT personal income tax in either '08 or '11) if he won.

I don't disagree with that. Adrian Dix definitely has, though, and he seems to be doing rather well in the polls.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That's interesting; I didn't know that. Do you have any particular examples in mind?

[Linus Van Pelt]

Your comments somewhat say all other candidates can't win over specific communities, economics being what drives people to vote... so Nash who has almost exclusively been focusing on economic issues or Mulcair who is pushing sustainable development everywhere can't win these folks over? I just don't buy that.

No no, just to be clear, I wasn't saying that at all - just trying to understand the Topp thinking on its own terms. I agree with the general consensus that Mulcair is a strong candidate for the general election, and Nash has a lot of strengths too though she is clearly a bit riskier in Quebec.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Two notes, one from a few pages back since I was away from the forum for a few days.

First, Bev Desjarlais wasn't kicked out the of the party for her marriage position in any direct sense. She was removed from the shadow cabinet by Layton, but was still a member of the caucus in good standing when she lost her local nomination to Niki Ashton, after which she decided to pull a Lieberman-style independent run. Of course she then was removed from caucus after she was running against the NDP candidate in Churchill.

Second, the idea that the fact that out of the of the 1,000+ people who are lawyers in the Toronto financial district - not even bankers themselves, but lawyers, who tend to benefit financially from regulation and many of whose clients include large pension funds linked to labour (as well as of course corporations) - an Ottawa Citizen reporter can identify 22 people who donated to Brian Topp indicates some sort of nefarious Bay Street conspiracy is one of the most preposterous things I've read in a long time. The reporter at the link doesn't seem to have investigated the employment situation of the donors to other candidates, but somehow I'm not inclined to believe that Thomas Mulcair, LLB, who from 1979 until his election in 1994 practised law in Montreal variously at the Ministry of Justice, for Alliance Quebec and in private practice, doesn't also have a handful of rich lawyers among his many supporters.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Per 1,000 residents, the membership numbers come out to:

AB 2.8
BC 8.8
MB 10.0
NB 1.3
NL 2.0
NS 4.2
ON 2.9
PE 1.9
QC 1.6
SK 10.9
territories 8.6

[Linus Van Pelt]

Leader / BC / AB / PR / ON / QC / AT / CAN / M / F

Mulcair / 25 / 12 / 26 / 25 / 37 / 30 / 27 / 25 / 29

Topp / 20 / 12 / 30 / 24 / 19 / 27 / 21 / 18 / 24

Nash /20 / 12 / 25 / 27 / 16 / 27 / 22 / 18 / 26

Wait, what is this? A poll of members, or of supporters? And is it just of decided voters, in traditional Canadian style, or does it include "undecided" in a separate category? Is it an internal for one of the candidates?

[Linus Van Pelt]

Yes you said that in the post above, but where did you see the numbers, and does that indirect source answer any of my questions?

[Linus Van Pelt]

I was over at Rabble.ca and thats where i grabbed the numbers... looks like it was a pool of all canadians... not just NDP members

"Forum Research polled Canadians (n=1675, 5 Mar) with different putative NDP leaders at the helm.  They seem to indicate that with Topp or Nash, we're back in 4th place in Québec.  The results are:"

Leader/Cons/Lib/NDP/Green/Other/Undec

Mulcair/29/21/27/7/4/3/9
Topp/31/23/21/7/6/3/9
Nash/30/22/22/8/6/3/8
Unspecified/33/22/25/4/5/1/11

More NDP numbers (not repartitioning undecided):

Leader/BC/AB/PRA/ON/QC/ATL/CANADA/MALE/FEMALE

Mulcair/25/12/26/25/37/30/27/25/29
Topp/20/12/30/24/19/27/21/18/24
Nash/20/12/25/27/16/27/22/18/26

Oh I see, it's support for the NDP depending on who the leader is, not support for leadership candidates.

Not a tremendously useful poll, but at least the numbers make more sense that way.

[Linus Van Pelt]

A few subplots have developed in the second half of the campaign.

One is that there has been a significant effort on the part of certain strategic-voting groups to get people to sign up for the party to vote for Nathan Cullen on account of his candidate-sharing scheme. In mid-February both the Canadian branch of Avaaz.org and some non-partisan progressive advocacy group called "leadnow.ca" publicized campaigns online to this effect. It's hard to know how many of these people there are, but the Pundits Guide reported that Cullen suddenly went into the top tier of fundraising with Mulcair and Topp after this, so it doesn't seem totally negligible. Presumably these people are mostly Mulcair on the second round.

