A thirsty guy walks into a bar ... you finish it.

Wow. Yowch. The Sausage Man rebuts.

Now, normally, we would not rebut a rebuttal -- kind of a tedious experience for blogger and reader alike.

In his blog, Dan denies our assertion (in a rather thin-skinned way, wethinks) that in his post-election analysis piece he bought into the Tory thesis that the election might have been theirs had there not been a "flood" of pre-election advertising by the government.

Just for the record, we have no problem with Dan or any journalist reporting what one side says. That's all fine.

It is a silly point of view, of course. Utter nonsense to say that a few ads from the government (as all governments do) somehow fooled Manitobans who would have otherwise thrown Gary Doer out. But instead they decided to hand the NDP an historic 36 seat third majority.

Our point was that if government advertising could change the mood of the public, then Gary Filmon would have reigned beyond 1999, because the Tories advertised like crazy in the pre-election period.

In fact, just a few days before the recent election, Mia Rabson revealed in one of her pieces that as Hugh McFadyen was spending the last days of the campaign suddenly complaining loudly about government advertising, setting up this strange excuse for losing the election -- back in 1999 as Filmon's Chief of Staff, McFadyen was in receipt of a memo from his campaign manager Greg Lyle advising him to crank up the provincial ad machine. Which he in fact did, but to no apparent avail.

Nonetheless, if Dan wants to report McFadyen's and Scarth's ridiculous post-justification, fine.

However, for Dan's and others' edification, here is a key line from Dan's story:

However, the deft timing of the writ, combined with the flurry of pre-election advertising, seemed to do the trick: The NDP lead grew to double-digit levels almost immediately.

Note this is assertion by the author. Unless we are mistaken, this statement is not attributed to anyone. It appears to be the analysis of the writer.

This is allowed, of course. We believe it was valid to run this story not just on the Op Ed pages, as it did, but it could have run in the news pages. But statements such as the above clearly signals that it is an ANALYSIS piece, not just straight-forward reportage. It appears that it is indeed Dan's view.

It is that view we disagreed with in our previous post.

Dan, indeed, did drink the Kool Aid -- unless he now feels the above statement is not his view, that it is not his analysis.

'Nuff said. Belaboured point is now over.

-------------------------------------------------

Business to clear up -- we have heard from scriblers such as Dan and the soon-to-depart Curtis Brown that our references to the Mountain Ave. Typing School and calls for reform of the tired and pedantic FreeP Editorial Board seem to include them.

Rest assured, gentlemen.

While we don't always agree with our friends mentioned above, we are not saying all the opinion and analysis printed by the Free Press is completely lacking. We are, however, actually speaking specifically about the hidebound, trite troglodytes of the Editorial Board itself -- the likes of Flood, Oleson and Mitchell, as we have noted here before.

And if publisher Andy Ritchie doesn't do something about this, then he might as well sell the Op Ed page space to make way for car ads -- which has the benefit of both raising Free Press Publications' profits and doing the readership a favour. Please, Mr. Ritchie, stop the pain.

---------------------------------------------

We're taking a break.

This space will darken for an undefined period -- the summer, anyway -- to rest and reflect on the purpose of this experiment of the past 18 months.

Take care all. Have a good summer. Have a few beers.

Dan drinks the PC Kool-Aid

We've been away a few days, so we're just catching up on the pile of papers in the porch.

Not tons of things of interest, but Dan "the Sausage Man" Lett's election retrospective on the weekend had some points worth discussing.

Apart from creating titters around the Leg, we understand, by mislabeling Doer Chief of Staff Michael Balagus as the Clerk of the Executive Council, Dan offers up some interesting views from NDP and Tory top operatives.

However, it seems that Dan bought the Tories' rationalization of their loss as being largely due to massive government advertising.

It's nonsense, of course.

On one hand, the Tories can't even keep their story straight. In the "massive government advertising" they point to, they include the total $2.4 million spent over the past year on the Spirited Energy campaign, which in fact, a) was not government advertising but a community effort supported by the government, and b) includes lots of stuff which was not advertising at all.

But more importantly, just last week, Tory MLA Leanne Rowat noted the one-year anniversary of Spirited Energy by admonishing the government, calling the effort a "lead balloon" that landed with a resounding "thud".

Not only are the PCs trying to have it both ways, but they are wrong on both counts.

