• You can always tell when things are tightening up in a campaign: stuff that party war rooms/partisans had been holding back starts to seep out, like primordial ooze. With the first debate being held today, too, partisans have more reason to get out material that throws the other side off their message for the day.  It’s an important day, after all.
• Thus, the email I got in the middle of the night, from a real person: “I ended up with a close [redacted] advisor in my house two weeks ago for a night. When I invited her I didn’t know but when she arrived she brought with her a quantity of what she insisted was “freebase” – but was to all intents and purposes crack. She smoked this 6 or 7 times in my presence.”
• I’ve redacted the name of the party leader, and asked the correspondent for the full name of the staffer, which I now have. I’m checking it out. Suffice to say, however, such a revelation in Week One would be damaging, to say the least.
• Another example is found with this photo of Justin Trudeau a topless female. It was sent to me last night.  I was immediately suspicious about the photo, given that it was posted by a fierce critic of Trudeau. In my Twitter feed, photographers weighed in, saying they too thought it might be fake.
• Apparently it wasn’t. It was shot at a Pride parade last year. It’s real, and I have been informed by a senior editor that Sun News Network even showed it on-air last year.  (Sigh.) Is the issue, then, that a young woman was topless? Of course not.  That’s been legal and proper for two decades.  Is the issue, instead, Justin Trudeau’s judgment – that a guy seeking the post of Prime Minister needs to be thinking twice about placing himself in situations that suggests to voters that he’s “not ready?” Of course it is.
• More evidence of that came over the midnight transom was another photo, from this year’s Pride. To me, the photo is completely innocent, and no big deal.  But the objective in leaking this kind of stuff isn’t ever to get into the heads of guys like me – it’s (a) to get into the heads of some older, more-traditional voters who may be leaning Liberal, but aren’t quite sure yet, and (b) to generate some social-then-mainstream media heat, and thereby throw Trudeau off his big day.
• The irony in all of this? Trudeau’s team have probably been hurt already – by themselves.  After weeks of skillfully lowering expectations for the debate, they this morning have reversed whatever they achieved with the boxing room stunt – and now look cocky and arrogant (and juvenile) in the bargain.  As one senior Liberal ministerial staffer told me on Facebook: “Wow!! Not sure I can verbalize more than that…visions of Stock Day on his jet ski are flashing before me!!!”
• Exactly.  Thus, the irony: all of these leaks of pictures with topless women, and tales about crack-smoking staffers, aren’t as damaging to the candidates as what the candidates do to themselves.  Self-inflicted wounds in politics, I always say, are always the ones that cause the most damage.

UPDATE: Aaaand…it worked. Congrats, anonymous war room.

UPDATER: The woman in the photo at World Pride is no supporter of Trudeau, apparently, and seemingly posted it herself to do him some damage. Which should have persuaded Trudeau’s staff never to let the photo happen in the first place.

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Just about. 

  

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• I can always tell when it’s an election, because reporters call guys like me, and pretend that we have insights to offer. Here’s a sampling.
• On so-called negative ads: Former Alberta Wildrose leader Danielle Smith interviewed me on Calgary radio, here, and she did a pretty good job. Me: “They may not like it, but it is the advertising they remember. It is the advertising that motivates them, and it’s the advertising that changes their minds.” So why won’t Trudeau do any? Beats me.
• On what to watch Thursday night: The GOP freak show or the Canadian leaders’ debate? Me: “I’ll be doing what everyone else will be doing — jumping back and forth and then when I get sick of Donald Trump I’ll stick to Canadian programming exclusively.” Others polled here.
• Debate stories: There are a lot of them today, the debate being tomorrow. So, let’s interview folks who lost debates, like in  this one! Interview those who won their respective debates? Don’t be silly. Now, where’s that beer and popcorn?
• Line of the campaign so far: Hands down, it’s this. Since they’re nothing but consistent, watch for Team Trudeau to speak about nothing else for two full days, and to issue an ad featuring  Justin saying: “I’m Justin Trudeau, and the Conservatives want to talk about my pants. But I want to talk about your pants.”
• Premier opponent: It’s a proud Canadian tradition: when all else fails, attack another level of government! Does it work? Of course it does. When your opponent is insufficiently cloaked in sin, go after a Premier/Prime Minister of another stripe who is.  It’s an all-Canadian pastime!

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And it’s apparently working.

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• KCCCC is back by popular demand! Well, okay. No one whatsoever requested that it come back. But I will endeavour to reprise it every single day of Long March 2015 – unless I’m getting married, or whatever.  Those days I may take off.
• Winners and losers! To kick things off, let’s reduce complex political events to bite-sized oversimplifications, shall we? I mean, everyone else does it!
• Gold medal: Stephen Harper. He had a flawless launch, he looked “relaxed, forceful and confident” to a Liberal-leaning member of the punditocracy, and he even took questions from the media.  This guy has done a few of these things, and it shows.  Is greatly assisted, to boot, by HDS (Harper Derangement Syndrome), which has now reached pandemic stage.
• Silver medal: Justin Trudeau. His Day One was a bit of a disaster – instead of being where the media were, Trudeau was in a plane four miles up, eating pretzels.  Being AWOL for the first part of the news cycle on the campaign’s most important day was stupid – and going all the way out for Pride was not particularly strategic, either, given that Hedy Fry has owned Vancouver Centre for two decades, and is in no danger of losing it, ever.  Since that Day One flub, Trudeau has looked like he’s a man fighting for his life, which he probably is.
• No medal: Angry Tom.  No questions from the media? No debate after agreeing to debate? No events for five days straight, and “conspicuous by his absence,” as CTV put it? At first, Dipper partisans defended the no-questions idiocy – and then, when they realized they were in trouble, they lied, and claimed Mulcair had to rush out to attend Flora MacDonald’s funeral (the funeral was hours later, and within walking distance).  At first, they defended the no-events-for-five days thing, too – until it dawned on them that it looked arrogant, and suggested that NDP senior staff were worried about Angry Tom getting Angry, and making a mistake.  So they hurriedly threw a Montreal event on the sked.  All told, it has had a net effect of making the NDP campaign the loser so far.  No bronze, just a DQ. (And don’t bother complaining, Dipper Trolls: plenty of folks agreed with this critical view!)
• Other stuff: I did a CITY-TV hit on the election, here. Also, later today, Danielle Smith is interviewing me for radio!
• Video of the day: Right here.  This is the guy I want to win! (Cartoon reaction to clip and save here.)
• Photo of the day: This one, I presume from Vancouver.  It doesn’t exactly scream Prime Minister, to me, but what do I know?

Caption contest!

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Check out the number of retweets and favourites. I’d say there’s a consensus Team Orange made a big error on Day One of the Long March, wouldn’t you?

Cue the Dipper Trolls who’ll argue that it was strategic and brilliant. 

  

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When historians look back on this one, they’ll observe that the winners knew it was a knife fight – and that the loser thought it was the McGill Debate Club. 

  

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Outing someone to destroy them is still just that. If you have tall tales to tell about a former politician, don’t do it here. Thanks. 

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