Back and forth with New Democrat strategist Brian Topp on newly minted Ontario NDP leader Andrea Howath's prospects.
Me: Less than 48 hours have passed and already the Globe is patting down the dirt on Andrea Horwath's political grave.
I'm wondering if there's something the pundits are missing in their finely wrought political calculations.
Topp: I guess nobody sees themselves being appointed to the Senate by Ms. Horwath.
But seriously...
Provincial politics are remarkably underplayed in this province. This has always struck me since I moved here from a decade or so in Saskatchewan, where provincial politics are a thick seam of the common culture and a bloodsport.
Even the Government has a low profile - never mind the official opposition; never mind the third party.
(This may explain why Ontario federal Ministers seem so reluctant to speak for or to defend their home province, and so often seem to become the "Honourable Members from nowhere.")
So not much about Ms. Horwath has been discussed and analyzed yet, really - all consistent with the overall theme: Who cares about Ontario, it politics or its issues?
Andrea Horwath does.
And she's going to bring something into Queen's Park that might make folks working in office towers nearby uncomfortable.
If the hundreds of thousands of people working in manufacturing and resource industries in this province need to be "adjusted," maybe reckless and poorly-led managements and sleep-walking governments at both levels need some "adjusting," too.
I'm not surprised that message doesn't resonate with its targets. But depending on how things work out economically in the province in the next year or two, her message may be very much on point in the coming election cycle.
In which case, with the Tories AWOL and likely to slip into irrelevant Harris-era neo-connery again, Ms. Horwath may not be the one getting dirt patted down on her after all.