Spirited Energy will likely go on because the main movers and shakers in town want it to go on and know that over time the grousing will go away and promoting Manitoba is absolutely necessary.

But the other point they are wrong on is that government advertising, of course, does not win or lose elections.

If it did, Gary Filmon would have won in 1999.

We should not need to remind the greybeards in the crowd (and we certainly shouldn't have to remind Dan) that back then, the PCs ran tons of government advertising in the run up to the election. And it apparently did them no good whatsoever.

Objectively, there were similarities between the 1999 and 2007 elections: the incumbent governments had been in for multiple terms with well-regarded leaders, but the Probe polling showed a tight race shaping up.

However, there were big differences. So many that we will only touch on a few -- like the fact the government in 1999 was seen as terrible on the top public issue, health care, was bruised badly on the trust issue due largely to the vote-rigging scandal, and the mood of change permeated the air.

All the government advertising in the world can't actually change public perceptions. It may help highlight perceptions that are already out there, but to assert a few ads changed pubic opinion around 180 degrees in just a few weeks is to believe that the public is fundamentally stupid.

And they are not.

It's not surprising, though, to see Jonathan Scarth trying to explain his way out of accountability for a lousy campaign and advertising is a convenient excuse. But it is a bit surprising to see Dan seeming to buy the same basic premise.

And, by implication, Dan is asserting in his piece that Manitobans are dumb -- easily swayed by some advertising.

C'mon Dan. You can do better than that.

-------------------------

As a postscript to the above, another common thread between Dan's piece and the PC's story is a belief in the Probe numbers of March 2007 that there was a statistical tie between the NDP and the Tories, just weeks before the writ drop.

As Balagus stated, if that was true, do you think Gary Doer would call an election? Are you nuts?

But Dan positions that point in a way to try and wedge in the scenario that there was indeed a tie as Probe stated, then there was lots of government advertising which led to a lead for the NDP going in to the election.

That's just crazy. That kind of a short term lead, if it existed, would not have been enough to call an election on. For sure, Doer would have waited until the fall if that scenario were true.

The real story is, that Dan conveniently seems to push aside, is that Probe consistently underestimates the NDP support -- for lots of reasons we have detailed here before time and time again.

It just seems very strange to us that a newspaper ostensibly interested in reporting the truth would continue down this path, knowing how consistently flawed their pollsters have been.

------------------------------------------------

Oh, and if anyone needs reminding how desperate the Tory campaign was in its final days, you need only play the ads below, which ran in high rotation on Manitoba radio stations the last several days of the campaign.

Mountain Ave. typing school provides platform for the Flat Earth Society ....

Yikes!

It's as if our note yesterday on the FreeP Editorial Board resulted in an immediate brain fart.

How else can you explain a big opinion piece from well-known and completely discredited climate change deniers in today's paper?

As we have stated before, it is not simply good enough to put up 'one side of the debate' on climate change when that side is represented by the tiniest fraction of climate change 'experts' and that side is made up of stalking horses for the oil industry who conceal their dirty and self-interested benefactors.

Tim Ball, one of the authors of today's piece, is well known locally as a former professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg (although he claims he was a climatology professor) and a long-time climate change denier. He is one of the infamous 61 signatories to a letter sent last year to Stephen Harper urging him to eschew the prevailing climate change science by the vast majority of experts in the field.

Ball is usually associated these days with the Calgary-based Friends of Science (FOS), a shell organization that has long been exposed as funded by the oil industry, including in reports in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.

He has also been exposed for padding his resume, torquing his former position with the University of Winnipeg as "one of the first climatology PhDs in the world", before his early retirement in 1996, which is a ludicrous claim. He also regularly bills himself as "Climatologist and Prof Emeritus of Geography at the University of Winnipeg." He is in fact not listed in the U of W's roll of professors emeriti.

He also sued the Calgary Herald and CanWest for printing a truthful article about him. He is billed by the DeSmogBlog -- a leading watchdog source on climate change deniers -- as someone whose "credibility lies in shreds".

His co-author, Tom Harris, is head of an organization called the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). The NRSP is controlled by the High Park Advocacy Group, a lobbying firm that specializes in the oil and natural gas industry.

