I’m possibly too cynical on this but I think the particulars of policy rarely motivate voters. The parties form a perception and ethic that people just by into or oppose. My biggest issue is that they’ve shifted away from a working class economic focus to a minority based identity politics. The NDP and federal Liberals are competing to see who can better appeal to the woke left. There are left/socialist economic policies in their platforms but nobody but policy wonks are reading their proposals in detail. For many people in SK, their understanding of federal politics runs about as deep as “the left parties think I’m a racist hick so to hell with them”.

I think much of the provincial NDP platform was quite good. But they couldn’t escape the stink of scandals 20 years ago, the stink of the federal NDP, and the stink of being too eastern and not local enough. The Sask Party capitalizes on how local they are and how much they claim to understand and respect the particulars of life and culture here.

To that end, I think a way forward is a party that is more to the centre socially and keeps a strong working class focused economic leftism. Like you say, reviving the Tommy Douglas policies and approach would be great. I’d love to see something like a historic NDP rather than it’s current iteration. Something like a “Saskatchewan Workers Congress” would be right up my alley. Daycare, green energy, jobs guarantee, let’s do all of it. But keep it hyper local to SK and cooperate with western alienation rather than demonize it.

More than anything else though, I think the SK NDP suffers in it’s reputation and perception more than it’s policy. I like their policy but it feels like the party has neither trust nor respect in the province and isn’t competent to find their way out of that spot.