[Westey]

Horwath came close in '18, remember.

A *real* problem the NDP has is that they don't really have a media-alliance infrastructure in place (major outlets are still heavily programmed t/w the Lib/Tory binary, and the demise of alt-weeklies like NOW doesn't help), civic awareness has disintegrated among low-info voters (due in large part to the starvation of local media plus other weapons of mass distraction), and Ford's retail instinct has made for a rather uniquely direct "bond" with said low-info voters (and of the "you don't have to be high-info" variety, at that). As well, Ford in power has had a pretty uniquely effective way of patting Horwath and then Stiles on the head and giving them a lollipop while treating their party as a trivial nuisance: "I won, you lost, so, nyaaah". Meanwhile, the media (or what remains of it) has been tapping its fingers until the time the Libs become the Official Opposition once again, because they still have it hardwired that The NDP Cannot (And Should Not) Win.

I feel that if if it were the glory days of a third of a century ago when traditional news media still ruled, the NDP might have more of a chance--but right now, we're dealing with a populace that's largely not only not served by such media, but incapable of consuming it due to post-literacy and limited attention spans. Plus, Bob Rae notwithstanding, the NDP's raison d'etre has always been more that of parliamentary representation than that of governance--which isn't a matter of "weakness", it's a matter of knowing better than to put the cart before the horse. (And of recognizing how parliamentary electoral politics is more than just a simple matter of, shall we say, "Premier Idol".)

Horwath would have won, or finished second to Hudak, had she brought the Wynne gov't down as soon as Wynne was voted Liberal leader. Instead she let Wynne gain momentum for a year before the election happened. And Hudak was not a charismatic person, so I think Horwath was the likely winner in 2013. By the time Wynne had her 4 years people were sick of the left-wing gov'ts and nobody on the left could have won.
To some degree, I think it's related to what Jagmeet Singh did - so afraid of a Conservative might win that they will sacrifice their own party. It's more important for PC's to lose than for them to win. And a Party with that mindset will have a hard time winning.
The other problem for NDP is that they lost some of the Private Sector Union vote to the conservatives and lost almost all of the Public Sector Union vote to the Liberals.

 

[adma]

Horwath would have won, or finished second to Hudak, had she brought the Wynne gov't down as soon as Wynne was voted Liberal leader. Instead she let Wynne gain momentum for a year before the election happened. And Hudak was not a charismatic person, so I think Horwath was the likely winner in 2013. By the time Wynne had her 4 years people were sick of the left-wing gov'ts and nobody on the left could have won.
To some degree, I think it's related to what Jagmeet Singh did - so afraid of a Conservative might win that they will sacrifice their own party. It's more important for PC's to lose than for them to win. And a Party with that mindset will have a hard time winning.
The other problem for NDP is that they lost some of the Private Sector Union vote to the conservatives and lost almost all of the Public Sector Union vote to the Liberals.

I'm not so sure about the "sick of the left-wing gov'ts" thing. If anything, they were sick of the *establishmentarian* gov'ts; and thus '18 shook out as a battle of the populisms, one on the left, and one on the right. And the one on the right won--but by any standard, Horwath overachieved relative to a whole lot of expectations in '18, and that was *directly* due to her being "not Wynne, but not Ford, either" (as well as have-a-beer-with relatable in her own right). However, because she *didn't* win (and much of *that* was due to her party not having the full riding-by-riding infrastructure in place due to their eternally-also-ran pigeonhole), she became pigeonholed as a "loser"--but under the circumstance, that's like pigeonholing Jack Layton as a "loser" because he didn't win in '11. The Liberal-concern-troll party line was playing Horwath in '18 as if it were a worse fumble than Horwath in '14 (well, maybe if you're configuring things in simple "stopping the Tories" terms, which is why "a vote for the NDP is a vote for the Conservatives" talk is popular amongst such concern trolls).

And when it comes to losing the respective union votes: it didn't prevent Marit from being extraordinarily successful at "saving the furniture" in '25, while the federal vote was a Trumpified binary existential battle where Jagmeet simply fell down the crack. And judging from polling, it's far from certain that a lot of that union vote migration away from NDP-availability is a permanent/terminal condition. (IOW when *some*--not all, mind you--polls suggest that Avi's gained 10 points from the election but Pierre's *lost* 10 points from the election, there might be subtlety afoot. Of course, a lot of that PP vote may have done a "Gladu dance" to Carney, while a lot of the "Carney left" is peeling back off to Avi; electoral-intent shifts can be funny)

 

[UtakataNoAnnex]

Aren't the Liberals essentially leaderless? I wonder how Ford would fare if the OLP had more than an interim leader. If only Mother Wynne hadn't screwed up things so badly on hydro bills, etc. and building Liberal-fatigue from the McGuinty era (unlike how Carney immediately differentiated his government from Trudeau's), we might never have voted for Ford in the first place.

I get that you want to get your "Obama is how we ended up with Trump" moment here...but for all her faults she was the best Premier we had. She did and does circles around the current sitting government. It was too bad the voting public was too gullible and stupid to realize that at the time. And our media then where dying for a Conservative government was all too willing to fill in that nonsense vacuum, IMO.

 

[urbanclient]

I think a lot of those roles don't have the title of manager, director, etc. Probably a few HR or project coordinators or engineering analysts in the mix.

Wrong thread?

 

[afransen]

Wrong thread?

Not sure how that happened...