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Cliff, the propietor of 'Rusty Idols' has a thoughtful take on what went down at the FedDip convention:
Here is his lede, but go read it all if you're interested:
I'm a proud New Democrat and I've always felt more sympathy for the left wing of the party. I believe the party made a tragic and mindbogglingly stupid decision to run too far to the right during the election.
Mulcair had to go and deserved to lose.
But the vote to study and debate the Leap Manifesto (NOT adopt it, an important distinction you can expect to be roundly ignored in the coming days and weeks.) massively overcompensated and took the party too far left...
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Cliff's follow-up post is worth having a look at also.
Mr. Beer 'N Hockey was there as well and he has been blogging this weekend also.....Beer looks at things a little differently than Cliff, but he is no less thoughtful.
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We Know Where the Republican/Harris Voters Are
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2 comments:
The idea that the NDP was too far to the right is complete horseshit. Some lesser folk have this idea that being fiscally responsible is being right wing. Tommy was the most fiscally responsible leader our country ever had.
Wee Justin won on bullshit promises. Anyone with a clue should have realized it was teeth and hair with the same old liberal power brokers.
Democracy doesn't work when the masses are uneducated.
Bravo to Mr. Beer, who as usual hit the motherf***ing nail on its motherf***ing head.
I was a delegate in Edmonton this weekend, and I voted for having a leadership convention as well as the rather tip-toeing approach to the Leap. I supported the latter because of exactly what it called for - a couple of years of debate and reflection on what climate change really means for all aspects of party policy. And I voted that way despite many reservations about Naomi Klein's general approach to things - weak in many aspects of follow-through, and with several blind spots, but serving as a good starting point for discussion.
Although I lived in Alberta for a few years and understand the milieu that Notley et al. are up against, the anti-Leap debating points from the AB Labour Fed head and a provincial cabinet minister were borderline hysterical. It's sad and unfair, but however ambitious Notley's climate policy goals are in the context of the weird AB political hothouse, they're too little, too late if one really looks at the science. A "cap" of increasing tar sands emissions at a 50% increase? And this is to demonstrate the kinder, gentler AB that deserves its pipelines? Please.
Notley had to say what she said for local consumption, and I'm reasonable enough that I won't fault her too much for that. But I suspect that she and most of her cabinet realize that the increasingly dubious economics of bitumen will doom those pipelines more surely than any number of manifestos.
Finally, all of this is bound to be risky and potentially divisive, but we've seen where caution and timidity have got the party in recent history.
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