It is becoming increasingly common for the fossil fuel lobby to take a page out of big tobacco's playbook and set up shell organizations to attempt to influence public opinion on climate change. It's clear the NRSP and FOS are false fronts for special interests in the oil industry.

Even very basic research by the FreeP Editorial Board would have easily dug up this stuff on Ball, for example, which is very well known.

To put up these stalking horse frauds on the editorial pages, whose game has been prominently exposed by independent research groups and the media, is completely unsupportable. It's a sham and terrible journalism. It does the Free Press readership a great disservice. It's complete amateur hour.

Mr. Ritchie, you have to do something.

Lame duck columnist

We just spotted the several-days-old blog post of our buddy Tom Blowback, in which he calls Gary Doer a "lame duck" premier. His reasoning: That Doer's past 7 1/2 years have been about "nothing", so expect four more years of "nothing" and therefore this is a lame duck administration.

Ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Whew. Excuse us for a sec -- gotta wipe a bit of a tear from the eye.

This is the same Bunkbeck who has dined out since 1999 on the Doer government, reinventing himself from an erstwhile leg reporter into a neo-con columnist? The same guy who has railed about the lack of radical tax cuts, the lack of privatized health care, the lack of turning Manitoba into a police state, and on and on?

Nothing?

Well, that's one hell of a revelation from our Tom.

So based on what he states, we can therefore expect poor Tom to have "nothing" to write about for the next four years. (And beyond that we predict, as 2011 could well be a four-peat based on Manitobans' continued affection for more of "nothing".)

It's so sad -- nothing to write about for the next several years. Sounds like a lame duck columnist to us.

-----------------------------

Memo to Andy Richie: Time to start taking deadwood on the Editorial Board out behind the woodshed with an axe.

And we would begin this chopping spree with the frequently off-topic and oft-sotted Tom Oleson.

On Saturday, he rambled on with a clumsy, disjointed thesis about how free access abortion in Canada is perhaps responsible for our society going to hell in a hand basket.

This, we submit, was not remotely worth the trees killed to provide the space. The pound of flyers that fell out of our Saturday edition were a better use of paper by far.

We would have no problem with a thoughtful discussion of whether free access to abortion services is a good policy (though we'd likely disagree with it). Oleson's piece, however, was just more evidence the Free Press Editorial Board is a vapid wasteland occupying space that could be filled by something better -- like more car ads.

Mr. Richie, show some kindness to your readership with some tough love. Do the deed, sir.

Perhaps he did his best

The notion put out by the opposition yesterday that the Throne Speech was worthy of derision due to the fact it was a repetition of the NDP's election commitments is laughable.

No new ideas, said Huey.

The election was just over two weeks ago and the opposition is trying to sell the line that the government should govern on something other than its promises? Ha.

You could just see their reaction if the Throne Speech was not reflective of the recent campaign. "They lied to Manitobans. They won't fulfill their promises."

Ah, well. We suppose they had to say something.

This morning, however, we read with interest Sausage Man Dan Lett's take on the political scene in the deadwood version of the FreeP. He states that, "Despite having lost a seat in the election, McFadyen's Tories did not run a bad campaign."

Whaaaa?

Now, we are more than happy with the notion that the NDP campaign was run brilliantly, bowling over the PC wunderkind's excellent but ultimately futile strategems. But in all seriousness, despite a very strong NDP campaign, if that campaign was indeed Hugh's best, then look out, the PC long knives should be coming for McFading, but fast.

For Dan to make the assertion that McFadyen ran a good campaign not only flies in the face of common sense, but also of his own paper's polling -- which would be an interesting non-endorsement of the Free Press's continued investment in Probe's services on the part of our Sausage Man.

In Probe's May 18 pre-election poll, they claimed Team Huey lost the respect of a full 18% of Manitobans during the campaign, which the Probites then calculated into a new metric called "momentum". They stated the PC's had a "momentum" value of -14% due to a net worsening opinion of the PCs over the course of the writ period.

If you chalk that up to the strength of the NDP campaign and its ability to paint Huey in a negative light, great. However, you would think that if McGriddle had at least done a very basic job introducing himself to Manitobans over the past year, getting into the media, creating a minor persona out there (instead of largely being invisible), then ran a good campaign -- he would have been bullet-proofed to a certain degree against the NDP attacks.

