Ontario ONDP Leadership (March 2023)

[adma]

if the party wants to actually win, it has to appeal to suburbanites. Who can they do that the best? The party only holds on suburban seat (if you count Oshawa as a suburb), and Jennifer French isn't expected to run. The party's inroads into Brampton have been a flop, though it's possible to get those voters back, I guess. I'm not sure electing Jagmeet's brother would be a good idea, though.

Due to its historical electoral idiosyncracy, I wouldn't count Oshawa among the suburban seats--but as inferred w/Fife, a lot of the small-city urban seats are in fact "suburbanish", and the Chandra Pasma gain of OW-N *almost* makes up for the loss of the Brampton seats; plus even 416 cases like Doly Begum and Tom Rakocevic.

It's also far from certain that Ford-style blue-collar Toryism is eternal--as always, there's the "What Would Peter Kormos Do?" question out there...

[adma]

It's also far from certain that Ford-style blue-collar Toryism is eternal--as always, there's the "What Would Peter Kormos Do?" question out there...

It's not "Ford-style blue-collar Toryism" that's the biggest threat to the NDP, because I think we often overestimate how much of this is about Ford, and underestimate how much of this is part of a broad trend. For whatever number of reasons and theories that people can speculate on, small-town populists are almost universally shifting right, and big-city professionals are almost universally shifting left.

One could look at the 2020 BC election where the NDP won the PV by 14%, a blowout which saw them win in "bourgeois" places like Vancouver-False Creek and 2/3 North Van ridings which used to be hardcore anti-NDP during our lifetimes, yet still unable to flip places like Kamloops and Skeena. I bring up this example instead of Trump/Brexit/whatever, because the BC Libs under Andrew Wilkinson were far from "Ford-style blue-collar Tories", and John Horgan isn't exactly a Rolex-wearing woke champagne socialist.

While I realize that, it's also why I raised Peter Kormos because his legacy's key to whatever putative "Fetterman strategy" might be out there.  Plus, the BoJo backlash has meant that a lot of those '19 Red Wall pickups in the UK aren't necessarily looking eternal--all the shift means is that Bolsover and Sedgefield will probably never again be the Labour rubber stamps they were a generation ago; but that's not the same as being never-again-competitive--even when it comes to the Kamloopses and Skeenas in BC.  In other words, eff the "broad trend"; the NDP can still be viable on its own terms in such places, a little by disarmingly channeling what's made them viable in the past in such places. 

And when it comes to the NDP, it can be not just a matter of leadership, but a matter of a perceived "team"--while the party won under Bob Rae in '90, one might argue how the fact that its big tent included "Kormos populism" sealed the deal in the heartland.  And likewise, an urban-centric "team" helped Horwath get into OO in '18.  IOW the party doesn't need a Wayne Gates type as a *leader* to reach into those populist corners--and those populist corners would be more by way of reinforcement than the entire package...

[adma]

Let's also keep in mind what the job description is here. This is not the federal NDP in 2003 sitting with 13 seats and on life support trying to find a new leader who will keep the party alive and find some space to the left of the Liberals.

This is also not the Ontario NDP in 1996 when it was a third party facing a viciously rightwing Harris government and marginalized by a Liberal official opposition that quickly became the default anti-PC party.

This is also not the Ontario NDP in 2010 when it had lost official party status in three straight elections and had just 10 seats and facing a majority OLP government...

The Ontario NDP is the official opposition for the second straight election and it isn't just OO by one or two seats and by some fluke. It has 31 seats while the Ontario Liberals have just 8 and have lost official party status for the second time in a row. Whoever the ONDP picks as leader is not some "hail Mary" choice of a tiny third party trying to find relevance. The ONDP is picking the leader of the opposition with a large caucus of 31 MPPs who will have to cement themselves as the Premier-in-waiting and as the one and only alternative to Doug Ford. 

And as such, it's the first time the outgoing ONDP leader left the party in better shape than he/she found it than when Stephen Lewis made way for Michael Cassidy in the 1970s.

And say what you will, but that caucus of 31 proves how the '18 Andrea wave actually left the party with pretty good bones--maybe even more so than they grasped.

And finally, while winning seats is key to getting government, let's keep in mind that a preliminary matter is to express oneself as a valid voting choice, even in seats where it might not seem like they have a chance in blazes--a classic case federally being that of Jodie Primeau in Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke in '21, who ran a powerhouse campaign and finished ahead of the Libs for 2nd (sure, it was 21% vs Cheryl Gallant's near-majority for the Cons--but imagine a province full of Jodie Primeaus, and you might see a lot of well-earned pickups and competitive runs where you might least expect them).

