How bad is the economy?

During Meet the Press this morning, among ads selling luxury cars and Charles Schwab trying to make us all feel better, was a Wal-Mart commercial.

We're all going to die.

And the winner is...

Kevin Brennan, once of Tilting at Windmills, more recently of POGGe, came just eleven points away from correctly predicting the gaffe totals, with a prediction of 15/12/2/5. Congratulations, Kevin - identify a local candidate before the next election rolls around, some time after the Liberals get their act together, and they'll see $20 in your name.

See you all right back here whenever Stephen Harper decides again to defeat his own government, in clear contravention of his own fixed date rules. Either that, or four years from now, again in the middle of a Presidential race, again over a Thanksgiving weekend. Remind me to post why fixed dates are stupid.

Gaffe cleanup: the addendum

The election day cleanup I did ignored completely the Andrew McKeever uncontextualized "war deserters" facebook post mentioned back here. No-chance candidate, possibly just a name on the ballot to put up against Bev Ota (if he has time to keep up with his facebook and get into flame wars during the writ, he's not a serious candidate): prom=one, comments that I don't even know if they were written during the writ means sig=1 for lack of better information. One more point for the NDP.

I'll try to calculate the winner by the end of the day.

!!!!

Linda Duncan is showing a ONE VOTE lead over Rahim Jaffer in Edmonton Strathcona at this moment on the CBC website. It's particularly entertaining to see the word "elected" still sitting beside Jaffer's name.

Edited to add: now it's 150-odd for Duncan, but the "elected" is still there for Jaffer.

The next several months

I'm concerned that Harper has won a functional majority for the next year or so, on the back of a Liberal party that's going to be in disarray again while they figure out who they want as leader. Watch them step out of the house every time the bells ring again, abstain from votes again.

What would happen in a perfect world is that a chunk of the Liberal party would recognize that Dion managed to undo 18 months of negative campaigning in about a week, and if the party got together behind him, he could have a do-over by next summer with a much better result. But there are way too many Liberals too attached to the very old Trudeau-Turner split now represented by Iggy and Rae to ever let that happen. So congratulations to the Conservatives for their functional majority for the next long while.

Close races

The number of seats that could flip over the next couple of hours, or under judicial recount, seem higher than normal to me. I;m going hunting for a list, and might edit this post when I find one. Offhand: Edmonton Sherwood Park, Vancouver South, Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Oak Ridges-Markham, and Outremont to name several.

Local results

Turns out Edmonton-Sherwood Park is the riding to watch tonight in Alberta. Sadly, it seems to be the officially-named but brown Tory neck-and-neck with the independent but white Tory. Thanks again, Alberta, for disappointing me.

The ridings that were theoretically competitive - Edmonton-Strathcona and Edmonton East for the NDP, and Edmonton Centre for the Liberals, were, in practice, part of the provincial blowout.

Late start

So, why won't the CBC say "minority"? Anyone who can count can see that the elected and leading for the other parties add up to 161. Things could flip, but not that far.

Go vote

Out of respect for the law of the land, liveblogging the results won't start until 7:30 Mountain. To resist temptation even to seek the early east coast returns out for myself, I'll be taking the earlier-mentioned big change in my personal life out for a birthday meal, so if I'm late, well, guess the check didn't come quickly enough. See you as the numbers roll in.

Election day catchup

This year's gaffe-o-meter has been complicated by a few factors: a lot of discussion early on of the pre-writ (sometimes by several years) activities and statements of candidates, a real issue jumping up mid-writ to overrun reporting of our 308 elections (while dominating the 51 Electoral college elections in the States), and the media's disinterest in the Canadian battle in favour of Sarah Palin and her three-ring gaffe machine. I'll add a personal fourth reason: a heavy work schedule married to significant changes in my personal life have left me distracted, too.

I'll soldier on, working backwards.

Dion is confused by a question posed by a local newsman, and the tape is met by hoots of derision. I'm frustrated by this one, because Dion could have easily, and happily as part of the broadcast, said what I think he was getting at: we'd all seen the pop of the bubble coming from some distance back. Was he being asked about preventative steps he might have taken leading up to now, or was he being asked about steps the Canadian government should take going forward? Alternatively, he could have snapped into his 30-days-big-meetings talking points, which he should have been able to perform in his sleep. Dion's the leader, so this is automatically a prom=3, and I think it stopped the momentum I discussed just one post ago right in its tracks, so despite it being more mumbly-joeism rather than any indication of Dion's unfitness to lead (IMHO, YMMV), I think a sig=2 is correct, for a six point gain for the Grits.

