Who's going to be the next Liberal leader?

[Observer Walt]

OK, who voted for Justin "Pretty Boy" Trudeau?

Talk about a light weight running on his name and looks

But he's not running! He is hardly responsible for the wishful thinking of others.

 

[cacruden]

But he's not running! He is hardly responsible for the wishful thinking of others.

This is a fantasy "poll" and he is definately running.... I asked him not to (see below) but he chose to run anyways -- and someone voted for him

You should make this a poll question - but drop Justin - too junior (I think 5 max).

 

[kEiThZ]

Kennedy is someone I believe can reach out beyond the base, but also attract the base very strongly. This is key to why I'm supporting him for the new leadership convention.

I just think his support for Dion might not make him so attractive to the Liberal faithful. That and there's likely an understanding setting in that they need more of a centrist. I like Kennedy, and he'd probably be a great Minister, but I think he's got too many downsides to make it this round.

I am with you on Rae and Iggy. That's why I think they need to go outside the current lot to McKenna or Manley. They maybe too right wing for most Liberals but they are exactly in line with voters.....

The coming fight is for the centre. Dion just proved you can't win on the left. Kennedy is kind of in the same mold...that's his obstable to power.

 

[adma]

OK, who voted for Justin "Pretty Boy" Trudeau?

Talk about a light weight running on his name and looks

Well, it's a shame he ain't Sacha *ahem* Alexandre...

 

[Hydrogen]

As far as I can tell, of the last crop of leadership hopefuls, only Rae has paid off his bills from the last run for the top seat of the Liberals. That may affect who runs this time around.


Kennedy did nothing for the party between his losing run at the leadership and this election. Hardly worthwhile leadership material.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I'm no Liberal, infact I have no interest in supporting party politics but this discussion does fascinate me from the point of view of strategy. For the Kennedy supporters, if you love your party you would be nuts to back him. He is Dion 2. Kennedy spells conservative majority.

 

[adma]

On language grounds alone, I doubt he's Dion 2. But he'd need an *awful* lot of united-left backing, which is easier said than done...

 

[Brandon716]

So you guys seriously think a McKenna or a Rae could unite the left better than Kennedy?

While none of us really know, I really have a harder time thinking Kennedy is this far left Dion 2 that everyone keeps mentioning. First of all, Dion wasn't a far left guy, he just focused on the green platform too much. It was his entire campaign. Then the language barrier and personality connection (or lack thereof) did him in.

Kennedy I think transcends all of Dion's weaknesses, and none of the others really seem to offer much in terms of attracting the kinds of voters the Liberals need.

But in Quebec I don't know, since I am not qualified to know which Liberal would be best to bring Quebec more Liberals I'm open to anyone who has advice on that front especially.

 

[Whoaccio]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081024.wcogagnon27/BNStory/specialComment/home

Tall, dark and fluent – go, Iggy
LYSIANE GAGNON
From Monday's Globe and Mail

During the election campaign, many wondered how the Liberal Party would have fared if it had been led by Michael Ignatieff. My guess — and everybody else's — is the party would have been a formidable rival to the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois. It is not a coincidence that the vast majority of Quebec delegates at the 2006 leadership convention were supporters of Mr. Ignatieff.

Among the potential contenders to succeed Stéphane Dion, Mr. Ignatieff would still be the favourite of Quebec Liberals, even in the unlikely event that Quebeckers such as Martin Cauchon and Denis Coderre — who both nurture leadership ambitions — were in the race. (Justin Trudeau said he wouldn't run, a sensible decision since he is widely considered, at least in Quebec, to be a lightweight.) After having had three leaders from Quebec in a row, the last one being a francophone, the Liberals will surely want an anglophone from another province. Alternating between francophones and anglophones is still the Liberal Party's unwritten rule.

