OK, what I said was a slight exxagerration...but does no one find it suspicious that virtually everything the man did as leader, EVERY single step, had the effect of driving NDP support down in the polls? Or that he just happened to crash in the economic debate at the precise moment when doing so would do the NDP the most possible electoral damage in 2015?
No, I don't find it suspicious in the least. I think Mulcair was every bit as left wing as Jack Layton and the party bureaucracy which Layton installed, which is to say mushy middle at best. Remember the interview Layton did with Mansbridge during the 2011 campaign? I can't seem to find a link just now, but I have posted it in another thread a few years ago. In it, Layton was challenged by Mansbridge to name the big differences between his program and that of the Liberals under Ignatieff. He admitted that there were no significant differences, but insisted that the NDP would keep the same promises that the Liberals would break. Mulcair just carried on that tradition.
I wasn't addressing the question of where Mulcair was on the ideological spectrum there. Or Layton's.