But no. The NDP attacks appeared to work like a charm: A backroom boy that helped privatize MTS and consulted with Mike Harris and Ernie Eves when they were trying to privatize Ontario Hydro (hence putting Manitoba Hydro at risk if he were premier); A policy wonk that was there to help fire over 1000 nurses and reduce doctor training, and can't help himself from defending those disastrous decisions because he believes in it; A hidebound ideologue who would repeal basic water protections that are just now starting to pay off for Lake Winnipeg and all our water resources; and lastly, someone willing to make unending reckless tax cut and policy promises that would endanger the services like health and education Manitobans so value.

All these attacks were not only verifiable but also rang true with voters. That combined with a general comfort level with 7 1/2 years of NDP rule and the public's strong affinity with Gary Doer led to not only a return to power, but an increase in seats.

As much as it may be gratifying to New Democrats for Dan to give Team Doer all the credit, he shouldn't get away with the claim that Huey ran a great campaign.

Perhaps he did his best, sure. We're willing to concede that. But a good campaign? Surely Dan is kidding.

(Oh, yeah, did we mention the Jets promise? No? Hmmm.)

It's ... so ... slow ...

The news is so slow these days that the most interesting thing the Sun could muster today is a federal Tory trial balloon via Tom Blowback about naming the Human Rights Museum after John Diefenbaker.

Even if it were a remotely serious suggestion, no other federal museum is named after anybody as far as we're aware. The Museum of Civilization, the War Museum, the National Gallery -- none have any politicians' names plastered all over it.

That seems to be the fate of other institutions, such as airports and federal buildings.

Not that anyone really pays attention to even that. Does anyone say they're going to the Richardson airport to catch a flight? Does anyone say they're going to the Stanley Knowles Building to enlist in the armed forces?

Anyway, to slap the Dief on the front of the first national museum outside of Ottawa seems a bit goofy, regardless of the bejowled former PM's alleged bona fides on human rights (who knew?).

And being an institution in Winnipeg, it might be a bit of a head-scratcher for River City denizens to get the link between a 1950s-era PM from Saskatchewan and a prized new waterfront gem for Manitoba.

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It's ... so ... slow ... on ... the ... blogging ... front ... tooooo

However, if you really want the full blast of sour grapes in post-election Manitoba, you have only had to look to the letters to the editor of the dailies over the past two weeks.

If you ever believed published letters were any indication of public opinion, you would also have to believe no one actually voted for the NDP and there is about to be a mass migration of people to the west and east due to the historic result on May 22. (Hmm, didn't we hear those threats in 1999 and 2003, too?)

Anyhoo, it would be nice to see more of our Tory chums out there get reinvigored and back to their keyboards -- at least for some interesting reading over the morning cuppa joe. Gawd nose it ain't happening in the newspaper.

C'mon guys. Get to work.

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Today, 57 MLAs get sworn in and go to the House tomorrow to hear a short, we believe, Speech from the Throne. It will be in some ways a pretty similar House to the one that last sat on April 20, hours before the writ was dropped.

Gary Doer and the NDP still firmly in charge. Huey at the front bench opposite. The Liberals remain as the Gang of Two.

But it will be a different House, too. More women than ever. The first woman of colour, ever. A larger NDP majority in the House than ... ever.

It will be different for Huey, too. Once the carrier of great expectations from his party, the media and pundits, he is now humbled, with one less net seat than he had, sharing the front-bench with a wily yet vendictive veteran having only won by the skin of her teeth (Bonnie), and rumblings about whether he will even survive as leader to take another run at the big chair.

My, what a few short weeks can do.

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Speaking of leadership, has anyone else noticed that Schulander has kept all his leadership videos up on YouTube and has been promoting them on his website? (Don't bother taking it all down. It's all been saved for posterity.)

Ah, the Wellington saga continues

Today the Winnipeg Sun recounts the latest claim out of Wellington -- this one from former candidate Angie Ramos that the NDP intimidated her to drop out before the nomination deadline.

In a letter to the Sun, Ramos writes she was "forced" to sign a resignation letter and she was "coerced" to drop out.

"Forced" to resign? Like what, she was tied up?

"Coerced"? That's a pretty major 10-dollar word.

This smells like another caper with Joe Chan's fingerprints all over it.

