La, la, la.................

.............. Mabel Elmore will go down in crashing defeat and I think a few other NDP seats will 'flame out'. NDP pick up the 3 Burnaby seats and maybe 1 or 2 others but will loose more than they gain.

Call it the Carole James syndrome.

the Carole James syndrome.

Call it the Carole James syndrome.

Yup she will carry the blame if any female candidate fails to win!

Would serve her well for interfering in a standard, normal process of nominating candidates.

Next on the agenda will no doubt be to insist on minority candidates having preference.

James should learn that life is not fair, we are fighting for a great cause, and she is liable to screw it up by her petty ideas.

Forgot

Don't forget that the Liberals recently gerrymandered a few NDP strongholds, possibly out of existence. For instance, in Nanaimo they've moved boundaries around to include a few more Liberal supporting areas in districts that usually go NDP.

So it's probably a closer race than you might think.

In Stikine last time and against Nathan Cullen.....

...the liberals ran a candidate who was never in the race. Didn't run a campaign worth squat and might as well have stayed out. The conservative candidate was disgraced before it started. I would not be too sure that the NDP organization was the deciding factor. It was most likely the personal appeal of Cullen himself. That is something that won't be duplicated in the provincial.

By your own admission

It's a long shot scenario for sure.

I will stick with 50 Liberal seats.

I will hold my nose and

Vote NDP here in the Comox Valley.

Most of the blue hair crowd will likely vote Fiberal!

While I am no fan of James; Campbell makes my skin crawl!

The Carole James syndrome

I think the NDP will lose more seats than it gains.

The NDP's Platform of "No" is fueling very strong opposition.
http://www.zerocarboncanada.ca/can-mayor-robertson-save-public-transit-and-the-bc-ndp

The North Island is also a looming Flame out.

Yes Grumpy its "the Carole James syndrome"

Carole James

Count me in as another who won't ever vote for the NDP again as long as Carole James is at the helm.

I voted for Michael Sather in the last election, but having him dumped from the party for not toeing their line *really* pissed me off. If a candidate isn't permitted to accurately represent the opinions of his constituents to the government, exactly why would we vote for him? Plus, while his focus on green issues is laudable, he has not been involved in a lot of other critical issues in the community because he focused on them to the exclusion of all else.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me with the NDP was that stupid "gender equity" crap. I'm a woman, and it totally insults me that James seems to think women can't achieve public office without some stupid bureaucratic legislation. It diminishes the achievements of those who are already working there, and casts doubt on the whole system of electing candidates when there's a perception that men are being reverse discriminated against. Not that the whole political/election system doesn't need a massive overhaul, but candidates need to stand or fall on their own merits rather than their biological equipment.

Guess I'm voting Green (and for STV, of course)!

Rhea

You make some excellent points and I thank you for adding some really constructive comments to the thread.

I also believe that women do not need any special status to be successful in politics and that is it actually demeaning to women and anti-democratic to force "gender equity."

It is so 90's, like the NDP itself.

With supporters like those above

how can the ndp fail? Let's wait until the ndp has the perfect obama like canadidate, and campbell's in his fifth term, the last wild salmon is dead, and we're all living like medieval surfs. I guess that'll show campbell...duhhhh! I wonder if affirmative action could have ever helped obama...hmmm. And anyone who thinks all women now have a perfectly equal chance with all men everywhere, when they still earn only 75% on average of what men do probably needs..affirmative action. Off the net for at least 10 days...unable to immediately answer outraged howls...

Burnaby

is and always has been at the very core of the NDP's success.

However even if they take back some of these seats (Corrigan's for sure) it will not spell success.

Oddly, and as this piece portrays, the BCNDP victory is a long shot. I say oddly because as we all know governments never get voted in they get voted out. And Campbell's should be no exception to this rule, however this time around it will be. Largely due to the fact that huge swaths of the NDP have no intention of winning.

Call it the Carole syndrome but doing so deflects the responsibility away from the real culprits.

The Liberal strategy of boundary changes complimented by a positive upbeat campaign will harmonize well with a complicit media and their ability to focus the repulsion away from the Libs record and onto the NDP's "dark decade."

Too bad really, a Carole premiership could really throw a wrench in things. Especially if she ditched those whispering in her ear when she got there.

Losing Mentality

"Call it the Carole syndrome but doing so deflects the responsibility away from the real culprits."

The real culprits in the NDP's lack of electoral success are the hard liner lefites who still control the party. This is the lot that tossed Mike Harcourt, one of the best premiers we have ever had, for something he had nothing to do with, and for which they were guilty as sin. Go figure and Harcourt is still seen as a bigger pariah than Gordon Campbell.

There is also a losing mentality in the party. You are not going to win when you enter the race already resigned to defeat. It is all about policy. If the NDP can examine itself and do what it needs to do to win, they can be a very successful force for social improvement in my opinion.

Maybe they will learn from their defeat in 2009 but I doubt it; they didn't learn a thing from 2005.

Losers

WF Wrote:
The real culprits in the NDP's lack of electoral success are the hard liner lefites who still control the party. This is the lot that tossed Mike Harcourt, one of the best premiers we have ever had, for something he had nothing to do with, and for which they were guilty as sin. Go figure and Harcourt is still seen as a bigger pariah than Gordon Campbell.

You mean the ones that won the subsequent election?

Wilf Laurier is starting to be a comic.

The hardline lefties, whatever they are, don't control the party these days. It is the softline lefties or small "l" liberals. But I enjoy your comments about Harcourt. It is always nice to hear someone say how wonderful he was but they never would have voted for him. Wilf, you wouldn't have voted for the NDP if it was led by Christ himself. Harcourt's shortcomings were in that he lacked, for lack of a better word, "the killer instinct". He was a nice guy and one-on-one he came across well but he couldn't deliver 30 second sound bites and when called for was slow on his feet in the heat of debate. That is much like James now. Even so I didn't agree with what they did to Harcourt

Clark was seen as too abrasive, too cocky because the media wanted his head and projected that image. Instead he was quick and sharp and a match for Gordon any time of the day. Some of those characteristics of Clark that you despise are evident in Campbell. He uses them for questionable purposes and the media lets him get away with it. If Clark had done half of what Campbell has done, there would have been a revolt led by CanWest and maybe Wilf.

I consider myself a hardliner, but only when it comes to peddling of mythical interpretations of the past.

They did but.....

"You mean the ones that won the subsequent election?"

The hard liners did win the next election but actually lost the popular vote because the free enterprise vote was split.

"It is always nice to hear someone say how wonderful he was but they never would have voted for him"

I did vote for Mike Harcourt and I think he was one of the best premiers we have ever had. Too bad his own party did Judas on him because the way he moved the party was successful. Oh, that and running on Vander Zalm's record.

The record of the Clark government was set in 2001 when the NDP got two seats.

The issue in the election is, plain and simple

That only the NDP can defeat Campbell and Campbell, his lies and his sellout of the province ARE the issue. Write the place off if Campbell wins gets another 4 years - it is already the least fair and equitable place in Canada - far from being the best place on earth he's gone a long way to make it the worst.

If he gets in again - it won't be hard to determine who's to blame either.

Gordon Campbell is the ONLY issue in this campaign. CEO government has to go!

Carolel James

With a reasonable leader the NDP should be in an easy election. Carole James is the problem she is the Sara Palin of BC politics both with C grade intellects. The last US administration (Bush 2) was dominated by C graders at best and we can see how well that turned out. A possible BC NDP administration would ensure a mediocre administration. That is what you get with affirmative action. Four more years of Campbell Liberals and the NDP have only themselves to blame.