On September 18, members of the New Democratic Party(NDP)
of Canada vote for their new leader replacing outgoing leader Thomas Mulcair. Naturally, hard right news outlets paint a “boring” and uninspiring picture of the NDP race as irreverent due to the space
between their conservative-leaning ideology and the social democrat(abeit moving
to the centre) ideology of the NDP. More
liberal-leaning outlets give more adequate coverage by contrast. As a hard
democratic socialist leftie myself, this race I feel is really relevant. Namely, the question of: With the rise of
left wing populism worldwide through the campaigns of Jean-Luc Melenchon,
Jeremy Corbyn, and Bernie Sanders himself (in spite of his relative moderate
stances and the fact that he’s just a social democrat, abeit much better than
what passes for rational questions in the US), how would the NDP address the
need to move left to address the key issues of our time and challenge the
injustices of neoliberal policies and the alt-right? Or would they choose to maintain supposedly
pragmatic and centrist policies, and grow weaker as a result? My primer analyzing the NDP race will go over
the policies presented by the NDP candidates, as well as provide my own
analysis of who I am supporting in the race in ranked choice, as well as my own
take on the media coverage of the candidate of my first choice, the coverage of
which I have a lot of problems with.
