Kann Avi Lewis seine Politik dem Moment anpassen?

His politics do fit the moment.

Inequality is rampant. Housing out of reach. Cost of living out of control. Healthcare is a disaster.our climate is worsening. Electoral reform is desperately needed. Workers once again need to have a voice. AI needs to be regulated.

This is the moment we are facing. Lewis‘ platform addresses these issues. It’s just a question if Canadians want to keep circling the drain of neoliberalism and go down the same path as the US, and eventually likely meet a similar fate. Or try a new approach with potentially very exciting results.

I think we have forgotten what canada CAN be if we actually try and hold ourselves to that standard. We might still be a great nation, and could be even better.

I am optimistic for the future

I’ve voted NDP the last three federal elections, but I’ve found this slate of leadership candidates generally uninspiring. It’s weird, I look at someone like Lewis and feel that I should be more excited at the prospect of him leading the NDP, but I’m not. Maybe I would have been in the past. Perhaps I’m aging into a more cynical phase of life, but I’m concerned the NDP as a whole doesn’t have a full grasp on what the „moment“ even is.

> I think his central strategic challenge would be to present structural reform not as an additional source of uncertainty but as a means of restoring predictability in areas such as housing, food prices, and employment security.

Except the reform he talks about is quite literally increasing instability and upending the existing system on purpose.

That includes increasing taxes on all persons, not just the top 10%, which everyone seems to be against yet want what the other more socially democratic states have without paying for it…

I think his *politics* can be a lot more popular than some think. People need to take Lewis seriously.

He already is well situated to tap into one vein of strong political appeal: anger. The more people feel scared and that their position is precarious, the angrier they are at least prepared to be at any group that can be identified as responsible that does not include them. Lewis is well positioned to try to tap this anger and channel it at the rich and elites, and the government he says facilitates their interests alone.

True, he has to show that his rage is about the people whose anger he hopes to tap, rather than anything that points at them, but I think he’s shown he knows this and is good at it.

For example, his environmental policy is a showcase of this approach. He (IMO incorrectly) frames the fossil fuel problem as one of domestic production, rather than domestic consumption. The problem, dear voter, is not that you drive a big gas guzzling vehicle two hours every day, and need a lot of natural gas to heat your oversized suburban mcmasion, part of a massive global consumption driven demand for fossil fuels. No, the problem is that we produce any of the fuel for these domestically. It’s the big corporations‘ fault, if just shut down their wells and mines, we can end the fossil fuel problem!

This doesn’t make a lot of logical sense. *But* it has shown itself to be a lot *more* popular with some important segments of the population than the deeply unpopular liberal idea that the problem stems from demand by consumers, and that introducing technology that removes that demand will make production irrelevant. It makes sure that the blame rests with groups who are easy to hate, rather than with important blocks of voters themselves.

He’s shown good instincts in targeting affordability within a frame of blame of greedy corporations who are identifiable and run by a class of super rich who are super easy to hate. I mean, Galen Weston is basically out of central casting for a young adult movie villain.

So, sure, his policies threaten a lot of instability by closing about 5% of Canada’s GDP, to be replaced by a green plan that is actually pretty sketchy, and policies that treat investment as a problem at a time when we need a *lot* of it.

But this does not mean that they don’t have the potential to be quite popular with a significant segment of Canadians. There’s a reason he’s winning with NDP partisans right now – its not because he’s „more electable“, but that what he is saying resonates with them on a deep, visceral level.

Tapping into that kind of feeling is going to be very important for rebuilding the NDP.

Plus, its going to position him well to land attacks on the obvious weaknesses and gaps in the Carney Liberals‘ armor, like the laughably weak penalties for fraudulent false identification of products as Canadian, and the need for the sitting government to thread some very unpleasant needles on managing the relationship with our ever increasingly psychotic neighbour to the south.