Canadian federal election - October 19, 2015 (Official Campaign Thread)

[Marokai Backbeat]

I think this Bloc ad speaks for itself.

Oh wow. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Does it really take all that much effort to dig this stuff up? Give some 17 year old a Best Buy gift card and tell him to look at ____'s Twitter and Facebook pages for an afternoon. That's about all it'd take to find half this stuff.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Mulcair looks all well and good on paper but in practice has thusfar ran a boring as f**k campaign.

Also Quebec responds well to racism, evidently.

[Marokai Backbeat]

So this is shaping up to be a repeat of the last Ontario election i.e. the Liberals cleverly convincing enough people that they are the real progressive/leftie choice?

With the NDP running a mediocre campaign (and a sympathetic Liberal media) that allowed them to do so, yes.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The NDP can blame nobody but themselves on this. Triangulation is a dumb strategy and it seems left-wing parties will only learn it the hard way.

The way Mulcair campaigned boggles the mind. Bland, boring, forgettable. Basically made no attempt to control the narrative once the campaign kicked off properly. Like Holmes said, the NDP were handed a platter of issues that were theirs to lose, with a popular and trusted leader at the top, as well as an incumbent government most people are tired of, and they inexplicably pissed it all away. If recent provincial elections have taught anybody anything it's that Canadian Liberals are horror movie villains that never die.

[Marokai Backbeat]

For the NDP those EKOS numbers are dreadful. Not that it needed to be said, but still...

[Marokai Backbeat]

It's entirely possible (and if they end up sub-20, probable) that Mulcair will step down of his own volition just out of sheer embarrassment, but I think ditching him as a leader would be very shortsighted, particularly if there's a minority government. They ran a bad campaign, but it's not because Mulcair was disliked or bad at politics. Starting fresh with a new leader would be a big mistake, and could result in the damage done to their Quebec support being irreparable. In the event of a minority government, taking the gut-punch, sitting tight, and shoring up left-wing support with a leader everyone already knows while waiting for the government to trip up is their best bet.