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Premier Rachel Notley won the support of 97.8 per cent of her party members on the weekend — in Calgary, of all places.

Notley is respected, admired, even adored in her party. Part of this is circumstance. Any New Democrat who wins in Alberta is bound to be popular with a party that wandered in the wilds for half a century.

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But the other part, that’s all her. Notley can be fierce and funny in the same sentence. She lacks the pomposity so common to politicians. When the occasion demands, she can deliver a better motivational speech than any Progressive Conservative premier, including Peter Lougheed.

Notley’s keynote address stirred New Democrats deeply. They went nuts, jumping to their feet dozens of times for long applause. The speech was unusually long but the delegates seemed to want more.

Conservatives will sneer that the New Democrats are all just bat-crazy, nothing more than a brief bad dream for Alberta.

But visceral hatred of the NDP blinds them to the reality that they’re up against a seriously gifted leader. No opposition party has a chief who’s anywhere close. No party is likely to find anyone better.

In NDP terms, Notley is already succeeding powerfully. In little more than a year she has changed Alberta both economically and socially. It’s her fervent goal to stamp these realities on the Alberta psyche over the next few years.