I rather think this is the first time I've mentioned the election at all during the entire course of the eight-week campaign. I guess I simply, at the outset, thought the entire thing was a tedious waste of time best summed up by the above title - most people are annoyed at the Liberals, but not enough to vote for the Conservatives, so we were likely to get yet another Liberal minority just like last time, and maybe with enough NDP seats for those two parties to form an actually stable coalition government.

It was really the only plausible outcome at the time, because the Conservatives didn't have enough support to form a majority government, and no effective coalition partners in a minority.

I failed to count on the Liberals apparently purging everybody who knew how to run a campaign from their backrooms when Paul Martin took power. I probably should have, though - the rivalry between the two titans of the 1990s Liberal party was so intense that I still someday expect to hear about somebody sticking an ice pick in Jean Chretien's back.

In any case, I thought that this was the Liberals' election to lose...and they then proceeded to, apparently, lose it in such spectacular fashion that a Conservative majoritry government is not entirely out of the question. The government simply looks...tired, out of ideas. Demonizing Stephen Harper worked so well last time, but not as the sole electoral strategy. The day I saw the CBC headline "Martin attacks Layton for not attacking Harper", I had to sigh, shrug, and just say it was over. I don't aee the Liberals being completely obliterated like the PCs were in 1993, but at this point I wouldn't be at all surprised if it happened.

Especially when Harper's people have had a year and a half to lick their wounds, and have succeeded admirably in getting their Western candidates to keep their damned mouths shut. I don't have enough faith not to worry about Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the turn the country might take under his direction, but I have to admit that he's actually managed to look, superficially, like he could run the country - and Martin hasn't, which is why he's losing so dramatically. Trying to scare the public away from someone who is actually managing to look less scary is not a viable leadership tactic.

I am not saying here that I support the Conservatives at all - I disagree with them on too many levels, as anyone reading here long enough should know. All I can say is that they've actually managed to present a platform that's visibly different from the Liberals', which is the _point_ of an election campaign. Make yourself look good, instead of just making your opponents look bad...and doing a bad job at it, so that it just backfires on you. Show us what you'll do differently. The Liberals are the only national party that appear to have forgotten that, and it appears their punishment will be removal from power. I would welcome it if the apparent alternative wasn't so much worse from my PoV.

(For the record, I continue to vote NDP in Alberta, which is, for my American readers, about as effective as voting Democrat in Texas. My nonexistent kingdom for worthwhile electoral reform.)

-D.