NDP: Lost In The Supermarket
On The NDP's Insanity
The favoured running question in Canadian politics, the one thing that can unite everyone from the right to the centre-left or the pragmatic left or whatever I count as is a complete lack of understanding why Jagmeet Singh still has his job as NDP leader. I’ve gone over that road many many times in the pages of this site, so let’s take a different run at it. The NDP is attempting to pivot to a left populist position, at least in their rhetoric. It’s not working.
There’s a lot of reasons, and one of them is absolutely the guy selling the package, but even if Charlie Angus or whoever were trying to sell it I doubt it would work. The problem, at some level, is it’s too simplistic. The NDP has spent so much time and energy trying to do a very singular thing – turn Galen Weston’s status as a recognizable hate figure into a liability for the government, and the Tories. The problem is voters agree that he’s an asshole, and yet don’t give the NDP any credit.
Is it that voters aren’t paying attention and therefore will rise when they clue in? No, because the NDP face a deeply unpopular Liberal Party, and traditionally a softer Liberal vote elevates the NDP as a matter of course. With a popular message (Fuck Galen Weston/the big grocery chains), you’d think they’d be riding the populist tide, right? They’re exactly where they always are.
My suggestion? They’re lost, stuck in a haze of their own self-righteousness but also stuck in a strategy that very clearly isn’t working. It’s not that attacking Galen Weston and Loblaws is bad, but that it’s not enough. Beyond that, the NDP seems lost, and it’s true. It’s almost as if they’re lost in the supermarket, and unless they get out, they won’t find any success.
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What’s the NDP’s plan to stop climate change? What’s their plan to solve the housing crisis? What’s their actual answer on dealing with recalcitrant and right wing governments that are stymieing Federal policy successes? Oh, you have no idea? Yeah, neither do they.
The big crime of not firing Jagmeet has been the party’s intellectual decay, because the closest thing to a housing policy we have from these chucklefucks is opposing “luxury” condos and their brilliant environmental solution is banning fossil fuel ads even when they say things that are certifiably true (say, that LNG emits less than coal). Hell, what’s their actual solution to do anything about the grocery giants? About the same as my gay ass’ plan to sleep with, well, any woman.
The NDP have failed to use the time that the confidence and supply agreement buys them to build up the party in any way, which means you have the BC NDP attacking your housing ideas (I refuse to call them policies) and the Alberta and Sasky NDP Energy critics putting out joint denunciations of the climate advertising dumbassery. It’s a mess, solely created because the incumbent leadership of the NDP doesn’t take the voters seriously.
Here’s the thing about electoral politics in Canada, whether you want to admit it or not. Even when voters do things that you disagree with, they generally don’t do things that make no amount of sense. Usually it’s quite easy to understand why people vote the way they vote, even if you dislike that decision. Do I like the fact that a bunch of socially progressive, liberal minded voters are likely going to vote for Poilievre next time? No. Do I get why? Of course.
The NDP holds the electorate in some sort of contempt that I can only compare to that a parent holds for the intellectual caliber of their child while playing peek-a-boo. They hold the electorate in contempt by assuming that Galen Weston Bad is good enough to win them support and seats, without thinking they need to do anything more for the voters to just flock to them. Assuming that the voters are too dumb to notice you have nothing of substance – on this issue or any other – is a losing battle, and one they clearly have lost.
My penchant for attacking the NDP is well established but as I will always point out, comes from a place not of contempt for them but of anger with them. The federal NDP are a fucking joke, they’re an incoherent mess at a time when the country needs them to be. And their refusal to focus on anything other than a policy-free vendetta that people agree with but doesn’t move any votes is killing them, and helping to kill the left in this country.
The last month or so has felt like me just screaming into the void begging for this country’s left to stop being fucking morons, and I get that feels a bit dull, but at some point we will reckon with the absolute state of our progressive institutions, right? We have a Poilievre government in all likelihood coming, and we have progressive politicians in this country whistling fucking dixie instead of using the 18 months we have to fucking get their house in order.