[adma]

It's also far from certain that Ford-style blue-collar Toryism is eternal--as always, there's the "What Would Peter Kormos Do?" question out there...

It's not "Ford-style blue-collar Toryism" that's the biggest threat to the NDP, because I think we often overestimate how much of this is about Ford, and underestimate how much of this is part of a broad trend. For whatever number of reasons and theories that people can speculate on, small-town populists are almost universally shifting right, and big-city professionals are almost universally shifting left.

One could look at the 2020 BC election where the NDP won the PV by 14%, a blowout which saw them win in "bourgeois" places like Vancouver-False Creek and 2/3 North Van ridings which used to be hardcore anti-NDP during our lifetimes, yet still unable to flip places like Kamloops and Skeena. I bring up this example instead of Trump/Brexit/whatever, because the BC Libs under Andrew Wilkinson were far from "Ford-style blue-collar Tories", and John Horgan isn't exactly a Rolex-wearing woke champagne socialist.

Kamloops is a bad example, the North seat didn't even vote NDP in 1996 and the South one was a perfect bellweather until 2017 (which means it rarely voted NDP). I also think Kamloops itself voted NDP, but it's cracked in two seats.

Sure, but in Kamloops-North Thompson for example, the Carole James NDP used to get just as many or more votes as the John Horgan NDP did in 2020 - even though 2020 was a much better election for the NDP. So it's not exactly an "NDP-turned-conservative" type of area, but the point is that the NDP did just as well in Kamloops in a 14-pt landslide (2020) as they did in 4-point losses (05, 09)

But while the generic shift may be a statistical fact, it still doesn't necessarily equate with "terminally out of reach"--it's more that Horgan's infrastructure had bigger fish to fry and opportunities to pursue  than to super-priority-push Kamloops back into the orange column.  Plus it may require other circumstances for an assist, whether candidacy or right-dissidence or subtle shifts in political climate.

So I'd advise being cautious with overwrought readings of the "heartland" shift to the right, even if there was an overwrought denial of the same this past election--and TBH the more strategically savvy approach would be to grasp *both* the rightward wave's potential *and* the leftward potential regardless, all as part of a multidimensional seeing-the-total-picture.  It's just like if Labour's looking to regain Bolsover or Sedgefield, they shouldn't be expecting to do so w/the 2/3-or-more-mandates that were common a generation or two ago.  *That's* delusional jumping-the-gun...

[adma]

I think until Liberals disappear completely, NDP winning is going to be very tough. 

Let's not put the cart before the horse in putting all the eggs in the "winning" basket--that is, as in outright winning *government*--as opposed to optimizing one's performance so that victory of some kind or another, whether in the short or long term, is not an implausible pipe dream (and that includes your usual riding-by-riding mini-victories).

Or to paraphrase the posted link:  turn off the electoral GPS, it's bad for all of our brains ;-)
https://www.thestar.com/life/health_wellness/2022/08/07/hitting-the-road-turn-off-the-gps-its-bad-for-your-brain.html

[adma]

Last I checked, the places that voted for NDP candidates in 2022 were overwhelmingly poorer areas, which is inconvenient to people who want to talk about the unstoppable force of trends. Witness the way that people want so badly for Charlie Angus to have already lost that they ignore that he won his seat by eight points in 2021. They're so anxious to complain about how the NDP can't win because low-income voters don't vote NDP anymore that they're willing to do that regardless of the actual facts.

Not really; aside from the issue of studentty sublets or cost-of-living-in-the-core factors, NDP-electing inner Toronto is scarcely "overwhelmingly poorer" these days.  Much of this is really more a matter of psychographics, as well as, unfortunately, the comfort zone of the NDP chattering class--i.e. not a matter of whether you're rich or poor, but whether you're a "certain kind" of rich or poor.  And Charlie Angus might have won his seat by 8 points, but it was w/only 35% vs a fortuitously split opposition so you can see how people can come to overstate trending (yet many of those same people remained adamant that Gilles Bisson would hang on provincially--though even *his* upset's likely overstated in what it augurs for Angus).

[adma]

And meanwhile, in the Liberal end, and something that *perhaps* we should have seen coming...
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2022/12/07/ontario-liberals-court-green-leader-mike-schreiner-for-party-leadership.html?fbclid=IwAR2wABPbvh_aXnfZCuTnwKsw-d7WDpPtQBerA3ZOuWBxYWcXwzh5u80-JTg