Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Drew Anderson comments on the support the NDP is winning among groups which have historically supported the Cons:

Seniors and men. Until now they formed the rock-solid base of the Conservative Party. But they’re trending towards Mulcair, and that should have Harper’s team reaching for the panic button.

Why the sudden shift, particularly amongst two demographics that are often the hardest to move?

New Democrats launched a TV ad that, to say the least, bypassed soft and fluffy.

The ad has trucks and dogs and country music and power tools. It played in heavy rotation, not on Grey’s Anatomy, but during Jays games and the hockey playoffs.

The entire campaign was designed to reach out specifically to those holdouts from the last election campaign, particularly men.

And early indications is that, at the very least, it’s got them joining in the water cooler conversations.

Nobody should get ahead of themselves. Polls go up, and polls go down. There is a lot of real estate between now and the next election. And as Mulcair’s team no doubt learned this past week, honeymoons don’t last forever.

But in politics as in football, it’s always easier to be playing in the other team’s end.

 - Sarah Schmidt reports on UN special rapporteur Olivier De Schutter's fully justified outrage at the lack of food security facing many Canadians:

"It's even more shocking to me to see that there are 900,000 households in Canada that are food insecure and up to 2.5 million people precisely because this is a wealthy country. It's even less excusable," said De Schutter.

"It's not because the country is a wealthy country that there are no problems. In fact, the problems are very significant and, frankly, this sort of self-righteousness about the situation being good in Canada is not corresponding to what I saw on the ground, not at all."

 - Meanwhile, Michael Laxer fits De Schutter's review into a wider pattern of attacks against poor Ontarians.

- Finally, Frances Russell wonders whether some well-placed political theater might be needed to call attention to the Cons' disrespect for Parliament.