Second, pretty much the entire South Asian elected establishment in B.C. is supporting Topp - he has the endoresements of Jinny Sims, Jasbir Sandhu, Harry Lali, Harry Bains & Raj Chouhan. One assumes this crowd is not so pleased with the emergence of Martin Singh, who is not only himself Sikh but also devote essentially 100% of his campaign to the Sikh community since he isn't a serious national candidate. This is part of the background to Singh's recent bizarre attacks on Topp. So there is some question how the South Asian vote will go.

Third, it's obviously rare for an elected politician to offer a secondary endorsement to the rival of your guy, and yet recently I saw the following remarkable combination of quotes in Macleans. Françoise Boivin, MP for Gatineau, Topp endorser: "It has to be either Brian or Thomas. I feel we have better odds of forming the next government with Brian Topp, but I don’t think we’d do badly with Thomas Mulcair." Meanwhile, Tarik Brahmi, MP for Saint-Jean, endorser of Mulcair: "I'm behind Thomas Mulcair. However, I’d prefer if the winner were Brian Topp instead of everyone’s second choice.” The prospect of one of these random Anglo boy scouts winning just makes the Quebec wing of the party terrified.

[Linus Van Pelt]

If any previous Canadian convention is any guide, each round should take approximately two hours than they say it will.

Anyway, really I have no idea what will happen. I guess Mulcair will probably win after a few rounds - he seems to have not done anything idiotic and has broad enough support within the party. But who knows, really.

Contrary to what has been occasionally suggested, I doubt that the down-ballot choices for most candidates will be that different from the first ballot - people make their choices on the basis of all kinds of things. And if Topp goes out early having failed to get much traction, plenty of his votes will go to Mulcair. The sort of people who form Topp's core base aren't fools as to the Quebec situation.

On the other hand, even though it's pretty unlikely, I'll admit it wouldn't completely shock me if Topp were stronger than the forum thinks. If we hadn't had any real polls and only had the internet (which is basically our situation now), we would have thought that Hillary Clinton had only "establishment" and no "grassroots" support too...

[Linus Van Pelt]

A result that would have seemed unsurprising towards the beginning, really. I should have been more skeptical of all these internet momentum rumours - in hindsight, the idea of people who've been voting NDP for forty years hanging around Hamilton, Winnipeg, etc. saying to themselves "Ed Broadbent doesn't tell me what to do!" was always kind of dubious.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Meanwhile, for some subtly zany entertainment, this morning's Globe and Mail contained the following letter to the editor. Even if it were from an ordinary citizen its odd combination of erudite references (such as to the Laurentian Thesis) with its slew of vapid buzzwords and really weird argument would give it a certain random charm; but the identity of its sender renders it truly great.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Just for reference (and since I was kind of interested after this discussion): ridings in greater Toronto and Vancouver by average household income (rounded to the nearest thousand) and 2011 party (gathered using the Pundits Guide database of census data):

Don Valley West 110*
Oakville 106
Thornhill 101
Oak Ridges - Markham 99
Eglinton - Lawrence 92
Pickering - Scarborough East 92
St. Paul's 92
Newmarket - Aurora 92
Vaughan 92
Vancouver Quadra 92
Mississauga - Erindale 91
Markham - Unionville 91
Mississauga South 89
Mississauga - Streetsville 88
Richmond Hill 87
Brampton - Springdale 87
Etobicoke Centre 84
Ajax - Pickering 83
Toronto Centre 83
Whitby - Oshawa 80
Mississauga - Brampton South 80
West Vancouver - Sunshine Coast - Sea to Sky Country 77
Willowdale 75
North Vancouver 74
South Surrey - White Rock - Cloverdale 72
Brampton West 72
Bramalea - Gore - Malton 71
Etobicoke - Lakeshore 71
Delta - Richmond East 70
Trinity - Spadina 70
Port Moody - Westwood - Port Coquitlam 68
Fleetwood - Port Kells 68
Newton - North Delta 67
Scarborough - Rouge River 66
Beaches - East York 64
Mississauga East - Cooksville 63
Scarborough - Agincourt 63
Don Valley East 62
Parkdale - High Park 62
Toronto - Danforth 61
Pitt Meadows - Maple Ridge - Mission 60
York Centre 59
New Westminster - Coquitlam 59
Richmond 59
Oshawa 58
Burnaby - Douglas 58
Scarborough Centre 57
Etobicoke North 56
Vancouver Kingsway 55
Vancouver South 55
Scarborough - Guildwood 55
Scarbrough Southwest 55
Vancouver Centre 53**
Burnaby - New Westminster 53
Davenport 53
Surrey North 50
York West 48
York South - Weston 47
Vancouver East 38

* This despite containing some significant low-income South Asian areas in the southeast that vote very differently from the rest of the riding. You could get a very rich riding here with slightly different boundaries.

** This is the only riding in either metro with no significant area of families with children and so is penalized by the use of household rather than per capita income.