Joe Chan you may recall is the former associate of Councillor Harvey "weird old man" Smith, who vied for the Wellington nomination, but ran into the small problem of not disclosing his former company's run-in with the law on Internet child porn charges.

Chan is also frequently singled out as the figure behind the dirty tricks that often pepper Smith's campaigns, like hiring kids to destroy opponents' signage and dropping "dirty" flyers about opponents. In Smith's race against former CBC host Maureen Pendergast, Chan is widely recognized as having gone on an intense homophobic whisper campaign among ethnic communities in the area.

But some time before the writ drop, Chan was disqualified from the nomination and ran as an independent.

Incumbent Conrad Santos dropped out of the running when news of his own possible nomination hi jinx came to light. Angie, by all accounts a nice woman, was previously an unknown quantity in the NDP. She ran for the party nomination and won with the support of the membership signed up by Chan.

As you will recall, at the time of the writ, Chan ran as an independent, but all his materials were in NDP green and orange. Santos also ran, but came dead last.

So, shortly before the official Elections Manitoba nomination deadline Ramos quit, citing health problems. The party convinced Flor Marcelino to carry the party banner and made a direct appointment. Flor won.

Word on the street is Chan had his hands all over the Ramos nomination as his back-up plan. Ramos would resign after the nomination deadline, the NDP would have no candidate in Wellington. Chan would run as the seeming-NDP candidate and scoop up the seat in the vacuum.

Ramos, however, couldn't handle the pressure of the deception and was literally sick with worry about it and came clean before the nomination deadline, messing up Chan's grand plan.

Now, it seems the questionable Chan has somehow convinced Ramos to fall back in line and has enlisted the questionably-stable Kevin Lamoureux to make some hay with the invention of a new tale for the media.

At least it isn't dull.

--------------------------

Both Samyn and Chantal Hebert [UPDATE: as did Mia] wax eloquent about Gary Doer's new status as the official dean of the First Ministers' club. It will be very interesting over the next few years to see Manitoba's place on the national scene even more elevated and what that could mean for the Keystone Province.

"Intriguing" possibility?

The Canadian sports media is all atwitter today with the latest speculation an NHL team may land back in Winnipeg.

Of course the most obvious thing to say is, "wouldn't that be ironic?"

Ironic, as Hugh's Jets promise during the election campaign was roundly pilloried as a Hail Mary pass he couldn't possibly deliver on. And a community that was already burned -- burned badly -- by the economics of the NHL didn't take too well to the notion.

Jack Reimer expressed publicly what other Tories were facing on the doorstep -- Conservative stalwarts pissed right off about Hugh playing fast and loose with the public purse strings even before he had a chance to sit in the big chair.

Now, Hugh likely would have lost anyway, without the Jets gaffe. He had tried to gain momentum with his Crime and Punishment tour the previous week, to no apparent avail.

Crime is a salient issue. But as we saw, there was no evidence that it was pushing voters either away from the NDP or towards the Conservatives. On top of all that, crime tends to be a bigger issue in bedrock NDP core area and north end ridings, not the south and west suburbs which were the key battlegrounds.

Let's not forget as well that it seems unlikely Gary Doer would have pulled the plug and gone to the people if NDP internal polling showed anything remotely like Probe's picture of a 40-40 tie in the pre-election period.

We could go on at length about a variety of other reasons the Tories didn't gain ground in the writ period, but actually lost ground (not least of which was their disastrous TV ad campaign). But we will spare our readers a rehash of much of what has already been in the mainstream media.

Huey has already opined that it would be ironic in his view if the NHL actually did come back to the Peg, as it would have proved him right all along.

Of course that is nonsense.

If the Jets -- or a team of another name -- ever comes back, the private backers and Gary Doer will have to do a hell of a job convincing Manitobans they are not busting the treasury wide open and that the team has long term prospects that seem realistic in a market that may balk at tickets ranging anywhere from $40 - $120 per seat.

But if all the stars align, and the Jets do come back, it will not be because Hugh McFadyen was cheated. For all his promising of a return of the Jets within four years, the public knew better. If the NHL returns, it will be because a lot of advance work has been done by Mark Chipman, et al, as well as the leadership of the private sector and the Doer government in forging ahead with the MTS Centre.

After that, it will be a lot of hard work by private proponents and a whole lot of factors we do not control coming together to shine on Winnipeg.

