It’s risky business, being a politician on the left these days.

They champion new-fangled progressive issues and this makes them the darlings of social justice warriors and the liberal media.

But they do so at the risk of alienating the non-elite, blue collar folks within their ranks for whom these increasingly fringe concerns just don’t resonate.

The political fallout from the Omar Khadr payout has largely been portrayed as a Liberal government vs. Conservative opposition issue – with Conservative leader Andrew Scheer taking a stand against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The NDP has managed to stay largely off the radar, despite being in the midst of a leadership race. Lucky for them.

Lucky because this has become a wedge issue that isn’t as easy for them as you might at first suspect.

It perfectly exemplifies the big split that exists among the rank-and-file of Canada’s left-wing party: the champagne socialists vs. the blue collar types.

The Angus Reid Institute poll on the matter showed 71% of Canadians opposed the government’s settlement deal with Khadr and would have preferred they tough it out and fight it in court.

When broken down by voter intention, the Conservative opposition was highest at 91%.

However 64% of NDP voters also rejected the deal, several points higher than the Liberal opposition, at 61%.

That’s a red flag to the NDP caucus and party grandees that this is one of those common sense issues where they risk upsetting a huge swath of their support if they play it wrong.

But it looks like they already know this.

Because for all of the strongly worded opinions we’ve heard and read from people across the spectrum, the NDP has been surprisingly quiet on it.

Evan Solomon writing in Maclean’s summarizes the political reactions as: “There are the ‘Never Pay’ Conservatives, the ‘Had to Pay’ Liberals and the ‘Must Pay’ NDP.”

As an ardent Hill watcher, Solomon is no doubt right that this is the position they’re articulating in Ottawa.

But they didn’t exactly blast it over the megaphones to make all Canadians crystal clear on where they stand, as the Conservatives did.

The party website features no releases on the matter, even though a scroll through recent ones is a reminder they’re not shy about speaking up on issues of the day.

On social media, where the Khadr debate has been high octane, even by online standards, all four of the leadership candidates have curiously been near silent.

Only two of them -- Guy Caron and Jagmeet Singh – posted about the issue. Just once, on Twitter.

And they managed to do it in a way that voiced their disapproval of Khadr’s prolonged legal ordeal, without commenting on the steep, $10.5 million pay-out.

Similarly, that was the thrust of NDP justice critic Alistair Macgregor’s position: former Liberal and Conservative governments are to blame for getting us into this position in the first place.

The focus was on the charter rights angle. There was little talk of the cash payment to Khadr, nor of rationalizing or downplaying his jihadist past, as some voices have done.

Smart move. Good luck arguing with factory workers that this is a virtuous use of their tax dollars.

As savvy politics goes, the party and leadership candidates were wise to not jump in with both feet into this conversation.

But it’s quite the contrast: Leftist SJWs online passionately embracing the payout while almost two-thirds of social democrat voters polled reject it.

What a split to reconcile.