Linus Van Pelt
Sr. Member
Posts: 2,145
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« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2011, 09:55:50 PM » |
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« Edited: December 07, 2011, 10:00:15 PM by The Great Pumpkin »
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Rae wouldn't be nearly the disaster that is often suggested; the situation with him in Ontario is complicated.
Even in his 1995 loss NDP got a higher % of the vote in Ontario than in any subsequent provincial or federal election until the breakthrough this year, and exceeded what was considered the NDP "base" during the decade 2000-2010. And given that he was very unpopular with certain sections of his own party, this number probably slightly underestimates the degree to which he was still then pulling in some votes from outside the party's core. And he has rehabilitated his image to some degree since that time in a lot of ways.
The private-sector industrial unions, remember, supported the social contract, and the labour chaos was mostly public-sector; given the recession the party did pretty badly in '95 in industrial areas, but he's not personally toxic there. And urban left-of-centre non-trade-unionists don't particularly dislike the guy.
The personal problems with Rae are concentrated among (a) a small group of very partisan NDP'ers who won't vote Liberal anyway; (b) public sector workers like teachers, who are often the base of the non-Tory vote in Tory areas; and (c) the large section of the population that is firmly anti-NDP, (whether loyally Tory or not) and generally regard the 1990-1995 period as a disaster.
Obviously (c) and to some degree (b) are serious problems, but surely the first step for the party has to be getting NDP votes back - no matter how unlikely you think a return to Lib/Con is, it's surely more likely than a Lib/NDP system. And Rae is probably better than the alternatives among many of the voters these parties actually compete over.
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