The NDP's campaign disaster was much more than a failure to communicate

[JohnyCanuck]

By Michael Laxer

According to the NDP and its leader it is now official -- what we've got here is a failure to communicate.

In a note entitled "Personal Reflections" that was posted to the NDP's website and emailed out to those on its email list, NDP leader Tom Mulcair made a show of appearing to "take full responsibility" for the debacle of a campaign he ran and accepted the predictably tepid conclusions of the "Interim Report" of Rebecca Blakie's Campaign Review Working Group that he had appointed to allegedly look into what went so very wrong.

"I agree with the over-arching assessment [of the report] that our campaign came up short," Mulcair writes, in one of the great statements of the obvious in recent political memory.

While one might note that a leader who accepted full responsibility for such a totally catastrophic result would actually generally do the right thing by their party and resign to leave its stewardship in abler hands, as always with the NDP, the devil is in the details when it comes to both the report itself and the mea culpa on Muclair's part.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2016/02/ndps-campaign-disaster-was-much-more-failure-to-communicate

[laundry_queen]

1. Excellent article

I still voted NDP but they really lost me the second they announced a 'balanced budget'. As someone who has a business degree, and has taken econ courses and is a hard core Keynesian, I knew this was so very wrong not just for the current economic climate, but for the party as well. It sounded to me like nothing more than a flimsy campaign promise to get votes...nothing more. It kind of made him sound desperate. As the article suggests, this was the VERY election for left wing policies, and instead the NDP shifted to the right.

Right after the election I wasn't so sure I wanted Mulcair to leave. But as I rethink it more and more I think he should step down. His behavior after the election also factors into my new thinking somewhat.

[iandhr]

2. If I understand correctly

They also lost the "Anyone But Harper" vote to the Libs.

[arikara]

3. I voted for NDP

They won this riding, if the Libs had been poised to win here I would have voted for them because it was vital to get rid of Harper. And I was really REALLY pissed at Mulcair and how he ran his campaign, I saw it going down the tubes right off the bat. They were stupid enough to use the same idiots who ran the disastrous 2013 BC NDP provincial campaign and gave us 4 very long years of that unspeakable 4 letter worded Cristy Clark and her band of crooks.

I don't know how to figure it. Are they really that stupid? Are they deliberately trying to lose? What is wrong with them because they sure the hell aren't Jack's NDP.