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Be that as it may, the Red-baiting that has characterized the last-ditch effort by the PCs to salvage their campaign has been singularly unpersuasive. Hauling out a candidate’s controversial past views is less potent in an era in which voters understand power changes everything. Rae himself, in his 1996 memoir, From Protest To Power, acknowledges as much.

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Second, should Notley be confronted with a diehard such as Kormos, who refuses to bend to pragmatism, nothing prevents his or her being cast into the outer darkness, as Kormos was.

Moreover, Notley would have an advantage that Rae didn’t, which is the stark clarity of the ballot question.

Disenchantment with Prentice and the PCs has emerged from across the spectrum and is as non-ideological as such a wave can be.

Notley’s campaign caught fire because of her impressive performance in the TV debate, but also because she sounds reasonable. Again in an interview Saturday morning with CBC’s Evan Solomon, she did not present, in any way, as an ideologue.

Also, her party’s platform is just vague enough in many places to give her the flexibility to set some of its woolier promises aside, as she will have to do if she becomes premier, particularly in a minority context.

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This brings us to the potential impact of a “socialist” Alberta federally. Here again, the speculation already seems overheated.

Precisely because the NDP surge has been so non-ideological, is tied to Notley’s personal likeability and is a response to a particular set of circumstances in Alberta politics, there is little reason to assume it can translate into anything similar federally. There is currently just one federal NDP seat, held by Edmonton MP Linda Duncan. Her leader, Thomas Mulcair, will need to bring his own game.