So what now, NDP?

Yesterday morning was a dark day not only for Canadian politics but for the Canadian people from every corner of our great nation.  NDP Leader, and Leader of the Official Opposition, Jack Layton succumbed to the cancer he so hoped to beat.  Yesterday was a day that many mourned his untimely death and celebrated his life and the legacy he will leave behind.

So today we must ask whether the NDP can survive without Jack.  Some may say it's too soon but a political party is much like a business, only it represents people, and eventually a new CEO must be chosen to step into the role that Jack left behind.  Some will say that the party doesn't stand a chance without Captain Jack at the helm and others try to hold onto some of Jack's optimism and in his own words say "don't let anyone ever tell you it can't be done."

There is talk that the Liberals, currently under former provincial NDP boss Bob Rae, will try to merge the two parties into one Liberal Democratic Party or something like that but something tells me that the merger will turn into more of a hostile takeover by the Liberal party decimating everything Jack Layton and company spent years building up.

So can the NDP be successful on their own without Captain Jack?  What would Jack say? Yes.  Winston Churchill once said "whether you say you can or you can't, you're right!"  The NDP needs to pick themselves up, sooner than later, dust themselves off and regroup.  The foundation has been built, it may not be ready to consider a serious run at the governing party in four years but it's ok to plan to stay in the opposition.  I find it highly unlikely that the Liberals will be in any position to make a serious run at the government in 4 years either so I figure, unless a major Conservative scandal on the horizon, they have at least 8 years of time to build.  Remember it only took Jack Layton 10 years to go from rookie to Leader of the Opposition so it is possible.

So what do they need to do now?  Well clearly step one is do some serious soul searching within the party and find a leader, learn from the Liberals who have had several failed attempts at finding a leader that clicked with Canadians.  Another thing to keep in mind, don't look for Jack part 2, you are likely not going to find him or her and odds are good that if / when you do they will probably disappoint because they aren't enough like Jack.

Politics is like hockey.  It's a team sport and sometimes a team leans too much on their star player, it doesn't mean they can't do well without him it just means that the rest of the team needs to step it up!!  Jack was an optimist and was very much an extrovert, he loved the spotlight and the spotlight loved him.  Ok that isn't too unusual for a politician but the difference is that Jack's character made people feel like they could trust him, and that's where he was different from most other politicians.  At this point it the plan should be sustainability, keep the momentum where it is and build on it slowly and time will tell if they can pull it off.

Anything is possible, Jack taught us that.