• What do voters think? I think polls and focus groups are interesting, but I generally prefer my political gut over my political head.  I regard my six-pack-like gut on days like today, and say: “What are voters thinking, gut?”
• My gut grumbled. “They’re pretty busy, so they don’t have much time to think about politics as much as idiots like you do,” said my gut.  “So their analysis tends to be pretty to-the-point.  Here’s what a lot of them think.”
• Number one: “They’re pissed off there was another election.  It made them grumpy,” said gut.  “They’re taking it out on two guys, mostly, which is Iggy and Steve.  Some of them think Iggy was taking a risk to push for an election, too, when he’d been behind the Cons for a couple years.”
• Number two:“They like Jack, but they don’t like the other two so much,” my gut remarked.  “They saw Iggy and Steve as similar: kind of aloof and stand-offish, and more right wing than them. Steve and Iggy saw it as a zero-sum game, whatever that is.  They tried to shake loose votes from each other. But those votes that shook loose, alright, and they bounced right over to Jack.  People like Jack.”
• Number three:“The country is still pretty progressive,” gut observed.  “Sixty-five per cent of them hate, er, Steve’s guts, too.  Iggy should have been more progressive, they felt. So they went to the only guy they thought was more progressive, which was Jack.”
• Number four: “Attack ads work,” said gut.  “But they work best in a two-way race.  In a three-way race, they don’t work so well, do they?”
• Number five: “Folks are in a firing mood,” concluded my gut. “Today, they want to fire a few politicians.  Tonight, they’re going to get their wish.”

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“Chretien-era Liberal insider and Toronto political consultant Warren Kinsella (whose mockery of then-Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day in the 2000 federal election was partly credited for a Liberal victory) will reportedly return to run the Liberal War Room in the next election.”

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And from Julian Assange’s desk, no less.  B.B., you’ve arrived!  You’re now known world-wide as a duplicitous turncoat!

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…is going to have a thing or two to say about this.

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• It’s the last day! I’m supposed to be up at the cabin with my Mom, my youngest, and two dogs…and I have nothing left to say.  Sort of.
• Here’s my Sun column from today, in which I attempt to explain what happened.  Let me know what you think – and have a great day, whether a campaigner or not.  Oh – and don’t forget to vote!

 

They back Jack.

Jack’s got the knack.  The others? They yak, but they lack.

There you go: some really (really) bad poetry, designed to neatly sum up Election 2011.  There’ll be lots of much-smarter political analysis, this weekend, but I’m sticking to my pithy rhyming couplets.

Whether he captures the keys to 24 Sussex or not, the NDP’s Jack Layton is the winner of this campaign, hands down.  Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff have lost. Why, you ask?

There are lots of reasons: Harper ran a lousy, uninspiring campaign.  Ignatieff pushed for an election when he should have pulled.  Both men are seen as conservative and conservative-lite, and the country is apparently fed up with policies that are nasty, brutish and short-sighted.

But the main reason why Jack Layton will make history tomorrow night?  The best explanation for why he is going to be leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition – or maybe even Her Prime Minister?

Because Jack is the most likeable leader, that’s why. He’s a HOAG.

I’ve written about my “Hell Of A Guy” theory in these pages before. As the political cliché goes, you can picture yourself at a tailgate party with Jack, swigging Buds, telling lies about the ones that got away. Steve-o and Iggy, you just can’t. Standing behind a podium in an early-morning university class, giving you a lousy mark because you spelled “Milton Friedman” wrong in an essay, sure. But HOAGs? Nope.

I’ve worked with Iggy, and can attest to the fact that – in person – he is a thoughtful, easy-going, impressive guy.  But that quality doesn’t come across on TV. On the big flat-screen, the Liberal leader doesn’t emote HOAGism. It’s not fair, it’s not accurate, but it’s a fact.

Harper, meanwhile, has elevated thuggishness to official state policy. He doesn’t try to avoid being mean-spirited: he positively revels in it.  He embraces it. And Harper’s mistake – and his team’s mistake – has been equating being a hard-hearted S.O.B. with “decisiveness.”

It isn’t. Being a hard-hearted S.O.B. isn’t decisive, Team Tory. Mostly, its just evidence that you’re a hard-hearted S.O.B. More precisely, an angry guy who doesn’t like the country, let alone the people who live in it.

Now, I know what you’re going to say before you say it: how in the name of all that is holy can anyone vote for Wacko Jacko?

His policies, you’ll say, are nuttier than squirrel poop.  He wants to reopen the Constitution!  His promises cost $70 billion, and he claims he can balance the budget! He wants to have tea with the Taliban!

All true.  Also true: Canadians haven’t read Jack Layton’s policy manual, and nor do they intend to.  For different reasons, Messrs. Harper and Ignatieff wanted this election to be a referendum on “leadership” – and they got what they wanted.  In their hubris, however, they never imagined Canadians would vote for the third leadership option, nutty policies be damned.