In any case, Mr. Cauchon, a competent cabinet minister under Jean Chrétien, would not be a shoo-in in Quebec because he lacks charisma. And Mr. Coderre would clearly be punching above his weight class if he viewed himself as a future prime minister. Local Liberals enjoy his combative zeal and down-home populist style in partisan meetings, but he wouldn't be taken seriously.

Mr. Ignatieff, on the other hand, has many assets when it comes to winning Quebec voters: flawless, elegant French, and dark, intense good looks that somewhat resemble those of Lucien Bouchard, the beloved icon of the 1990s. Mr. Ignatieff is a public intellectual rather than a straightforward academic, and Quebeckers love public intellectuals — people who are cultured, at ease with ideas and can philosophize on various themes.

More important, Mr. Ignatieff is popular among the nationalists because he was the first to embrace the notion of Quebec as a nation. This was a skewed view — there's certainly a French-Canadian nation, but Quebec as a province is not a nation — but it worked, and now that the idea has been co-opted by Stephen Harper and accepted by large segments of the political class, Mr. Ignatieff can look like a precursor.

By the time the Liberals choose a new leader, Mr. Ignatieff's initial stand in favour of the war in Iraq will have been forgotten and forgiven, especially if Barack Obama is elected president.

The Obama factor might play in the Liberal leadership race. Even though Mr. Ignatieff is 14 years older than Mr. Obama, he's the only Liberal contender (so far) who can generate a bit of excitement: He, too, comes from outside the box, and he's not a typical politician.

Bob Rae, by contrast, is very much a traditional politician, albeit an exceptionally gifted one. If Mr. Rae had been leading the Liberals, he also would have fared better in Quebec than Mr. Dion. His French is very good, he is personable and a good conversationalist, and his failure as Ontario NDP premier wouldn't haunt him too much in Quebec, where most people have no personal memory of his tenure.

As far as Quebec is concerned, John Manley could be a sensible choice. He is fluently bilingual and has a solid record as a cabinet minister under Mr. Chrétien in various economic portfolios and Foreign Affairs. He's relatively unknown in the province and he totally lacks charisma, but, on this count, he would be at par with Mr. Harper. At least Mr. Manley could be sold as a man with gravitas, whose governmental experience could be a tremendous asset in the troubled economic times ahead.

Most of the other potential contenders whose names are circulating would have problems winning Quebec because they aren't fluent in French. A reasonable knowledge of French is not sufficient to win the hearts and minds of Quebeckers, but it's a sine qua non.

 

[adma]

So you guys seriously think a McKenna or a Rae could unite the left better than Kennedy?

Maybe when it comes to reattaining power, the Liberals need something more than a "unite the left" strategy--they're not gonna reclaim Tory votes that way, and besides, it isn't like Layton's team is going to roll over and play dead on behalf of Saint Gerard, especially if they're on the warpath over what happened to Saint Peggy...

 

[Brandon716]

Maybe when it comes to reattaining power, the Liberals need something more than a "unite the left" strategy--they're not gonna reclaim Tory votes that way, and besides, it isn't like Layton's team is going to roll over and play dead on behalf of Saint Gerard, especially if they're on the warpath over what happened to Saint Peggy...

I'm not convinced there has been a huge shift of Liberal voters going Conservative, afterall the Harper government just won its larger minority with fewer actual voters in 2008 than in 2006. Just look at the links provided earlier in this topic.

Liberals are simply staying home in large numbers and some have defected to the Greens and the NDP (more so the Greens).

Its more about how to bring Liberals back to the polls instead of trying to become like the Tories.

 

[afransen]

If the Liberals can bring back 5% from the Conservatives, they'll win. It's as simple as that.

 

[Brandon716]

Here's the last several election cycles.


