Montreal Gazette: "Opening on the Left" (Cdn politics)

[Minstrel Boy]

This is the kind of story that makes me think 2004 will be the best of times and the worst of times. The best for the fortunes of the Left in Canada, and the worst for - well, just about everything else.

Also, it's nice to see this in The Montreal Gazette, given the traditional invisibility of the NDP in Quebec. That's certainly changing under Layton's leadership.

Opening on the left
Ed Broadbent, the NDP warhorse, sees the Liberal shift to the right as leaving a huge void for his party to fill

The Montreal Gazette
Jan 26 2004

Catching up with Ed Broadbent means a quick sandwich before his weekly poli-sci class at McGill's Leacock building. Broadbent, retired champion of "ordinary Canadians," is back, running for the NDP.

He brings more than name recognition and good memories to this. He also brings a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and decent people ever to have graced the national stage. And he happens to be stepping back on it at a moment of rare opportunity for the left.

Not since Broadbent led the NDP to 43 seats in the 1988 election has there been such an opening on the left. How big? Jack Layton can drive a Mack truck through it.

It isn't just the issues, from social policy to quality of life, that resonate for the NDP. It's all that room on the centre left that's been vacated, indeed abandoned, by Paul Martin's Liberals.

http://tinyurl.com/2knbw

[Iverson]

1. kick

I've heard similar commentary on CBC, which can (still) be picked up in my part of Michigan.
This bodes well for Canada, but not so well for the rightward-drifting Liberal Party.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

2. The fact that Layton is a Quebecker from a family with strong roots

in the province bodes well for us.