i'm only going to do this once, this election cycle...

trudeau and mulcair are both horrible candidates, for their respective bases. i'd expect harper to effectively split the vote. the only really serious possibility of a change of government in the upcoming election is going to be in a highly tenuous minority situation.

let's ignore the conservative propaganda. it's useful in appealing to the base, but it has nothing to do with reality in any way.

the reality is that trudeau seems to primarily be concerned about appealing to the right, and so long as he does that he's going to bleed votes to the ndp. the liberals have not learned anything. they seem to be convinced their failures have to do with their front person, not their policies. in the end, if trudeau continues this "appeal to the right" strategy, i wouldn't expect him to perform much better than his immediate predecessors. i can only hope that they clue in to this soon...

so, as a left-leaning voter, trudeau's policies are too right-wing for me. default to mulcair, then? not so quick - he's no less of a center-right liberal. if you listen to him talk about economics, you immediately wonder why he's in the ndp. then the answer becomes clear - opportunism. and you realize you don't want to vote for this guy.

reality: all three major candidates are right-wing liberals. it's really about identity politics. and, that gives harper a major advantage.

i don't want the liberals and ndp to merge. i want one of them to re-establish the spectrum, by swinging out to the left. and, until that happens, i probably won't vote very often at all.

but, for 2015? nothing has changed. harper wins by splitting the left. again.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-s-ndp-may-be-turning-a-corner-polls-suggest-1.3016628

Apollo23
The Libs have always governed from the Right--and well in opposition they criticized from the Left..

deathtokoalas
that's an over-simplification, but the rhetoric from the younger trudeau is really dramatically different. he sounds more like a democrat, most of the time.

casino logic
fair analysis of sorts. But opting out of voting is the ultimate cop out. Apathy is contagious. I dare say that all parties count strategically on a certain level of voter apathy.

BigRocks
The only focus for voters this fall is to vote for the candidate in your riding most likely to beat the conservatives. Do some research, organize, become informed and effective voters. harper is strategizing to split the vote. We can't let this happen again. 

Organize the left vote. Vote for the your local riding candidate most likely to beat the cons.

deathtokoalas
@casino logic i think that the policies i'm seeing from the liberals & ndp present apathy as the best option. the better option at this point is to let them both crash and burn and focus on a protest party to re-establish some left-wing ideas. given that there's not going to be any difference between harper & trudeau & mulcair, anyways, there's no threat in letting harper retire...

i'm not well-positioned to actually do this. i'm an introverted artist. but, tactically, these parties ought to both be abandoned at this point. there's no future with either of them.

the greens look like the easy answer, but it's also a right-wing party, so you're looking at years of power struggles. better to start clean...

deathtokoalas
@BigRocks since 2006, the parties have positioned themselves too far to the right for it to matter. even reduction to minority isn't going to matter, because you have to expect the liberals to support them on virtual everything that makes any difference. so, please don't waste your time with this. please stop pretending that there's a future in the establishment left and support a new party, instead.

Maurice
Sounds neocon to me.LPC???

Green-PAC??? Isnt that neocon???

deathtokoalas
what i'm pointing out is that the liberal party has moved dramatically to the right over the last several decades. they were previously a social democratic party that advocated for a mixed economy, which was definitely not "neo-con". today, i think neo-con is a slight exaggeration, although they're not far from it.

the green party in canada is roughly classical liberal (it's right-libertarian in origin), and should not be confused with the more left-wing green parties in the united states and europe. neo-con, or neo-liberal as we tend to say in canada and europe, would not be a very good description.