The Globe Canadian Leaders' Debate

Trudeau lost. That is what matters.

I have now had a chance to see the Globe & Mail Leaders' Debate. It ran overnight in my time zone, so I had to wait until someone made it available on YouTube.

The main impression left by the debate was the shouting, which often drowned out any comprehensible points. This was terribly unseemly, and not something that will sit well, I think, with Canadians. We are a polite people. We follow the rules.

And Trudeau seemed to be the one most responsible for it. Worse, because he seemed so much younger, it looked worse for him than it would have been for either of the others. Worse still, much of what he said did not seem to make sense, and was repetitious. He seemed overexcited, like a kid on a sugar high. I almost felt like calling for the gong.

On points, Mulcair won. He got off a few really fine lines: on Trudeau “knowing all about” smoke. On the snooze button versus the panic button. He also avoided the creepiness of the first debate. However, I think he lost ground by joining aggressively in the shouting match. And I think Trudeau winged him badly by suggesting that his talk of no deficits was just political boilerplate, that he would get in to power and declare, as always happens, that the books are far worse than he thought, and the promise would have to go. Well done, Trudeau—except that the point probably helps Harper more than the Liberals.

I think Harper won the debate in the terms these “debates” are usually won: on endearing himself to the public. If you were to try to pick the one guy up on that stage who did not sound as much like a conventional politician as the other two, it was--no doubt there is an irony here--Harper. He generally avoided the shouting match. He gave the impression that, instead of making wild promises, he was talking straight: “I never said everything was wonderful.” That tone, I think, will resonate.

Conversely, the points made against him in the debate mostly sounded like typical political jive. As the current race in the US, and the one just concluded in the UK Labour Party, have shown us, times have changed, and the old jive now no longer works. In the past, people were naively inclined to believe, if there was a recession, it must be the government's fault, and if there were good times, it must be the government's doing. Nowadays, we are more aware of what is going on in the world. So, when Trudeau gave the now-too-familiar line “are you better off now than you were ten years ago?” Harper's response was spot-on: “which country would you rather have been in over the past ten years?” Trudeau came off as the political hack, Harper as the straight talker. More notable is the post-debate attempt to nail Harper for using the term “old stock Canadians.” He use it neither approvingly nor disapprovingly. This is hyper-pc stuff, and Trump seems to have revealed, in the States, that there is no longer much of a constituency for it. Harper loses here only if he backtracks or apologizes.

However, it probably does not even matter that Harper won. Because Trudeau lost.

The Conservatives remain in the race because the alternative vote has been split almost evenly between two parties. If the Liberals now fall back, the beneficiary will be the NDP. For Harper to win, his gain will have to be bigger than the Liberals' loss.

Given Trudeau's performance, that seems unlikely.