Alas, hindsight, the greatest of all lenses

Jack Reimer blames Huey's Jets promise for his demise in Southdale.

"I told the people at the door, I said, there's no way I would be part of any government that's going to give public funding to a professional hockey team to get them back in here," CBC reports Reimer saying.

"Definitely, it couldn't have come from someone that's been around politics for years and can sense — there's a certain sense and a certain smell that you can put with certain things," he added.

He is also quoted in other media claiming the first time he heard of the Jets promise was down at the MTS Centre where he had been summoned.

So, on the phone that fateful May 7 morning, Jack is commanded to the MTS Centre. Jack complies, apparently unaware of what the announcement was.

Jack arrives and is told to put on a white Jets jersey. Jack complies, still apparently unaware of what the announcement was.

Hugh makes announcement to bring back the Jets. Jack cheers enthusiastically along with the rest of the candidates, as you could clearly see in the TV coverage. He apparently still does not understand what the announcement is, as he would never countenance government involvement in bringing back the Jets.

Jack hits the doorstep. He meets voter outrage. He THEN finally understands what the announcement was all about.

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Huey and supporters have circled the wagons pretty fast around his leadership. Here's his spin, recounting how he could not get election-ready within a full year:

"There were limits to how much change I could inflict on the party," CBC quotes him as saying this morning.

Inflict?

Well, we guess we'll see how much change the party famous for back stabbing may be inflicting on Huey in the next while.

However, we actually hope Huey sticks around, surviving the inevitable slings and arrows of outrageous Tory fortune.

If he is given the chance, will he improve over the next four years? Quite possibly.

Will he be a formidable foe, though? Quite unlikely.

He is arrogant, self-satisfied and cannot shake his backroom-boy approach to the job.

More importantly, let's not forget the PCs would need to gain 10 seats now -- that's right, TEN seats -- in order to form a bare majority in the house.

And most of those seats they would need to take from the NDP are in Winnipeg. So which ones are they?

Every Winnipeg seat they targetted in this election, including ones gained by the NDP in 2003, were won by team Doer with an even greater plurality than the previous outing.

Fast forward four years from now with Erin Selby and Sharon Blady working their constituencies hard, following the example set by the 2003 "Southern Belles", transforming steals from the PCs into solid NDP seats.

Realistically, it will take a heck of a lot for the PCs to win in 2011.

We look forward to the prospect of a four-peat.

Hugh = Stu-lite

Picture Stu Murray at home last night watching the election coverage. When the dust settled, McFadyen's seat yield was less than Murray's in 2003.

He had to be laughing his ass off.

The man who faced the long knives of his party for winning only 20 seats in 2003, who ran an under-funded campaign with few Tory backroom war horses putting their shoulder to the wheel for the cause.

As Murray is reported telling people these days about that time, all the PC power brokers who shooed him into the job to replace Filmon were nowhere in sight come election time.

No cash. No horses to drive the cart.

The pundits predicted oblivion and Probe predicted NDP "landslide". But Stu held on to 20 seats. No oblivion.

Then by Fall 2005, it was over. The "committee" put enough pressure on Stu that he had to quit.

Once again the PCs lived up to their well-earned reputation of eating their own.

A year ago the Tory elite put their hopes in Huey. A new, fresh, younger, energetic face to the party of dour pessimism.

A year later. Millions of dollars spent in a campaign. Lots of hype. What have they got to show for it?

19 seats.

Chuckle on, Mr. Murray. Chuckle on.

(UPDATE: We just read our pal Tom Blowback's column, essentially the same thought as above. "Great" minds must think alike.)

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Whaaaat? Free Press declares Patrick O'Connor (who he?) in Lac du Bonnet.













(To be fair, it must be quite the scramble to put together the election edition of a newspaper, with late results and tight timelines. But we suspect this was a legacy of the mocked up page done in advance that editors forgot and left on. Good for another little E +1 chuckle, though.)

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Catherine Mitchell. Is she just channeling a grumpy old man to fit in at the FreeP editorial board or is she really that sour and cranky?

Her column today, entitled "For the PCs, tomorrow is a new day", her thesis is essentially the same as the Conservatives' radio ads over the last few days: The NDP has stolen the campaign by lying; we've been cheated.

Check this out: "But this is an extraordinary third majority of the NDP and it will not last either."

