Week one is in the books and I can honestly say that none of the campaigns have provided Canadians with anything they can really chew on.
The Liberals are running a typical front-runner campaign. They are making announcements on a daily basis but I am not detecting a election theme. In 2015 they remained laser focused on the economy. They were not distracted by three weeks of the Mike Duffy trial. They made only a passing remark on the drowned boy on the Turkish beach. In short, their campaign was focused, disciplined and on message from the time the writ was dropped to the end. For this campaign they have certainly been disciplined but they have not stuck to a central message because they do not seem to have one. They would go along way to ensuring their re-election if they had such a central message and if they could tie in all of their policy announcements to that message.
The Conservatives have run the campaign that I expected, namely negative. Although I have to admit to being surprised at how shameless they have been in lying to voters. I cannot see that as being a winning strategy for a 41 day campaign. I know that many point to success of Doug Ford's and Donald Trump's campaigns. However, if anybody, including the Conservatives, believe the same tactics will work this time around they are probably in for a major disappointment. Doug Ford was up against a government that had been in power for about 16 years. They pulled off a miracle in 2014 but they were not going to pull off the same miracle in 2018. I always like to remind people that Donald Trump came in second, by a significant margin, in 2016. Only the vagaries of the Electoral College system gave him the White House. If the Conservatives do not win the popular vote they do not win the election. Their vote is just way too inefficient for them to do so in our First Past the Post voting system. So far all they have done is lie and announce recycled Harper government initiatives. That is not going to inspire voters, which is what they need to do to win.
The NDP has been invisible, as I expected. They are trying to save the furniture and they are pretty much avoiding any really big policy announcements. Mr. Singh is waiting for the debates hoping that he can perform well enough there to convince enough voters to give him and his party enough seats to maintain official party status. It is an open question of whether he will succeed.
The Greens and the PPC are proving that they are fringe parties. They have not done anything in the first week to make themselves stand out.
Ms. May is long past her best-before-date and if she believes the current polling indicating that she may win more than her own seat she is delusional. We have been down this road before. By election day voters in this country will likely revert to their habit of voting for the big three.
Mr. Bernier has not done anything except receive an invitation to the official debates, which is hardly an accomplishment by him. I have stated here before that his best strategy is to rent a bus and campaign hard in the Conservative ridings in Ontario and Quebec. He is not doing that. In fact I am not certain what he is doing even though I have been trying to find out. At this rate he will be lucky to win his own seat. I thought he might be waiting for the debates but until yesterday there was no guarantee that he would be invited.
All and all, I am rather disappointed in the first week of the campaign and that is despite my generally low expectations for the first week. However, I am particularly disappointed with the Liberal campaign. They ran a brilliant, near perfect campaign in 2015 and I was expecting something similar this time around, particularly since the 2015 campaign team is intact. Instead, their campaign has been rather pedestrian.
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