The Home Stretch

We are now into the final days of the campaign and it looks like we will be getting another minority government. Based on the recent polls, it is more likely to be a Conservative than Liberal, although a Liberal is still possible, and certainly the possibility of a Tory majority is definitely gone. I will make my predictions once the final set of polls come in on Monday. This week has been a rough week on the market and no doubt this is hurting the Tories. While it is certainly not their fault the market is faltering as this is a global problem, their inability to deal with the issue is a serious problem. The reality is Harper has been asleep at the wheel and only woken up to the issue once it become obvious to everyone we were heading for a recession. The Liberal campaign seems to be improving, although it may be a little too late. Nonetheless, there is no risk of the Liberals doing worse than official opposition. All the talk of the Liberals falling behind the NDP is clearly just talk and won't happen. The other issue was Dion's ATV interview that he flubbed. CTV certainly should have not aired it, but the reality is any politician should never assume something won't be aired even if the media say they won't. The question was poorly worded, although I think Dion would have been better to simply repeat what he thought Steve Murphy was trying to say and then give the answer to the question to what he repeated. Even if not exactly what Murphy was asking, at least he could have gotten his ideas out on the economy. And in the case of Harper, he should have just said nothing on this rather than attacking Dion. When your opponent is self-destructing, you stand aside. But Harper did intervene and the damage this will cause to him will hopefully offset any damage it caused to Dion. For things complaining about Dion's poor English, his English is not that bad. I have met him and spoken to him in person. I have also travelled to Quebec and extensively in Europe and when travelling abroad, I had to repeat myself often, speak slowly, and use simple vocabulary. When talking to Dion, I spoke at regular conversation speed, never had to repeat myself, and used my normal vocabulary and he understood just fine. In fact his English was better than many of those in the tourist industries when travelling abroad. The final issue is the Afghanistan cost over-runs. While it is true the Liberals started the conflict and this includes the time both when the Liberals and Tories were in power, I think this can still be an issue as the Liberals had a large contigency in the budget so even with cost overruns like this (18 billion/10 =1.8 billion a year) they would still have a balanced budget, whereas with almost no surplus left under the Tories, cost overruns in Afghanistan could cause a deficit.

Anyways I am going to Kitchener for the long weekend and will make my last election post Monday night, where I will give my seat projections.