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In retrospect, Justin Trudeau’s 2015 victory was less about Hope and Hard Work, the Liberal Party’s unofficial and mildly nauseating campaign slogan. In fact, it was more like smarm and good luck.

Trudeau and the Liberals secured a leftish, immigration-friendly and self-described feminist government barely a year before Donald Trump provided right wing populist movements the world over a playbook on how to win by railing against lefties, immigrants and feminists. The campaign of his opponent Stephen Harper was weighted with the fatigue inevitably associated with long-serving governments.

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On the left, the NDP’s decision to forgo deficit spending robbed the party of the chance to make huge, progressive spending promises during the campaign. Trudeau made them instead, with optimism and freakish cheer — and won the election as a result.

Trudeau has since benefited from leadership travails within the NDP and the relative ineptitude of Andrew Scheer, who has yet to meet a populist idea he won’t cede to the wayward right of Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada.