In every campaign the party soothsayers and panjandrums dig into the minutiae riding by riding to develop their campaign plans and stratagems. However, past electoral history is not always an infallible guide as we saw most dramatically in the 1993 federal election and 1987 provincial election in Ontario.
Sometimes there are issues and emotions below the surface that blow up from out of nowhere and take campaigns in directions no one would or could have predicted. When I consider the frustration and passion, not to mention the anger with which this campaign has kicked off, I wonder if this will be one of those times.
As they hit the road however, the Conservative party has to be seen as having the best chance to form another government, perhaps even a majority. For anything else to happen, the vote of one of the parties has to collapse. The prospects for Mr. Ignatieff are daunting to say the least. Even for the Liberals to be knocking on the door of a minority, they need to gain 40 seats.
Perhaps the key question in this election is whether Mr. Ignatieff has what it takes to gain momentum. If not, and the Liberal party goes in the other direction, and in particular if it bleeds support in its final readout of Toronto, it may be headed for the oblivion meted out by history to the Liberal party throughout Europe. Come back Gladstone, your party needs you.
On Question Period this Sunday, we talked to the men who run the three mainstream national campaigns without getting a clear sense of where their fates may be headed. They and all the candidates are bogged down in a sterile seminar about coalition governments.
Come on, gentlemen, let's start addressing the things that matter to voters and which sparked this whole business. Is the Conservative government so secretive, some of its figures, perhaps even the PM himself, so unethical that it does not deserve to be re-elected by Canadians? Or, are the opposition leaders no more than malevolent usurpers, risking the nation's economic best interests in their hunger for power?
That is what has to be decided.
