As the Ontario election campaign runs down, Kathleen Wynne says that a vote for the NDP is a vote for Tim Hudak. And Andrea Horwath says that Ontarians don't have to choose between "corrupt" and "crazy."
The dilemma facing Ontario's progressives, Chantal Hebert writes, will raise its head again in next year's federal election:
More so perhaps than any recent federal election, it will feature a fight to the finish for progressive voters between Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau.
Based on the pattern of the provincial campaign, the NDP/Liberal federal battle for Ontario will be Trudeau’s to lose.
As much as many left-of-centre voters fear a Tim Hudak government, that pales in comparison with the trepidation that the possibility of a fourth Stephen Harper mandate often inspires.
If we had a system of proportional representation, there would be no such dilemma. But that solution is far away:
Meanwhile, as Ontario goes, so must apparently Canada.
Thus irreconcilable differences between the NDP and the Liberal Ontario clans have gone a long way to bring both sides to all but rule out a pre-election rapprochement between Mulcair and Trudeau.
The enmity between the two opposition parties in the House of Commons increasingly runs higher than their common dislike of the Conservatives.
And so we, the voters, allow ourselves to be manipulated for the most cynical of reasons. Ontario is a preview of coming attractions.
