Forelorn Hope In Next Year Country

Can NDP end MP drought in Sask.?

"The federal NDP is wrapping up its summer caucus retreat in Saskatoon today.

Official Opposition leader Tom Mulcair told Saskatoon Morning his party is focusing on winning seats in Saskatchewan in the 2015 federal election.

Even though Saskatchewan is the birthplace of the CCF/NDP, the party has not won a seat federally since 2000.

With new electoral boundary maps that have been redrawn to include urban ridings, Mulcair and the NDP believe they have a better chance of making inroads in the province."

Mulcair runs into a Wall in Sask

"Of course, federal politicians are supposed to be optimistic when they make their occasional forays into the hinterlands where they enjoy little or no support.

So one certainly expected federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair to accentuate the positive during his "return to Saskatchewan roots" summer retreat, where he has waxed on about how much this province means to his party.

And with the demise under boundary reorganization of what Mulcair described as Saskatchewan's "rurban" seats, it's quite possible that his party can win a seat or two or three in the 2015 vote. Heaven knows that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau hasn't exactly inspired the kind of confidence in this province that will deliver the Grits much more than Ralph Goodale's perennial Wascana seat.

But it's beyond optimism for the NDP to win five Saskatchewan seats, as the Ottawa pundits seem to be thinking, or a majority of the province's 14 ridings as Mulcair boldly predicted Monday. Making such a prediction is to venture into the realm of fantasy and New Democratic folklore that thinks of Saskatchewan as an NDP province or that it really has ever been fertile territory for the federal party. As cabinet minister Gerry Ritz put it Monday, "Mr. Mulcair is probably making use of some of Justin Trudeau's decriminalized marijuana." The good news for the NDP is that the new federal boundaries offer a chance to show that Saskatchewan isn't necessarily homogeneously Conservative. The NDP's best chance is the new Regina Lewvan seat, which is similar to the former Regina West seat that Les Benjamin held for years. Regina lawyer Noah Evanchuk, a previous candidate in Palliser, is likely to win the party's nomination and the NDP will put substantial resources into the riding.

The party also has a good chance in Saskatoon West, although the persistence of former candidate Nettie Wiebe in seeking the nomination may not be as helpful as one thinks, given that she may be well past her best-before date as a political commodity. Rumour has it the party aggressively pursued two-time provincial NDP leadership candidate Ryan Meili, but that Meili's always limited interest in politics waned with Wiebe's expression of interest in the nomination."

Hope not. One Liberal is bad enough.

But if they do, it will be in our cities. Funny how the CCF/NDP began as an agrarian movement, but is now almost exclusively a city phenomenon. Hope the good folks of Regina and Saskatoon shut them out and shut them up. However, look for the areas around the universities, and the North, to go NDP. Those are the only places left were the Dippers have any stalwarts. Common sense prevails every where else.