Around this time 10 years ago, Barack Obama was starting to pull decisively ahead of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries, as he managed to convince a growing number of supporters that it was his message of optimism and change that the party and country needed — not the more experienced leadership of either Clinton or Republican John McCain.

Barack Obama won that argument — and the following two elections — and if this morning’s speech from leader Andrea Horwath is any indication, Ontario’s New Democrats are going to give the same sales pitch a try. After the party’s 2014 defeat, she was criticized for running too enthusiastically to the centre and abandoning traditional NDP social justice concerns. In her address today, she outlined “campaign priorities” that went straight to her party’s heart: strengthening public services, boosting funding for affordable housing and transit, building a stronger middle class.

At least as interesting, however, was Horwath’s tone as she positioned the NDP as the optimistic alternative to, on the one hand, a tired Liberal government that can’t be trusted, and on the other, a Progressive Conservative party that is currently in leadership chaos.

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“It’s safe to say that people are feeling pretty cynical about politics in Ontario right now,” Horwath told a room of supporters at the Daniels Spectrum in downtown Toronto on Friday. “But in a province with so much potential, in a province that offers so much opportunity, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

“In this campaign, I’m going to work to replace the cynicism people are feeling today with hope,” Horwath added, as NDP activists waved placards with the party’s 2018 slogan, “Change for the Better.”

The brighter tone is a marked contrast from 2014, when even party stalwarts in Toronto criticized Horwath and her close advisors for running a campaign “to the right of the Liberals,” and when Horwath spent more of the campaign attacking the Liberals than she did making a case for her own party.

Speaking with reporters after her speech on Friday, Horwath said she’s not concerned that the Progressive Conservative leadership race is going to prevent her party’s message from being heard.

“People paying attention to that doesn’t mean they like what they see. Let’s face it: you get drawn to a train wreck, but it doesn’t mean you want to be in it,” she said.

The New Democrats continue to face substantial challenges as they prepare for the June 7 election. NDP insiders have bluntly stated that they expect to be outspent by both the Tories and the Liberals in the coming election, thanks to election-financing reforms introduced by the governing party. The NDP has lost the right to accept union donations, and it’ll receive only a small share of the new per-vote subsidy.

In the current polls, the New Democrats are arguably in a stronger position than the Liberals: Horwath is the more popular party leader, and fewer people have entirely sworn off the NDP at this point in the campaign. But the Liberals (and in particular, Premier Kathleen Wynne) remain tenacious campaigners who have the enormous advantage of being able to present a budget sometime this spring — one that will undoubtedly be packed with crowd-pleasing promises, and further reinforce Wynne’s message that she’s a leader who’s dragged her party to the political left.

Horwath alluded in her speech to the coming Liberal pledges, calling them “last-ditch, desperate promises,” but, like the Liberals, the New Democrats haven’t released a campaign platform yet. (Of the major parties, only the Progressive Conservatives have released a platform to date, and the leadership contenders have proceeded to punch it full of billion-dollar holes.) Horwath also reiterated promises she’s already made, including commitments to increase affordable housing and transit spending.

Horwath’s speech did include a focus on Indigenous issues. It opened with a commitment to “undo the harm and neglect caused by colonialism” and to support “justice for murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.” She pledged that a New Democrat government would make the federal government pay to solve the persistent issue of unsafe drinking water on the province’s reserves, arguably a dubious legal tactic (but just as arguably a morally imperative one).

Horwath said that the party’s full platform is still being finalized, but that it will be released before the election formally begins (expected on May 9). It will, she stressed, be something her party can be proud of.

However, she disputed the suggestion that her campaign priorities signalled a return to the party’s traditional position on the left of the political spectrum.

“I think everyday people don’t think in terms of left and right,” she said. “Everyday people think in terms of what’s happening in life right now — what’s happening to me and my family, and how can it get better.”