Tommy, We Have to Talk

Dear Tommy:

I've got some bad news.   The old gang has moved on.  They've "modernized" some, taken a new direction if you will.

Now, rest assured Tom, no one's saying that everything the party you created once stood for is radical nonsense.   At least none of them are saying that out loud although some certainly are acting that way.

They've figured out the route to get elected, their one slim chance at power, meant they'd have to grow up some.   They'd have to become sophisticated, moderate - pragmatic if you will.   Compromise is the order of the day and you know what a slippery slope that is for people of high principle.

Today, Tom, it's like three guys, a Liberal, a Conservative and a New Democrat (for want of a better name), each of them with the Green Apple Two-Step, competing for a single-seat outhouse.  It doesn't really matter to anyone but them who gets there first, the output will be pretty much indistinguishable.   Oh, they'll argue about whose smells the worst but, really, it's all the same.

You might be wondering, Tom, just who is holding down the Left in Canada after all this?   Actually, nobody.   Everybody wants to be in the centre today, that's where the action is.  That's how you get elected to form a government.

It might seem like they're not New Democrats any more but something more like Latter Day Liberals.  Sure, fair enough.   But don't forget it was the Liberals who shed their skin first to become Conservative-Lites.

Consider it the price of progress, Tommy.  Sure it's sad the progression has been steadily to the Right where Steve Harper has wanted it long before he even became prime minister.  But that's today's Canada, one big lump of political greyness.   Andrew Coyne calls it "a politics drained of any remaining differences between the parties, or indeed ideas of any kind."

Previously, party leaders were obliged to pretend to believe in policies before they could abandon them: now that first stage has been eliminated, freeing them to focus on slandering each other’s character and passing out baby pictures of themselves.

So, it's not you, Tommy Douglas, it's the times and, sure, it's that new Tom, the ex-Liberal from Quebec who's now an Ottawa liberal running your old party.  Some wise scribe coined a term for this sort of thing recently.  He called it the "endarkenment."