The NDP are infuriating me so far this election.
I think Andrea Horwath is way more clever than people give her credit for. An election is made to be won, not to just to participate. Horwath understood that and yes she will make some of the NDP base angry but she'll get a better chance at winning instead of keeping the status quo, who got her nowhere.
The whole "budget blackmail" was a brilliant strategy. By forcing the Liberals to go out of their way to please the NDP, they lost their focus. They became unrecognisable, hence unpredictable and add 11 years of scandals, wasting, mismanagement, Wynne not being Dalton and a total lack of integrity into the mix. Even the National Post said that Wynne's budget made Bob Rae looks like a fiscal conservative. That budget was so far left that the Liberal became in the population's and media's eyes another leftist/borderline socialist party. Horwath turning it down was a shocker but she made a point. The NDP can be a "reasonable" leftist party too...just like Mulcair is trying to sell at the federal level.
The strategy is to take over the Liberal vote and hope to marginalize them. The NDP took a centre party (the Liberals) and brought them down to their level (the left) by misleading them into believing that they would get the NDP support if the budget included everything Horwath wanted, then she turned around and said that the Liberals had no moral authority to lead Ontario...back stabbing them in cold blood...Simply Brilliant.
With the Liberals plagued with 11 years of scandals and economic policies that has been nothing short but a disaster, which left party seems more attractive now to those on the centre-left spectrum who will never vote Hudak?
The devil you know (the liberals)
who you really don't know afterall due to their track record, scandals, flip flops and lack of integrity who happens to have taken a radical shift to the left?
Or the NDP? Well, now that you think about it, they don't look so different from the Liberals minus the scandals...
The road to power for the NDP starts by turning disappointed Liberals who doesn't recognize their party anymore into NDP support who would be willing to give Horwath a try and that includes the "anything but Hudak" crowd. The real ugly battle will be between Horwath and Wynne which has already started. Wynne's recent ad is attacking exclusively Horwath. The Liberal strategists knows this is where it could hurt them the most.
As for Hudak, it's really his election to lose. Like the National Post said that he should stop the Unions rethoric, stop trying to be Harris 2.0 and just attack the Liberals on their track record and talk about being able to buy alcohol in convenience stores.
