Monday Afternoon Links

Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading.

- Murray Dobbin rightly notes that the main effect of the NDP's surge looks to be to bring our political system more in line with the values of Canadians:

If the NDP surge is real, it may represent the breaking of an historic contradiction in Canadian politics. One of the largely unspoken features of Canadian political culture is the gap between the majority's stated social and community values and their voting patterns. The CBC's fatally flawed Vote Compass notwithstanding (it's virtually impossible to get a result suggesting your values line up with the NDP), years of polling and focus groups suggest that if there was a direct line between voting and values, the NDP would win every election, hands down.

Even though the NDP is skittish when it comes to talking about tax increases (rightfully anticipating a firestorm of media attacks), the fact is Canadians say they would support tax increases if they could be assured the money would be spent on things they want. And the things they want are, of course, essentially the list of things the NDP has always run on: Medicare, affordable post-secondary education, generous social assistance, human rights, genuine EI, eliminating poverty. You know the list -- if you are part of the 70 per cent majority, it is your list, too.

- Meanwhile, Ian Capstick has some simple suggestions to make sure the NDP wave keeps rising until election day.

- I suppose it shouldn't come as much surprise that the closest anybody has come to criticizing the NDP's answers to questions on its platform is to suggest that it would somehow be better off pretending that it doesn't matter whether policy proposals are affordable. But Boris points out that the NDP's stance really amounts to nothing more than treating Canadian voters like responsible adults - which makes for a particularly nice contrast after the Cons' 2008 "never a recession! never a deficit" nonsense.

- Finally, David Climenhaga notes that the CBC ranks near the top of the list of Canadian institutions which figure to be on the chopping block - and that at least one Con backbencher who reliably sticks to the party line is making that explicit on the campaign trail.