Geez. Thanks, Catherine (or can we call you Cathy?). You've really cleared up that democracy, people-have-a-choice thing that was confusing us about the next election.

--------------------

Probing polls

Compare the popular vote today to Probe's published results last week.

Probe poll: NDP - 44%, PC - 37%, Lib - 16%

Election 2007: NDP - 48%, PC - 38%, Lib - 12%

So, not as far out at the 2003 "landslide" prediction, but they show some interesting things.

If the Probe poll was an accurate snapshot, then Liberals were tanking in the dying days of the campaign.

Why would that be? Most according to Probe felt the NDP was on a winning trajectory anyway. So fear of a Tory win was not squeezing Liberal considerers in the run up to election day to strategically support the NDP in a raw anti-Tory push.

In fact, if the last days of the campaign were any indication, the PCs were desperate to shore up their base support with Hugh's accusations of Doer "lying", etc. and their angry, nay, desperate radio ads over the long weekend accusing Gary Doer of every malfeasance in the book and urging voters to simply "vote against the NDP".

So if anyone showed signs of sliding in terms of their campaign activity, it was the PCs.

Now, anyone who read to the bottom of the story would see that the Probe poll was only just outside the claimed margin of error of 3.5% of the actual result.

So, one has to conclude either the Liberals were never up to 16% and Probe's methodology for whatever reason propped them up beyond their strength. Or, four per cent of Liberal support ran to the NDP in the last week of the campaign for no apparent reason.

Hmmm.

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And lastly, a big congratulations, Mr. Doer.

A good reason why Hugh will not only lose today, but deserve to lose

Pictured above is not a piece of NDP propaganda. It's the headline from the May 16 editorial in the Thompson Citizen.

Now, many of you southern folks will say, "Thompson Citizen? Yellow-dog NDP country. Who cares?"

While it's true "Landslide Ashton" has a strong hold on the northern seat (although he first won a gazillion years ago by just a hair), the Thompson Citizen is no NDP cheering section. In fact, not long ago it proclaimed its support for Huey McFading as premier.

That has changed -- hoo boy, has it ever.

And the reason why they had a change of heart is laid out plain in the editorial. Refering to McGriddle's agriculture policy announcement in Brandon earlier this month, the Citizen says:

"McFadyen accused the NDP of politicizing where highway dollars are spent. He said that the Conservatives would spend the same $400 million a year on highway(s), but if elected, his government would cahnge how the money is allotted, which would mean more spending in the south...

"A premier needs to represent the entire province and not only the regions where you have high support. Why even run candidates in the four northern ridings, if the region is going to be treated in this manner? He certainly has it right in Flin Flon where there is no Tory candidate (on) the ballot."

And it ends with a blistering line:

"In fact, McFadyen, you aren't welcome in Thompson."

Now, apparently the Conservative campaign denies saying the above statement, which was reported in the Brandon Sun by Curtis Brown. Brown stands by the report.

So, what is the relevance of an editorial in a regional newspaper? A lot actually.

They hit the point on the head. As premier, you have to govern for the whole province, despite where your political base is.

This is something we have seen since 1999. Despite little hope of winning in southern Manitoba yellow-dog Tory seats, there has been plenty of government largesse all over the province. Certainly, the north has seen a significant increase over the Filmon years, to make up for years of under-investment. But no one can credibly claim neglect in PC stronghold seats.

This is what it takes to be premier -- even premier-in-waiting. To be premier you can't just be a glorified mayor of Winnipeg with a rural rump in your pocket.

His crass position to cater for southern votes is a clear symbol of McFadyen's lack of appreciation of the entire province. Which means not only will he lose today and severely underperform expectations, but he also deserves to lose.

E minus one ...

Mia tears into Hugh's poor grasp of his own numbers.

"Will the tax cuts cost $586 million? $682 million? $723 million? $800 million? I’ve heard all the figures this week from Hugh and Gerald Hawranik."

Wow. This from the party of fiscal probity?

The guy can't explain where he thinks the money is coming from and he can't even explain how much money he's talking about.

And they get angry when it's asserted he probably can't do it without cutting core government services?

And they wonder why Hugh is tanking.

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Overall, Dan is lukewarm on the parties' ads in this campaign.

No one seems to meet the Sausage Man's broadcast standards, with the NDP at the top of the pack, eking out a B+.