This has been a bad campaign strategically for the Tories, I think. They spent a lot of time and treasure painting Dion as hapless over the last several months, only to have to change him to "scary" after the markets cratered and Harper looked uncaring. The debates contributed to the uncaring image, but I think telling Canadians through Peter Mansbridge that the collapsing market presented great buying opportunities became the stick that Layton and Dion beat Harper with for the rest of the campaign. Again, party leader means prom=3, and the issue stopped any majority hope the Tories had, but I don't think it was as game-changing as the Dion error. There is perhaps not enough subtlety in my scoring system. Sig=1, total three more for the CPC.

Another mumbly-joeism, much older but much debated since, between Jerad Gallinger and I at least. Liberal Andrew Telegdi, Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Waterloo, at an election forum, declared that the first task of this election is to elect Stephen Harper Prime Minister. He claimed later that he meant to say "eject", which was probably the stupidest excuse possible, but better than what he was really thinking, which I suspect was "let's hurry up and elect Harper again, which we all believe is going to happen, and then move on with the business of the nation. In the meantime, who do you want as your local representative?" which is why he referenced May. Sitting MP = prom=2. However, I can't imagine anyone believing that this slip was in any way indicative of Telegdi's voting preferences: sig=1. Total, two more for the Liberals.

Just to clean up the last suggestion hanging about, Dion playing street hockey was fine (no one expected him to look like Lemieux). And, seriously, nothing out of the Bloc? That just seems so unlikely. Oh well - perhaps money or ethnics will come up tonight and Duceppe will run up a score.

An aside

I've got some catching up to do (not a lot, mind) on the scores. But I've just arrived home after some extended road tripping, and is it just me, or are the wheels coming off the Tory campaign a little? I'm not talking gaffes, I'm just talking about the campaign itself. To wit:

- Harper seems caught off-guard by the American financial crisis, and doesn't seem to really want to acknowledge it. Claiming that we're isolated from it looks dumber every day, as the Loonie shrinks against the US dollar and Canadian banks claim they can only offer half the rate cut on loans that they themselves will receive from the Bank of Canada. Dion's "no plan" criticism from the debate seems increasingly spot-on. I'll save Harper's "great time to invest" bits for the gaffe count.

- The late platform release doesn't seem to have worked very well. The lack of substantive policy directions within it likewise isn't setting the world on fire.

- Speaking of fire, Dion seems to have finally found something of fire in his belly. The no-luck schmuck image the Tories so painstakingly designed for him held up really well, until possibly the last week or so.

- Layton may find himself hoist upon his own strategic voting petard, after arguing last weekend that Liberals might want to move their votes the NDP's way so as to make sure that Dion's cratering doesn't leave Harper with a majority. Does a Liberal recovery turn the argument on its head?

I'm not sure what the polls are telling us, but I'd be astounded by a Tory majority now. I think the Conservatives ought to be very thankful indeed this weekend, that most of the country is done paying attention as of tomorrow, and will be focused on turkey and what-not until Tuesday.

Full disclosure - I'd love to give Dion a vote of support this election, but despite what voteforenvironment.ca tells me, the real race in Edmonton East is between the Tory incumbent (Peter Goldring) and one of my favourite New Democrats from way back, former provincial leader Ray Martin - the Liberal candidate is going to be left well behind. I have no problem casting a strategic vote when it's also for the best local candidate.

How bad are things going for Stephane Dion?

I'm not much for tracking the polls. But there's some interesting side stories there. Intrade sells contracts on future events - you pay so many cents for the prediction of an outcome, and the site pays you a dollar if it happens. A Tory victory contract will cost you right now 95-98 cents, depending on your timing. By comparison, Barack Obama contracts are selling for 62 cents.

That's gonna have to be some kinda debate on Thursday. And somehow it's going to have to beat watching Joe Biden give Sarah Palin a stern talking-to. I wouldn't take a contract on that at any price.

And this is why I didn't let the Greens play

Every party has managed to earn a look in the last 24 hours, after days of quiet error-free campaigning. I appreciate their thoughtfulness in all timing their gaffing to serve my road schedule.