But Layton’s team, you’ll say: they’re not serious!  He’s got candidates vacationing in Vegas – while the campaign is underway! He’s got candidates who have never run a three-house paper route before, let alone a country!  He’s got no organizational strength on the ground!

Also all true.  But ask Toronto’s Rob Ford or Calgary’s Naheed Nenshi, they’ll tell you: Canadians don’t want polished professional politicians, these days.  They like populists.  They like HOAGs.  They like regular folks.

I’m a Jean Chretien Liberal, and a Bill Clinton Democrat.  Both those men were successful because they never forgot that there are a lot more votes on Main Street than on Bay Street (or Wall Street).  They were winners because they never forgot where they came from, or who made them what they are.

And that’s why Canadians back Jack.

And that’s why, for the others, it may be time to pack.

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• I’ve been a cop reporter, a political guy, a media commentator and (am) a voter. I tried to look at this Jack Layton story from all of those perspectives.
• As a cop reporter: I did the cops beat at the Calgary Herald and the Ottawa Citizen. At those papers – at almost any paper, then or now – we’d write about how the police periodically do sweeps at bawdy houses and places like that. If the round-ups involved a lot of johns, we’d write about that. If the operators of the prostitution operation were newsworthy, we’d write about them. And, if there was a famous person amongst the johns, we’d certainly cover it. We’d let the higher-ups, and the eggheads on the editorial boards, agonize about whether a story we filed should get published or not. Our beat was crime, and our job was to write crime stories. We did that. From a cops beat reporter’s perspective, the fact that a man has a shot at becoming Prime Minister, and was found at a place like that, is big news. Any journalist who says that it isn’t, isn’t much of a journalist, or is being dishonest. This is a legitimate cops-beat story – with one caveat: it happened in 1996, which is many years ago. All that renders it “news,” again, is the prominence of the person involved.
• As a political guy: A Sun reporter called me about this story yesterday afternoon. Before he could even describe what it was about – he said it involved “a major political figure and the police” – I told him I already knew what it was about. In Toronto, and amongst many political people, this story has been pretty well-known for years. Someone came to me about it two years ago. I looked at what they had, thought about it for about sixty seconds, and then urged this person to forget all about it. I certainly planned to. If the story ever saw the light of day, I told this person, it would hurt the source more than it would hurt the target. I still think that. If people within a political party were ultimately behind this – and there are four political parties which would have a direct interest in getting this story out – they’d better hope to God they don’t get found out before Monday night. Right now, there isn’t a voter in Canada who doesn’t think a political party was wrapped up in this somehow. Does that hurt Jack Layton? Not with most voters. Ask that Hugh Grant actor guy, he knows.
• As a media commentator: I’ve told people at the Sun I felt they were being used by someone with an obvious agenda, and to caution them about the story. They had weighed all of those negatives by the time they spoke to me, obviously, and they went with the story anyway. That’s their decision, and I think it’s maybe explainable by the fact that political people use media people all the time, and vice-versa. But two problems still remain, from my perspective. One, I think the Sun was indeed used by a political party during a hotly-contested election campaign, and – arguably as unhelpful – they’ve given their competitors an opportunity to also cover the story, while simultaneously slamming the Sun for going with the story. I wouldn’t have given the competition the opportunity to do something hypocritical like that. I would have let one of them go first. Two, the bigger scandal, here, remains unaddressed: at the time he was detained, Jack Layton was a city councillor on the City of Toronto’s budget committee, which has power over the police budget. The cops knew who he was, they knew the power he wielded over them. So what did they do? They walked him to the back door, and let him pedal away. Were the other men found at that place given that kind of treatment? If not, what happened here is a bona fide scandal, one that Toronto taxpayers need have probed, the passage of time notwithstanding.
• As a voter: On the one hand, I dislike prostitution, and I particularly dislike the media’s dishonesty about it – they condemn it, and then make money out of advertising that promotes trafficking in human beings (like the Toronto Star does, in its eye weekly paper). On the other hand, I don’t particularly dislike Jack Layton (he won me over, a few years back, when he called me to ask for a copy of one of my books – the one about punk rock, not one of the ones I’ve written about politics). Does this story make me, as voter, more or less likely to vote for him? Well, I was never planning on voting for him anyway. But it reminds me that he showed appalling judgment, sixteen years ago, and that he needs to express regret for that, instead of offering up the standard-issue political bullshit. In this election campaign, he’s not alone in offering up bullshit, I guess.

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I was on Sun News tonight. My take: if a political party was ultimately behind this story – and it’s highly unlikely a political party wasn’t – they’ll be really, really sorry if they get found out.

Voters aren’t stupid. Things like this don’t happen by accident.

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This aired the other night, I believe, and I didn’t see it until now.  It’s got people in it a lot smarter than me, and Catherine did a great job of pulling it all together.

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Forget about all this politics stuff.  If you’re a Grit or a Tory, come to drink your troubles away!  If you’re a Dipper, come revel in our misery!

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