But he saves his worst for the beleaguered Tories:

"An ad the Tories call 'Worried' is beyond hyperbole; it's downright dangerous in its irresponsible portrayal of downtown Winnipeg. It's hard to tell if the ad people think this gloomy image is realistic, or whether they are aware they're essentially lying to voters."

The thing that's the most important here, and a point Dan misses altogether, is not whether journalists like them or not -- it's whether they seem to be effective in changing voter opinion.

And if the Probe poll is any indication, the NDP's ads work. The Liberals do not. And the Conservatives' ads are helping the NDP.

On that note, word is that the PC ad guru in this campaign is Barb Biggar -- former Filmon communications supremo who has put out her shingle in the private sector for over a decade now. She has a reputation as a shrewd, smart operator.

This campaign, however, may well tarnish that rep. Screaming man? What were you thinking?

And the NDP is responsible for feeling unsafe in empty parking garages at night? Whaaaa?

We've always felt uneasy in parking garages -- yes, even when Gary Filmon was premier. Even before that, too.

It's one of the biggest cliche scenes in Hollywood's vocabulary. And now, according to Team McFadyen, the NDP invented it.

Yeah, not just irresponsible, but more importantly they really missed the mark and it's not connecting with voters.

Just how far off the mark we'll see on Tuesday.

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Hugh goes after government advertising in a pre-election period:

"McFadyen acknowledged that is something all governments have been known to do, including the former Tory government in 1999 when he was the party’s chief of staff. In fact, in May 1999, McFadyen was advised in a memo from the Tories' campaign manager to run government ads on health care and education because the NDP were gaining on those issues."

Hmmm. So we guess he would have some inside information on this issue.

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Funniest column of the campaign: our pal Bunkbeck's blog, entitled: "Doer smarter than your average chicken."

Oddest moment: Huey calling Doer "desperate" and "a liar", then feeling no shame in claiming the Tories have run a "positive campaign".

Even Huey's team having a change of heart?

A campaign shocker was on hand with the revelation, shown at left, that the sweatermobile itself seemed to be changing allegiances.

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What about Probe's polling? Whew! What a ton of charts, graphs, margins of error, parsing of entrails.

We loved hearing Probe supremo Scott McKay on CJOB radio saying the NDP is on a steep decline track -- since 2003! Wow, that decline may have legs by 2011.

Anyway, the interesting thing is McKay doesn't compare his election numbers to his last public poll, showing team Huey and team Gary tied.

There was no explanation why the NDP fortunes have consistently risen over most of the past year in his numbers. Hmmm.

And as usual, the former Liberal Party pollster threw Jon Gerrard a lifeline with giving the doctor some 16% in the polls (guaranteed it won't be that high on Tuesday night) and "minor momentum" of 1% (what the heck is "momentum"? -- never saw that metric before).

Anyway, apparently people's perception of Huey during the campaign has gone down -- a lot. The common wisdom after Tuesday will be that McFadyen blew it with the now-infamous Jets announcement.

We're not so sure.

We believe it's actually the Tory advertising that's mainly to blame.

Their "air war" campaign has been dominated by amateurish, even bizarre ad spots throughout the campaign (including the "revolving door" spot that has Hugh awkwardly throwing down a stack of newspaper headlines and the crazy ranting poor-man's Rick Mercer).

After the election, the PC's in their truest tradition will start sharpening their knives for Hugh -- though he will likely survive that. But more usefully, they should turf their advertising firm.

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Regarding that ranting guy, who is he? Every local actor we have spoken to says they don't know who he is. Did the Tories have to resort to out of town talent? Hmmm.

Maybe they kept him around to play chicken-man.

Six more sleeps ...

Tuesday is election day. Wow it went fast. Wow nothing really happened.

People liked Gary Doer a month ago. Hey, guess what! They still like him.

Global says the Probe poll is in the paper tomorrow morning and reports a few nuggets, like that Hugh has run a campaign no better than Gerrard's. Hmm. Whatever that means.

The Probe Full Monte tomorrow, eh? You know how we like those.

We will chat about that, for sure.

Meanwhile, get a load of Hugh's mug from the Free Press site here -- during his editorial board drone-fest. Looks like an excited chap.

This one's making the journalism rounds ...

For your amusement: