Scape Scape:
Interesting take, JT is going down because Singh is far too effective. As a result JT will go all out to DESTROY the NDP while impaling his own party at the polls. Sure he will lose, but the NDP will be GONE and the Liberals can always take back office. It assumes that the NDP will fold like a cheap suit without a platform that has been largely coopted by JT and the NDP is largely not trusted by enough to run for government.
A few points:
-The federal NDP's transition from blue collar workers to urban socialist bureaucrats and academics happened well before Jagmeet Singh became leader. I've seen NDP commentators criticizing the federal party for doing that under Singh's predecessors. It's also been a broader issue on the North American left for a while now, with debates among American Democrats about whether they abandoned the "white working class" and if it's a bad thing, and the British "New Labour" being accused of betraying its working class roots (view the opposition between supporters of Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn);
-I'm not convinced that disagreements over means-tested social programs are what prompted white blue-collar types to abandon the NDP. The NDP's struggled federally before, notably under Alexa McDonough in 1993. The bigger issue has been the 'culture wars' where various minority racial and gender groups have been pushing for what they consider fairer treatment and an end to discrimination. Meanwhile, a lot of white people consider what the minority activists are calling for as BS or as actively harmful, which is why so many of them have shifted right, especially when even conservatives like Pierre Poilievre and Donald Trump are abandoning the neoliberal 'free trade' principles that used to be so dear to them. They're talking more about 'pocketbook' issues that lead a lot of trade union-types to support them, which is one of the big reasons Poilievre is so popular right now;
-I find the Bagel's "poison pill" argument unconvincing. Trudeau's own faltering performance is what got him reduced to a minority in the first place, and the NDP was the only party with enough votes in the House of Commons he could reliably count on to back him. Poilievre would be salivating for a chance to take him down, and the optics of relying heavily on the Bloc Quebecois (not to mention whether the Bloc are even reliable!) would be terrible. And Trudeau is relying on the classic Liberal playbook when he plagiarizes good ideas from the opposition-his Dad did it when the NDP backed his 1972-74 minority, and Preston Manning and the Reform Party set the table for Jean Chretien's spending cuts in the 1990s;
-People were writing the Liberal Party's obituary 12 years ago when Stephen Harper won his majority government and the Liberals were reduced to third place. And quite frankly, I don't think Trudeau can think that far ahead, not when he's put his foot in it strategically on other issues. Singh has not been a particularly effective leader, not with the number of NDP pundits and bloggers I've seen criticizing him, and Trudeau's been more dependent on him with a minority government than the other way around.
-That said, I do agree with the Bagel's analysis of what Poilievre might actually cut if he becomes Prime Minister. He'll keep up the social programs, but he'll nix the economic 'corporate welfare' programs like the infrastructure bank (Paul Wells has written about how poorly designed some of these programs are) and consultants.