2008
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_election_2008
Party - Total Vote Count - Percent Overall
Cons - 5,207,553 - 37.6%
Liberal - 3,628,337 - 26.2%
NDP - 2,509,148 - 18.1%
Bloc - 1,379,956 - 9.9%
Green - 941,097 - 6.8%



2006
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Election_2006
Party - Total Vote Count - Percent Overall
Cons - 5,374,071 - 36.27%
Liberal - 4,479,415 - 30.2%
NDP - 2,589,597 - 17.4%
Bloc - 1,553,201 - 10.4%
Green - 664,068 - 4.4%



2004
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Election_2004
Party - Total Vote Count - Percent Overall
Liberal - 4,982,220 - 36.7%
Cons - 4,019,498 - 29.6%
NDP - 2,127,403 - 15.6%
Bloc - 1,680,109 - 12.3%
Green - 582,247 - 4.2%



2000
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2000
Party - Total Vote Count - Percent Overall
Liberal - 5,252,031 - 40.8%
Canadian Alliance - 3,276,929 - 25.4%
Progressive Conservative - 1,566,998 - 12.1%
NDP - 1,093,868 - 8.5%
Bloc - 1,377,727 - 10.7%
Green - 104,402 - .8% (notice the huge difference from below 1% to a surging in the 2004 election)


---


Based on the actual vote information, I think more potential Liberal voters are now in the NDP category and must be won back, not the Tories.

Capture the million voters that left the Liberals going to the NDP after the last successful Liberal win in 2000, and you win back a Liberal party.

The 2006 election was the first year the right fully united and voted for a united party, in 2004 it was too fresh for many centrist Tories to vote for a Harper government, but in 2006 he brought them in.

In 2008 you saw Liberals simply stay home - vote turnout was super low - and the NDP retained old Liberals that aren't happy with the party.

Not to say there isn't some Liberal support that has bled to the Conservatives, but the way its made out on this forum is that the only support the Liberals can get is by stealing Tories away... I don't buy that argument, its much more complex.

But I now understand why some of you keep screaming the Liberals need to run to the right, you're basing your opinion on the idea that Conservatives have won 2 million Liberal voters away from the Liberal party, and that simply isn't the case.

I still want to hear someone explain what is going on in Quebec and the likelihood of them voting more Liberals in (or rather how to entice them back to the federal Liberals).

Liberals have been bleeding votes away to several groups, Green most notably between 2000 and 2004 and beyond, and the NDP more significantly. The Bloc stole many Liberal votes in the 2004 election because of sponsorship, but those votes are now largely dissolving away as people stay home. Quebec doesn't like the Conservatives, but voters stayed home because they didn't like Dion and didn't vote for the Bloc as strongly as in 2004.

 

[Brandon716]

And if some of you choose to ignore the NDP rise from 1 million voters in 2000 to over 2.5 million in 2006 and 2008 or the Green party going from barely 100k voters up to almost 1 million voters in 2008 *meaning the Greens are as strong today as the NDP was in 2000*, you guys obviously aren't interested in where the real Liberal support has been bleeding away to...

Left leaning Liberals are voting NDP in record numbers today. Right leaning Liberals are voting Green in record numbers today.

And I'm not saying its not warranted. Dion was an uninspiring candidate, before then the Liberals were perceived as a party filled with scandal because of sponsorship in 2004 and the income trust issue during the Jan 2006 election.

But a new Liberal leader isn't going to win votes by running to the right and being Tory light, that's the last thing that is going to attract an NDP or Green voter who is a Liberal defector because of the malaise in the Liberal party.

A lot of you on here simply have the wrong idea about how to win a campaign for the Liberals based on my experience watching it from my perspective.

 

[cacruden]

Capture the million voters that left the Liberals going to the NDP after the last successful Liberal win in 2000, and you win back a Liberal party.

I look at it differently - they are not Liberal voters that left, they were NDP voters that returned. They left after Broadbent left -- because they did not elect a strong leader for the NDP. During the Broadbent years, the NDP had between 15% and 20+% of the vote (up from 15% for David Lewis). During this time - you had both Liberal and Progressive Conservative majorities.