• It’s Sunday, so KCCCC should be taking a day of rest.  But we won’t!  If Iggy is up, working to unveil his platform, then we work, too!  After Mass.
• So, um, about that platform: As in comedy, platform timing is everything.  Mike Harris released his Common Sense one more than a year before the writ – and he won a big majority.  Jean Chretien released his Red Book at the start of the campaign – and he won a massive majority.  Stephen Harper didn’t really release one at all, last time, and he won anyway.  So what to do?  The Grits, clearly, want to press the advantage they’ve been building up in Week One: they’re releasing theirs today, with a focus on families. Will it pay dividends?  I think so: if nothing else, platforms provide a useful prop for leaders under attack (and, believe me, Iggy will be facing an even more vicious Con attack, soon enough).  They can wave it around and say:  “Don’t believe the lies the other guy is saying about me.  Here’s my plan.  Read it for yourself.”  Mostly, it tells voters that you’ve prepared for government, and you’re ready.
• Media roundup: Even longtime Harper cheerleaders are saying the Reformatory boss isn’t doing so well.  Lorne Gunter: “Mr. Harper and his party stumbled on the week’s two big issues -who should participate in the leaders’ debate and the threat of a post-election coalition among the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois. They seemed unprepared for the election, despite being as eager for one as any other party (and despite having far more resources than their rivals). A party that has developed a reputation for tightly scripting its messages and for its Machiavellian manipulation of its opponents looked decidedly pedestrian as it let others define the debate issue.” John Robson: “…the Conservative party [is] nowhere near me. I [am] pro-life, seriously pro-military and against big-spending high-taxing governments. If Stephen Harper took the poll giving answers honestly drawn from the actual performance and platform of his party, he wouldn’t get that result, I can tell you.”
• Pic of the day: From Harper’s avail this morning on the youth fitness incentive, taking place at a gym where people are working out.  This one is weirder than weird.  Caption contest!

 

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Everyone had some ups and downs. But with Week 1 now concluded, the winner is — no question — Michael Ignatieff and his Liberals.

Polls are showing that, too. The yawning, nearly 20-point divide that separated the Tories and the Grits at the campaign’s start is now gone. Harper’s fearsome election machine has stalled, while Ignatieff’s more modest equivalent is surging closer. At week’s end, reliable polls showed as little as eight percentage points separating the two main contenders.

Meanwhile, Ignatieff’s personal approval ratings, which have been in the basement for two years, are now up dramatically.

So, too, are his Twitter and Facebook fans. Liberal fundraising is up. And, at the doors, Liberal candidates tell me they are getting lots of favourable comments about Ignatieff, along with plenty of requests for campaign signs and literature. So, um, what happened?

Three things…

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Toronto, Yonge and St. Clair, early April morning: Tony Genco heading to breakfast.

With…Rocco Rossi.

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Two things:

One, those look like Celtic Crosses to me. Given the pedigree of his main opponent, that makes some sense, too.

Two, Keon’s a stand-up guy, one who I’ve become acquainted with recently. If these cowardly shits think they’re going to intimidate him, they’re mistaken.

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Wire was in TeeDot at Lee’s, last night – sans Bruce Gilbert, and (incredibly) 35 years after they began.  They were, and continue to be, a huge part of my musical outlook (and are acknowledged to be influences for R.E.M., The Cure, Minor Threat, Guided By Voices, all of whom I have adored at different times, too).

I don’t know if they played ‘Heartbeat’ last night, but it’s a stand-out track off the godlike genius of Chairs Missing, and clear evidence that Wire was always unafraid to challenge conventions – even punk’s own conventions.  Alright, here it is. One, two, X you!

 

 

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• It’s a down day! Or, maybe tomorrow is.  Either way, every campaign is back in Ottawa, or heading there, so that the leaders and the planes and the tour staff can get home, hug the kids, get sleep in a familiar bed and – most crucially – do laundry.  Some, if they’re courageous, will wander in to campaign HQ to see how central campaign staff are doing.  They will look bleary-eyed and exhausted, because they are.  The war room staff will make jokes about Stockholm Syndrome (which seizes reporters travelling with the leaders, by the way, and shows up in their coverage).  And everyone will read the papers.
• What will they see? In tomorrow’s Sun, I write this: “Stephen Harper looks like he is phoning it in.  He appears washed-out and tired.  At his much-trumpeted Montreal rally, in fact, Harper didn’t look like a political leader fighting for a win – he looked like an exhausted chartered accountant in a crowded airport, trying to get home for the weekend.” That’s some of my take.  What do others see?  Here’s a columnist sampling – add yours in comments!  I guarantee you’ll be read – the stats for www.warrenkinsella.com have exploded by 300 per cent since the campaign started, and so too have comments.  Thanks to all for your contributions – you’re all pretty smart, left, right or coalitionist.
• Chantal Hebert, Star:“To drive his message home, Harper has been blatantly creative with the facts, starting with his own manoeuvres as an opposition leader in a minority Parliament. He has risked turning the election into a debate on his character, a huge gamble for a figure that has been shown to have a higher-than-average potential to polarize Canadians. Harper is taking that gamble based on his conviction that against a divided opposition, polarization is an ace up the Conservative sleeve.”
• Stephen Maher, Chronicle-Herald: “Harper’s team may be nervous, and if they’re not, they should be. Harper is on track to win this election, but so far the Liberals are having a better campaign, and the Conservatives could lose the government even if they win the election.”
• Adam Radwanski, Globe and Mail:“…the Liberal Leader is surprising even his own handlers with his comfort on the campaign trail. And he shows signs of making the Conservatives pay for underestimating him, and for conditioning the public – through advertisements that portrayed Mr. Ignatieff as a bumbling dilettante – to do likewise.”
• David Akin, Sun Media:“The Conservative war room has been obsessed, in the meantime, with penny-ante “gotcha” shots every time they think they’ve got more evidence of Ignatieff’s designs on a coalition government. OK. We get the point.  But if Conservatives really want that majority, they’ll have to do more than that to tell Canadians why they want it.”
• David Olive, Star:“It has seemed almost farcical to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper warn that Canada’s economic recovery would be jeopardized by a Liberal-led coalition of opposition parties taking power after the federal election May 2.”
• Bruce Campion-Smith, Star: “A week that started strong for Harper — by putting Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff on his heels with accusations of plotting to lead an opposition coalition — ended with the Conservative leader looking unsteady on everything from debates, his dealings with the media and even his attacks around the coalition.”
• Pic of the day: It’s fuzzy, but so is the campaign so far – nobody has landed on the narrative strikes a chord, most voters aren’t paying attention.  Add a caption!