They have not, however, all earned points. Let's have a look.

Conservative: Lee Richardson suggested in Calgary's weekly giveaway organ that recent immigrants may be responsible for gang activity.

"Particularly in big cities, we've got people that have grown up in a different culture," he said. "And they don't have the same background in terms of the stable communities we had 20, 30 years ago in our cities ... and don't have the same respect for authority or people's person or property."

He later added: "Talk to the police. Look at who's committing these crimes. They're not the kid that grew up next door."

The other parties are screaming, of course, but I think the Calgary Herald's editorial defense of Richardson is pretty accurate - Richardson is no racist. Nonetheless, the fact that the Herald had to spend a page arguing it is what makes this statement a gaffe. Richardson, as a sitting MP and candidate for re-election, is a prom = 2, but I expect the issue will evaporate by tomorrow, so sig = 1. If I turn out to be wrong about the life of this story, I reserve the right to reevaluate.

Liberal: Winnipeg Liberal candidate "crazy" Lesley Hughes has some really crazy ideas about September 11. It's unclear to me if her apology is acknowledging the craziness of the ideas generally, or just the part about Jews being warned away from the towers (because it seems anti-semetic). But it's ancient, so no score for the crazy lady.

NDP: Can someone find me the source material being discussed here? The story might as well be "Candidate says unpleasant things we won't repeat." I find it hard to score that.

I find it less hard to score Michael Byers' desire to close the doors on the tarsands. It's probably not a bad line to take in a UBC j-school class, but it was a dumb overstepping of policy, in that it feeds the belief that putting the economy in NDP hands would be very dangerous indeed. Byers is called "high-profile" in some of the stories around this, and I suppose from the outside he seems to be, but running against both Hedy Fry and Adriane Carr, he's going to get killed come election day. Still, even with a prom = 1, I think this might have some legs in reinforcing an argument about NDP secret agendas, so I'm giving a sig = 2. I'd be tempted to give three, but I haven't noticed the story taking the bounce I would have imagined.

(Note to Bear604 - check out, and then repair your link to the Thunderbird.)

BQ: Finally, Gilles Duceppe claims that the Tory "tough on youth crime" plan will serv[e] up "young flesh" to hardened criminals."

First of all, CBC, thank you so much for not also putting quotes around "hardened."

Duceppe's not apologising, so I think this falls into the category I described back in the rules section:

It might be a mistake for the NDP to release a platform paper advocating gender segregation of schools, to the derision of the Canadian electorate, but it's not a "gaffe". On the other hand, if Jack Layton explains the policy by making an aside about high-school boys being distracted by the firm and supple bodies of women in the full bloom of their hot, hot youth, that would be a "gaffe".

In fact, we seem to be having the very "firm bodies / hot youth" discussion I suggested here, but I'm suggesting that Duceppe is actually initiating a policy discussion about prison rape. It might be dumb, but it's not a "gaffe" in the same sense. No score for this one yet. I could be convinced otherwise.

Total score - Con 6+2=8, NDP 0+2=2, Liberals hold at 1, the BQ still not on the board.

The mortgage bailout, explained

Are you American? Do you own something that you think is worth more than anyone else is willing to pay for it? Perhaps the Treasury Department would like to buy that stuff, too! Here's a website that allows you to itemize what you'd like to be rid of, and what you'd like the American taxpayer to give you for it.

Is there a particular reason that the Treasury wants to buy the bad debts, rather than just, say, buy the banks themselves?

A partial list of people who have not been pure enough in behaviour to run for the NDP this time around:

Dana Larsen

Kirk Tousaw

NDP Ontario MPP Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo

Mike Harris, Glen Clark, and Ralph Klein

John Edwards, Howard Dean, and John Kerry

Barack Obama

Pierre Trudeau

And, let's be honest here, damn near anyone I've met under forty years old (and some over). When did pot use become a barrier to NDP nomination? Once Jack is cornered enough to have to answer that question, the answer should be interesting.

New reciprocal link

I note this because a) it's been a while and b) he has a neat little meter of his own, tracking the parties and leaders according to their Wikipedia page views. Go visit Jerad Gallinger and tell him Don says "hey".

