The pivot

Now that a minority government looks far less inevitable than through most of this campaign, the NDP's message has shifted toward a message of opposition rather than the balance-of-power strategy from most of the campaign. First, the deserved opposition to the Cons:

The Conservatives want to increase income taxes on people with low incomes, so that they can pay for a cut in the GST. That’s not a tax cut. That’s moonshine. And that’s always the way with Tory tax cuts. They put some dollars in one pocket, and then they pick your other pocket to pay for it.

The Conservatives want to wreck Canada’s chance to have a child care system. Instead they want to send parents with children under six a check for $3.28 a day...

Lest anybody think otherwise, this is far from the first time Layton has made sure to take shots at the Cons. If the new line seems a little better targeted than the earlier one, it's undoubtedly been helped along by some of the obvious drawbacks to the Cons' platform - and the apparent plan to recoup the amount of promised tax breaks is definitely a factor worth exploiting.

While the message toward the Cons has changed mostly based on a response to the Cons' announced policies, the one toward the Libs sees the NDP rightly fighting to be the main anti-Harper party:

More and more Canadians have come to the conclusion that Paul Martin has failed the test of leadership...

I respect some of the Liberal Party’s achievements in the past. Lester Pearson worked with our party to introduce public health care and pensions. Pierre Trudeau brought Canada our charter of rights.

But the Liberal Party under Paul Martin isn’t what it was.

Paul Martin’s Liberal Party needs a time out to heal itself, clean itself up, and decide what it believes.

So this time, in this election, I’m asking you to change your vote.

I’m asking you to vote for the NDP.

My one concern is that this message may give too much credit to the Libs. The message of allowing the Liberal Party to "heal itself" seems to buy into the idea of a natural governing party which will return as a stronger contender an election down the road, when the NDP's message should be designed to marginalize the Libs in future elections as well as the current one.

That said, it's great to see Jack now wielding past visionary Liberal leaders against the current myopic one. And the message should help to keep the NDP positioned as a positive choice for Canadian voters - even if it's less likely to hold the balance of power.