From: brewnoser2@gmail.com   
      
   Canadian Press | Oct 17, 2015 9:10 am |   
      
   Tom Mulcair: why is he smiling despite running in third place?   
      
   LAC MEGANTIC,, Que. – Tom Mulcair looks remarkably relaxed and content for a   
   man whom pollsters and pundits predict may be headed to the political gallows   
   on Monday – and not all of the shaggy grin is the polish of a seasoned   
   politician.   
      
   He smiled, joked and even mimicked the grumbling of one his senior staffers   
   during an interview late Friday with The Canadian Press, which may be somewhat   
   surprising for an NDP leader whose party rode a wave of Big Brother   
   anti-terror fears and Senate    
   scandal to the top of the polls early in the campaign, only to have the lead   
   evaporate.   
      
   Earlier in the week, he joined in a chorus of his favourite song – A Day in   
   Life by The Beatles – on a long cross country flight.  Before each speech he   
   gives his wife Catherine a quick kiss.   
      
   By rights, at this point in the campaign, you would expect him to be throwing   
   the chairs around, at least behind closed doors.  The NDP, as he likes to tell   
   partisan crowds across the country, has never been so close to power.   
      
   If the polls are to be believed, the party, which steered itself to the centre   
   of the political spectrum in order to gain acceptance and electabilty, is   
   about to drive off a cliff and land back in third spot where it had – until   
   2011 – languished for    
   half century.   
      
   In fact, he told the reporters interviewing him to remember where they were   
   – in the rebuilt basement of the famous music club destroyed in the Lac   
   Megantic rail disaster – when he predicted without the blink of an eye that   
   in three days hence the    
   NDP would actually form government.   
      
   Where is that moment of optimism coming from?   
      
   Some of it is clearly posturing.  Because – in all honesty – what else is   
   he going say?  But if you listen carefully he’s talking like a doctor who is   
   trying to convince a patient to quit smoking.   
      
   “People have to sense that you have confidence,” he said.  “Part of this   
   is about me giving Canadians enough confidence in themselves to be able to   
   break a 148-year-old bad habit, and to talk to them.”   
      
   The problem is not with the NDP policies or its message because, as Mulcair   
   noted, one of the things he’s learned in the campaign is to “remain   
   faithful to yourself (and) your ideals.”  The problem is that Canadians   
   don’t believe they can elect    
   an NDP government.   
      
   “Because they have confidence in the NDP.  They know us.  They know as a   
   party with strong values that represents Canadians and has been there for the   
   long term,” he said.   
      
   “But now I have to communicate also to them that they have to have   
   confidence in themselves for the final stretch on Monday that they can break   
   that bad habit, that they’re not stuck with the Liberals and Conservatives   
   (for eternity), that they can    
   move to something better, which would be an NDP government on Monday.”   
      
   On paper, the campaign turned for the NDP in mid-September when Mulcair was   
   forced to defend a woman’s right to wear a niqab in a citizenship ceremony   
   from blistering Conservative attacks, both inside and outside Quebec where the   
   issue is politically    
   toxic.   
      
   It was Stephen Harper’s great “distraction” from his record, he said.   
      
   The poll numbers have only just begun to stabilize as the NDP has taken hold   
   of twin life lines – opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal   
   and the resignation of Liberal campaign co-chair Dan Gagnier under a cloud for   
   his connections to    
   the oil patch.   
      
   Mulcair’s full-throated pledge to renegotiate the deal is a reminder of the   
   “old” NDP, the left-of-centre workers’ party that opposed both Brian   
   Mulroney’s free trade with the U.S. and NAFTA.   
      
   Bashing the Liberals over Gagnier gives him the opportunity to remind voters,   
   in his Quebec power base and elsewhere, that Canadians turfed them a decade   
   ago.   
      
   The NDP’s push to the centre, particularly with Mulcair’s balanced budget   
   promise, is widely believed to have driven progressive voters over to Justin   
   Trudeau’s Liberals.   
      
   But Mulcair does not believe the progressive vote has left him.  It’s still   
   there. Waiting.      ◕‿↼       
      
   The Liberals have tried to capture that vote, “but they haven’t been able   
   to succeed,” said Mulcair, who listed off reasons for his faith.   
      
   He said he believes that progressives will remember the Liberals backed Bill   
   C-51, the anti-terror legislation; the NDP’s plan to hike taxes on big   
   corporations; the party’s opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which was   
   founded on the desire to    
   process raw bitumen in Canada rather than export it; opposition to the TPP;   
   and the Liberals’ refusal to set specific greenhouse gas targets.   
      
   Maybe he knows something we don’t know.  The NDP is fond of saying it either   
   won or ran second in 224 ridings in the 2011 election.   And as late as   
   Friday, polling from Ekos was saying that despite the slide in nationals   
   numbers, the “rather    
   efficient distribution of their support means they will likely still be   
   looking at a fairly impressive seat count on Monday.”   
      
   http://i.cbc.ca/1.2901859.1434540949!/cpImage/httpImage/image.jp   
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