Hard to believe but yesterday marks one year since the most recent NDP Leadership convention where Ryan Meili lost to the eventual winner, Cam Broten, by just 44 votes (less than 1% of all votes cast).
As a cathartic process after the loss, I’d compiled a list of “44 Reasons We Lost” in my personal journal. I’d tossed around the idea of using that as the basis for a similar list on this blog to mark the anniversary.
But then a funny thing happened – I didn’t even remember that yesterday was the anniversary of the convention until someone on one of the many secret societies I belong to on Facebook mentioned it.
And then I also realised that there was no point in posting a list like that. Yes, there might be some value to be gained in sharing some thoughts about things we could’ve done better as a campaign.
But there was also much risk that a post like that, even if it wasn’t meant that way, would be read as criticism of members of Ryan’s team. Or re-open old wounds. Or bring back the nightmares I had in the week after the loss. (I only wish I was kidding about that!) 😉
Anyhow, one of my more tongue-in-cheek reasons for why we lost was that we picked the wrong song for Ryan’s convention entrance.
There was a lot of debate within the team about which song would be best and after much back and forth, the song chosen was “The Obvious Child” by Paul Simon.
That made sense for a lot of reasons – Ryan has strong connections to Africa as does the song, the music is very upbeat, the lyrics are relevant and the title is right on the nose about what our message was by that point – Ryan was (or should have been) the obvious choice for NDP members. (Maybe too on the nose given how things turned out!) 😉
One of the songs in contention was “Stompa” by Serena Ryder. I liked it for a few reasons – in Ryan’s 2009 run, we’d used “Past in Present” by Feist and like that song “Stompa” would be a call-back to that campaign as another song by an alternative Canadian female artist who was gaining increased mainstream success.
“Stompa” also had some fitting lyrics and a great beat like both the Feist and Paul Simon songs we eventually used in the two campaigns. And since “Stompa” had been used on the popular TV show, “Grey’s Anatomy”, it would be recognizable to a wide swath of convention goers, even if they might not realise where they’d heard it before. (Shea was actually the person who pointed out that it’d been used on Grey’s when I first played it for her.)
(Hard to believe I just realised that also gave it a medical connection too which subliminally reinforced one of the things Ryan was best known for.)
Anyhow, maybe I’ll still post that list of “44 Reasons We Lost” at some point in the future – maybe for the next NDP Leadership Race? Although I don’t think Ryan will be a candidate next time around – it looks like he’s doing quite well with his current endeavours.
Happy Anniversary, one day late! 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lTpkCKPyM
“Stompa” – Serena Ryder
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