Leadership musings
Well, the deadline for joining or renewing your NDP membership has finally passed. We're in the final stretch of the campaign to choose our next federal leader.
It's been an odd campaign. Quote a lot of whispering, chatter coming from supporters of one camp or another, and a general veneer of negativity mostly stemming from the abundant use of the straw man fallacy in official and unofficial campaign communications.
Only one of the candidates has any experience in elected office, yet she seems (to me) to be the most overlooked or misrepresented in the narrative that has been cultivated in both mainstream and social media (not that the mainstream is paying much attention). Because she is a known factor, she has been associated with the so-called establishment - the shadowy group of staffers, corporate lobbyists and "orange neoliberals" who are the source of all of the party's ills. The establishment, apparently, is what needs to be stopped in order to renew, or to forge a new path for the party.
While this narrative of the establishment as the enemy (rather than, say, an increasingly authoritarian global politics and a Liberal government determined to take us back to the 1990s policies that have decimated our public services, our health care and our democracy) is most notably wielded by the scathing rhetoric of Yves Engler supporters, it's very much present in other campaigns as well. For me, this does not inspire a lot of confidence in the ability of those candidates to unite the party and help us win back the seats that we lost to the Elbows Up sweep.
As a former (briefly) staffer, former federal councillor, former election planning committee member and policy chair, and as someone who sometimes is called upon to chair meetings and conventions, I'm often referred to as establishment - even though it has been twenty years since I did that work or held any of those roles, and almost all of them were volunteer. I'd find it amusing, but I've had that label weaponized against me in the same way that I see it used to undermine, marginalize and flat-out attack people who have devoted (or are devoting) countless hours at the expense of their careers, families and energy to doing the things that need to be done to keep this party running in good times and bad.
The hard work of uniting this party and rebuilding it is not glamourous. It's not driven by a cult of personality. It won't be achieved by a nostalgic preoccupation with whatever vision you may have about the party's past. It's not about hitting on the perfect set of policies. It's not about purging one group of perceived insiders and replacing it with another.
It's about building a sense of belonging - finding common ground in diversity, doing the hard work of building support and shifting positions. It's about building the capacity of our members and activists to do the hard work in every community. It needs a strong, mobilized grassroots, a functional internal governance system, and a well-funded and skilled team of paid staff both during and between elections. Above all, it requires trust and good faith - something that has eroded tremendously over the last while.
Personally, I think there are interesting ideas and perspectives and positive attributes in each candidate's campaign. I just wish that their teams and supporters felt confident enough about their campaigns to avoid marginalizing, demonizing, and sniping about their opponents. Those are the tactics of the far right - stoking fear, anger and negativity to further electoral goals. You can't preach hope and aspiration out of one side of your mouth while spitting bile about your opponents out of the other.
Or at least, you shouldn't be able to get away with it.
I hope now that we are in the final stretch, we'll be able to truly compare the candidates, their records and their visions - in an honest way, not filtered through the lenses of one campaign or another. The next debate is February 19, so fingers crossed.
