Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Harper: "I'm not the most emotionally expressive guy"

With one week to go before the election, Steve Harper finally released his platform for re-election; which amounts to a significant amount of nothing. The fact he did so at a ballroom filled with the business elite rather than a crowd of Joe and Jane Sixpacks is itself telling. After it was over, the press pool which until now has been pro-Harper all the way finally showed signs of turning on him. CTV's Craig Oliver challenged him on being insensitive to ordinary Canadians.

Harper actually replied by saying the down market actually provides opportunities for bargain and value hunters -- pretty useless for people who don't have money to invest in the first place. Then he said what must be the understatement of the campaign.


"I'm the first to admit I'm not the most emotionally expressive guy," Harper said. "There's a lot of panic, but the government can't panic. Canadians must be assured that the government knows where it is going and that is obviously what we are trying to communicate them in this election."

Is that the best Steve can do? How about a plan for action, rather than just say, "Don't panic." And what on earth was he implying when he mentioned Noah started building his boat when it wasn't raining? The fundamentals were a lot stronger before he came to power and he did some tinkering that turned a safe harbour into a mined one.

Today, Nanos has Harper's lead down to just three points. Today's underwhelming and very late platform launch may just cut that even more. What's more it is now entirely possible for either Harper or Dion to win the popular vote but lose the election on seat count, something that hasn't happened since 1979 when Trudeau bested Clark by over 700,000 votes but still won 21 fewer districts than Joe Who. Even this past weekend, I would have discounted the chances of that all together. Maybe not that big a margin, but it could be two or three seats one way or another.

UPDATE 9:54 PM, 0154 GMT Wednesday: Fixed bad link. Also, any one wonder if the US election could affect how we vote a week today?

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