Do I have all the right solutions? No, but it often feels like there aren’t enough people who can identify the problems that have any amount of credibility. For good or for ill it was only Nixon who could go to China; by the same token, only someone who voted NDP at the last election has a hope in hell of convincing anyone in that shambles of a party to fucking do anything to stop their decline.
At some points it feel like the NDP is rebelling at the very concept of electoral politics requiring, wait for it, a political strategy to appeal to the electorate. It’s a bit like Jordan Spieth fans bitching about the fact that he got disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard at Riviera this weekend. Is the rule an antiquated product of a bygone age that can be gotten rid of? Sure. Does it mean we should toss the rule because I happen to like the guy who fucked it up? Of course not.
The NDP have backed themselves into a corner with a cardinal message that isn’t working. They are running into definition of insanity territory if they continue to insist on making it front and centre when it is so plainly failing them. If they’d like to find themselves some success, admitting they’re all lost in the supermarket and trying to find a better way forward has to be step one.
“Do I like the fact that a bunch of socially progressive, liberal minded voters are likely going to vote for Poilievre next time? No. Do I get why? Of course.”
As a pragmatic progressive non-partisan voter, I’d like someone to explain to me why any socially progressive, liberal minded voter would consider an “axe the tax,” anti-2SLGBTQ+ “parental rights,” anti-immigration, anti-vaccination, pro-spending cuts Poilievre government a reasonable option.
Can someone please make this make sense? Does it simply boil down to the belief that Poilievre’s policies would ensure that they have more money, and to hell with anyone else? If so, how does that square with progressive values? I honestly don’t understand why any progressive voter would feel like CPC is a viable option.
Agree, I like the NDP but Singh must go and Rachel Notley should have stayed, but Alberta voters don’t know a good politician when they see one. Instead they voted Kenney who was part of the Harper regime that changed the equalization formula to benefit/help Quebec. Those 💩 voters don’t know anything about politics. It was a embarrassing slap to Alberta being that ridiculous to vote in the very man who changed the equalization formula Alberta rural/gas/corporations hate so much, it made Alberta look as stupid as they obviously are on politics. Media has burned a hole and misinformed people or not informed people just like Putin and Hitler did/has by controlling media. We must fund cbc more not less. The federal NDP still owes provincial NDP money. Singh and Charlie are bad for the NDP. When I see the NDP crap on the liberals I think does the fate of our democracy mean nothing? Over hate? Harper was 100% worse for Canada, he was never in Canada, he was in dictatorship countries teaching the Arthur Finkelstein method of venom, Harper, Trump and other dictators have sucked the goodness out of our countries. We almost don’t have a chance to keep our democracy if people don’t throw any their hate. My life already ruined and robbed by rcons, yet how do I fight or get them charged? It’s criminal how they harm us, but people are too busy hating. Our youth are in danger, these parents voting for Pierre will get the slap of their lives. Canada needs the basics of politics taught, we have a lot of uninformed people on politics. They listen to uninformed parents aka haters. In this situation and society we need to vote for the better person, no one politician is perfect. If the liberals don’t stay we are doomed and in a dictatorship. Young men subjected to war and/or persecution, people lead to poverty. As we are already in provinces. Someone needs to bring back the progressive conservatives and kick these reformed conservatives out to Russia. I feel safe under the liberals but terrified under these reformed conservatives who do not have anyone’s back except for big corporations. We are in a dark time, as a hard worker who lost it all bc of rcons saying they didn’t need my vote. Try losing everything? Then come back and say the liberals are worse when it’s these Rcons ripping out our lives in a cruel way. Corruption under these new conservatives have separated friends and families then put the blame on the liberals. Trudeau I heard isn’t planning on staying the whole next term, but it doesn’t matter who it is, the prairies will always complain and whine but violate the leader unless it’s their darn conservatives that they don’t realize were hi jacked. Stupidity is the new pandemic.