The real campaign being waged in a leadership race happens a long way away from the television debates and the convention floor. It's waged in community centres in Surrey B.C. and Longeuil, bars in Halifax and Biggar, and on the phone every day. The ground game is political trench warfare.

There is the possibility that a Mulcair-led NDP could open up space for the Liberals as the principled centre-left alternative. With Conservatives who see the federal government's role as more about building prisons and fighter jets than providing social programs, and an NDP beholden to separatist forces in Quebec, there is a worrying lack of national vision in Canadian politics.