LETTER

NDP counts bruises, not votes

 

As the NDP meets nationally to sort out its future, it will no doubt look at what went wrong in the last election campaign and from all this, will come an examination of party leader Tom Mulcair.  At one point in the campaign, the NDP was leading and there were headlines about “Mulcair, our next PM!”

It seems Mulcair and the party’s strategists had not strategized that far because they froze in the headlights of the polls, refusing to say anything that might rock any boat. Mulcair went from being perceived as an intelligent, benign uncle to a standard-order, yappy politician.  

Isn’t the NDP the new party, the innovative and experimental party?

Easy, they were outflanked – on the left! – by Trudeau and the Good Old Guys’ Party.  

It is easy to criticize Mr Mulcair, but imagine his situation.  On the right is the Harper machine, ready to trounce on anything they can label “socialist”.  For example, if Mulcair wants pharma-care, that’s socialism (according to Canada’s excuse for a media) but if Trudeau proposes it, it’s main-stream. Yes, Mulcair became very cautious. He had to be.  Otherwise you would have crapped all over him. You refers to you, the reader, and to all of us who don’t spend enough time and attention on our country’s political life. We’re satisfied with humourous stories, celebrities, or gossip.  There’s a letter-writer in the Bulletin who seems to just repeat what he has read in the Ottawa Sun (or worse), making him in his own eyes a political genius!

We have all the technology to get news and analysis from anywhere in the world on any subject, and what do we do, we the great Canadian freedom cheerleaders?  We file funny cat videos or we read comments on Celine’s grief, etc.  No, no hope. That’s what’s Right in Canada, no hope.

 

Charles Martin,

Hull