Sig and Prom, illustrated

Darlene Lannigan is pretty much nobody, so her comments, though pretty racist and suggesting something disturbing about how she views constituents, have only made a small media splash. Prom 1, sig 2 (and should have been three, but for the media feeding on Gerry Ritz).

Gerry Ritz is the Minister of Agriculture, and apparently didn't show appropriate levels of empathy toward people that no one in the meeting knew. Because his prominence is high (a three, for sure), no one seems to care that the significance was zero.

I spent last night thinking that if hosting the gaffe-o-meter has in any small way contributed to the media being oversensitive to these things, I don't want to do it any more. Then I decided I wanted to come to be viewed as the national expert on gaffes, and get on Canada AM panels saying "who cares?" to bits like this, so I've got to keep the g-o-m operating. But let me make my public announcement now - I'll never again stand for election anywhere for anything, because apparently I have a tin ear for what's appropriate. I wonder how many others have come to the same conclusion this week?

The meter above will be updated when I get to my desktop computer, probably late today or early tomorrow.

Finally, a quiet week wakes up

First up, Minister of Agriculture Gerry Ritz made some dark jokes about the listeria outbreak during a conference call.

Good for him. Read this blog regularly, and you'll discover I'm pretty sympathetic to whistling in the dark as a coping mechanism. Yes, the outbreak was tragic, but that's all the more reason Ritz needs to break the stress with his comedy stylings. Anyway, at least he was on the file, whereas Minister of Health Tony Clement was practicing his set at the DNC in Denver during the outbreak.

But then there was an apology, and gaffe-o-meter veterans know that an apology, self-acknowledging the gaffe, trumps whatever I might think of the original statement. Remember Peter McKay's "stick to your knitting" to Alexa McDonough? Goddammit, that one pissed me off a lot - it was just as sexist as "lipstick on a pig", which is to say, not at all. Just because someone objects to something you say, you don't need to fold like a cheap tent in a strong wind every time. I digress some distance from the point.

It was pre-writ, as Calgary Grit points out in the previous comments, so no score regardless.

Second, former Marijuana Party candidate Dana Larsen is now former NDP candidate Dana Larsen because, if I understand correctly, he advocated the use of drugs. And you know, was filmed while stoned. This might be him, right here. There seems to be a lot of discussion about the NDP lack of vetting, but really? This is a surprise to the party? Or did the party just experience some morning-after remorse?

Anyway, does anyone expect 308 candidates to be individually vetted by the central campaign? More likely to me is that the local constituency knew very well what his background and attitude toward drug policy is, and approved wholeheartedly of it, or at least didn't feel that it was beyond the range of acceptable views and experiences, because let's face it (and you can discuss this more with Bear604), the views of people living in the Lower Mainland are different than people living in Toronto.

But again, pre-writ, so no points. The scores remain unchanged, and the slow week continues. Would someone please let Rob Anders out of whatever crate Harper stores him in during elections, and get him a microphone, stat?

Liberals on board

They still have a LOT of scoring to do, going by some of the predictors, but the journey of a thousand miles blah blah blah. And if every gaffe costs them a candidate, well, they aren't going to be contesting a majority if they score as high as some predict.

I'm not penalizing the Grits for Simon Bedard's comments regarding Oka twenty years ago ("You go in there with the army and you clean up the place. Fifty deaths! 100 deaths! 125 deaths! It's over. You bury it and you move on."). Old comments don't score even if they're resurrected during the writ - call it the Azania rule. No, he's getting notched for saying this week that reserve gang activity (an "underground mafia" in the Globe article) validated his old comment, and that further, Stephane Dion has the backbone to intervene.

Backbone, Dion has. Intervene, he did. Unfortunately for Mr. Bedard, that came in the form of the candidate's rapid shitcanning. One prom for a candidate that had no chance to begin with, and only one sig for something I would have liked to see get more coverage. Not even my commenters seem to have noticed this one.

There's never a stone when you need one

Harper's week has been hurt by two birds: first a puffin, now a Sparrow. Ryan Sparrow declares that a father of a soldier lost in Afghanistan is politically motivated. What sort of partisan blinders do you have on to think sending that accusation to the media will produce the story you're hoping for? A quick apology and suspension, and this ended up being less of a story than the cartoon bird, but still, one prom (I had never heard of Sparrow before this, have you?) by two sig is another two for the Liberals. Next up, Simon Bedard.