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Mulcairites would call that process professionalization, of course, but the Star’s Tim Harperreminds us it was all supposed to be worth it: “No more moral victories, no more conscience of Parliament. He was chosen to helm the party in 2012 because he was supposed to win.” If he is to stay on, various NDP sources tell Harper, he will have to first of all have to acknowledge his mistakes.

In fact he has already done so to La Presse’s Vincent Marissal: he thinks the party’s economic message was muddled, and had no answer to the Liberals’ surprise promise of deficits; they were out-advertised and out-focus-grouped; and while he would not change his position on the niqab, he says he would “find another way to say it” if he had it to do over again. We think he said it pretty well the first time, really.

Anyway, back to Tim Harper, who has yet more tasks for Mulcair courtesy of unnamed Dippers. He must “show he can work as a team player,” “lose the tendency to double down when cornered,” “prove he can bring progressives back into the … fold and … show he has a plan to become the true progressive option both in the Commons and in the country.” And he must do all these things even though nobody has the stones to go on the record and “there is no organized opposition to (him).”

In Maclean’s,Paul Wellsreminds us of the many very good reasons to give Mulcair a shot at another election, beginning with the party’s “steady and perhaps even inexorable” rise in fortunes: setting aside the 2011 Orange Wave, “the NDP has risen from 19 seats in the 2004 election to 29 in 2006, 37 in 2008, and 44 in the 2015 election last October” —and the Orange Wave wouldn’t have happened had they ditched Jack Layton after three disappointing election results, as many urged them to for reasons not dissimilar to the ones currently dogging Mulcair. He still has everything going for him that he ever did, with the addition, Wells suspects, of some important lessons from the campaign trail. And moreover, the only names people are pitching Wells as replacements, Alexandre Boulerice and Ryan Meili, are neither compelling nor, in fact, campaigning.