• Don’t feel like you’re alone in not seeing this historic change coming – nobody saw this historic change coming. All of the professional pundits, pollsters and politicos – an alliteration, as well as the people who get paid to be smart about politics – didn’t see it coming, either. I challenge you to find one one person, one, who said this sometime in the past year: “The Liberal Party will drop to a distant third place. The NDP will surge and have a shot at defeating Stephen Harper on election night.” You won’t find anyone who said that, out loud. Not even Jack Layton believed it.
• Figuring out what the Libs and Cons did wrong is easy. And, one thing I will predict – entire forests will be felled, soon enough, to print up articles, essays and books which will analyze the reasons why the Reformatories (as even conservatives agree) and the Grits (in particular) did badly. But the Dippers? Wacko Jacko? That’s a lot harder to understand. Here are a few of my suggested ingredients in the Orange Crush.
• Jack Layton is likeable (and has few calories). He’s Taliban Jack, he’s Wacko Jacko, he’s all those things right-wing media call him – but he’s also the most likeable of all the federal leaders. Polls have been showing that for years, now they’re showing it at precisely the best possible moment for him. If the campaign has devolved into a great big HOAG contest – that is, “who is the one who is a Hell Of A Guy” – Layton wins, hands down. Iggy is quite likeable in person, in my opinion, but loses in a televised HOAG showdown with Jack. Harper’s people, meanwhile, had decided likeability didn’t matter – a decision they will come to regret, profoundly. Sixty-five per cent of the country dislike Stephen Harper. They needed to fix that, and they didn’t. Too late now!
• His party’s policies are irrelevant (and contain ingredients that are very bad for you). They have some not-bad policies – and they have some that are plain nutty (like reopening the Constitution, or multiple billions in promises that Jacko doesn’t know how to pay for). But, in the main, his party’s policies don’t matter. Canadians have decided they want to vote for someone they like, not for someone with the best policies. Jack, they like. Harper, especially, they don’t. The policy analysis of many Canadians: Harper and Ignatieff are too right-wing. I’m voting for the only guy who isn’t right wing.
• His party’s team is irrelevant (and have no nutritional value whatsoever). Name five of their candidates – ones who don’t currently hold a seat. Name two or three. Can’t, can you? Me, neither. The Dippers aren’t popular because of their team – because they don’t really have a team (and that’s why their strength in places like Quebec may end up being largely illusory – they literally have no one on the ground to GOTV). It’s a big problem for them on E-day. Cue the screams of righteous indignation about rep by pop on Tuesday morning.
• But what do YOU think? Why did the Orange Crush happen? Comments are open – and welcome.

AKIN-RELATED UPDATE: Take it away, Sun News colleague David Akin:

Warren: “nobody saw this historic change coming. All of the professional pundits, pollsters and politicos – an alliteration, as well as the people who get paid to be smart about politics – didn’t see it coming, either.”

Er, ahem, I know I write a lot of drivel but, as my predictions are rarely write, I’m going to poke my head up on this:

Here’s me on March 21, writing five days before writ drop:

“My hunch is that if they can boost their popular vote on e-day to anything above 20 per cent, they stand a very real chance of becoming the official opposition in a scenario where the Tories win a majority and the Liberal vote collapses.”

Mind you, in that blog post, I thought Layton would back the budget!

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In the mood to hear these guys, tonight.  ‘Spanish Moss.’

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Having taken up residence there less than a year ago, you will forgive me for finding stuff like this a little hard to read.

Me, not exactly as pictured.

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