Words are inadequate

One of the key statements I keep seeing from NDP supporters on the message boards that I've followed the election on is that for years they've asked the Liberal party for the types of voting reform that would have prevented the CPC from taking control of the country with a minority of the popular vote but were refused time and time again.

Maybe in five years, the Liberal Party and the NDP will unite with a platform of voting reform. I can't see either of them really becoming _the_ single liberal party in opposition to the CPC in the next decade - the NDP is too leftist (and consistently so) to get a majority (not to mention the fact that French Canadian politics are likely to increasingly affect the party's platform in ways that won't appeal to central and west coast moderates) and the Liberal Party demonstrated that a platform of "we're not Harper" wasn't enough to hold the votes. Perhaps I'm hearing disproportionately from NDP supporters, but many of the statements I've heard is that there wasn't enough difference when it came to governance between the Liberals and the CPC for them to be willing to vote for either.

At the very least, maybe they'll cooperate enough in some ridings where a single left wing candidate might hope to overcome a right wing but not two. I still think the great wasted opportunity of the 2000 election was that Nader didn't extract some very public and hard to go back on concessions from Gore in exchange for endorsing him. Maybe some quid pro quo endorsements and policy plank compromises will be possible between the NDP and the Liberals.