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I spoke to a senior Grit yesterday.  He asked what they should be doing for the next few days.  I said, in a typically nuanced way:  “Harper looks like a chickenshit with this debate thing.  Keep picking at that scab until it’s infected.  Don’t let him change the channel. Make sure the whole country knows that he dared you to debate, you immediately said yes, and he thereafter chickened out.  Make sure every voter knows it.”

Ipso facto, good stuff.

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But…I told you so, etc.

Oh, and, by the way, he’s trying to change the channel.

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…except that the joke is on us, and our kids.

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• The Stench of Death: That’s what we political hacks and hackettes call the unique odour that assaults our olfactory system when alighting in the campaign offices of a sure-fire loser: the stench of death. The candidate is off-balance and screwing up; the campaign is consistently misfiring; the voters are drifting away, or have, to the other side. I’m not saying that Stephen Harper’s Refomatories are dead – far from it, (a) they’re still a formidable election machine and (b) there’s still a month to go, which is four (4) lifetimes in politics – but, man oh man, are the Tories ever looking like losers. They’ll recover their bearings, I’ll wager, but for now – well, there’s a faint odour, and it’s unmistakable.
• Want proof? A proof is a proof. Here’s proof: here and here and here and here. Harris: “According to the latest Nanos tracking poll, Stephen Harper has managed something of a miracle: He has raised Michael Ignatieff from the political dead…If Mr. Harper goes on to blow a near double-digit lead when this campaign began, (either to win another minority or hand one to the other side), his substitution of messaging for communication will bear a large part of the responsibility. The prime minister uses language to create facts, not to convey them.” And, as I’ve noted in my coming Sunday Sun column, the Cons beleived their own anti-Ignatieff propaganda.  Big-o mistake-o.
• Stephen Harper is a liar and a chicken: Rinse and repeat. David Olive, who is way more thoughtful and restrained than Yours Screwly, throws it down, right here. STEPHEN HARPER IS A LIAR AND A CHICKEN. I don’t know who were the morons who, reptilian kitten-eater-like, issued the now-infamous one-on-one debate challenge to Michael Ignatieff on the Conservative leader’s Twitter account. But I’m willing to bet they are now to be found under that infamous Parliament Hill bus – you know, the one under whose wheels so many other Tory staffers inevitably come to rest. “Jenni? Jenni Byrne? Senator Finlay is on the line, and he wants his office back!”
• Buck buck buck! Harper’s disdain and contempt for professional journalists is nothing new – some of us have been writing about it, and pointing out the likely consequences, for years. (To wit, as I wrote in the Post on March 30, 2006, the Harperite media-hatred was going to come back and haunt him – and I even found support for that with Mike Duffy! Said Mike, now a Conservative Senator: “Why would these guys want to get into a pissing match with the Gallery…before an election?”)  Now, Harper’s decision to (a) take only five questions from the media every campaign day and (b) refuse to answer questions about that, or misfiring local campaigns, all point voters in one direction: he is, well, you know. And the media are paying him back at the worst possible time.
• The Harper-OLA connection: One of the Reformatory MPs closest to Stephen Harper is Scott Reid. Reid, with Harper’s blessing, was instrumental in last night’s Ontario political shocker – the dumping of Progressive Conservative Norm Sterling by a boss within the extremist Ontario Landowner’s Association. The OLA is slowly but undeniably taking over the Ontario PCs, and forcing out progressives. Who are they? Well, here’s a quote by Edward Kennedy, an OLA founder. It tells you all you need to know about our opponents in the coming provincial campaign: “Typical n****r behavior. Concealed carry would have made the outcome much different. Note if the perpetrators had been White, they would have all got the death penalty for a hate crime against n*****s. And the lieberals wonder why a large segment of Whites hate blacks and distrust them. I am surprised the black bastards did not try to rape them, that is standard fare for n*****s.“
• Internet toys are internet toys: Here we go again – more hysterical right-wing fulminating against the CBC for their “Vote Compass” Internet game thingie. Criminy! It’s for fun, rightist people – it doesn’t make you vote a particular way. If you don’t like it, well, um, don’t use it. And take a Valium, while you’re at.
• Pic of the day: We have two contenders, both featuring the PM, whose campaign images so far have been not so hot:

Caption contest! Mine: “Bring me my senior campaign staff!”

And there’s this one, from MontrealElite, which is my favourite:

“You two closely resemble my campaign co-chairs!”

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