The NDP Snatches Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

It could only happen in Canada. Or at an NDP leadership convention.

First the party gives the leader the boot.

In a dramatic rejection of Tom Mulcair's time as leader of the federal NDP, delegates gathered in Edmonton for the party's convention have voted in favour of launching a new leadership race. Delegates voted 52 per cent to 48 per cent to proceed with a leadership election.

In no uncertain terms.

Only to allow him to stay on for two more long years.




Speaking to delegates shortly after the vote, Mulcair indicated he would stay on as leader until his replacement is chosen. Delegates voted to give the party two years to select a new leader.

So he can finish off the NDP, and no doubt all his enemies in the party.

And keep on making the same kind of mistakes that cost the NDP the election...



Because he just doesn't get it.



Trudeau is not worse than Harper, he represents generational change something the NDP badly needs. And anybody who doesn't get that is either living in denial  or out of their minds.

In his speech begging the party to keep him, Mulcair didn't mention the word "left" once, or apologize for taking the party to the right of the Liberals.

And he completely ignored the NDP's youth wing, that had been begging him to take their party back. 

In an era of massive popular movements energizing progressives across Europe and North America, it’s time for the NDP to boldly and unapologetically stake our ground as the party of the left.

So god help those poor young socialists...



Now don't get me wrong. I have no desire to see Tom Mulcair humiliated. But that painful exercise was not about Tom, or his future as a professional politician.

It was about getting the NDP to become as left-wing as possible, so it can help pressure all the other progressive parties to head in the same direction. 

And we can form a mighty movement, fight the greedy grubbers of the one percent, destroy the Cons, save the planet, and start building a better world.

Mulcair should have bowed out gracefully, instead of clinging to power, and presiding over a party badly divided by his leadership.

It's a prescription for disaster and demoralization. And at a time of global upheaval, when the left is surging in Bernie Sanders' America and other places in the world, leaving the party in the hands of a man who doesn't like the words "left" or "socialist," is tantamount to sipping the Kool Aid in the Jonestown jungle.

I apologize if I sound harsh for it's never my intention to hurt any progressives. I hate doing that.

But we live in desperate times, sometimes the truth should hurt, and whether I'm right or wrong that's how I honestly feel. 

An interim leader should have been appointed to start giving the NDP a new face.

And after twenty years in politics, Tom Mulcair should resign...



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