The English debates on Thursday night turned out to be much more exciting due to the inclusion of an additional debater in the televised debates.
No, no, I’m not referring to Elizabeth May, (although I thought her performance was both intelligent and effective).
No, I’m referring to Steve Paikin, the supposed ‘moderator’ of the debate.
Much to my disbelief, Paikin actually entered the debate himself after Stephen Harper reacted to Layton’s factually correct statement that Harper had been the head of an organization whose stated goal was (and still is) the destruction of Canada’s healthcare system.
Harper reacted by saying, “Let me just be very quick on this. I use the public health care system. My family uses the public health care system. In fact, in the last federal election campaign at one point it turned out I was the only national leader actually who had used exclusively the public health care system.” (source)
Harper was perfectly within his rights to make that point — in fact, in my opinion, it would have still been perfectly within his rights to even elaborate on the point and try to stick the knife into Layton further if he thought it would advance his case. That’s debating. That’s the whole point. At the same time though, Layton should have been perfectly within his right to retort that he didn’t pay for his hernia operation, it was covered through his OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) card and thus he never cue-jumped and never went outside the public health care system.
But what came next was completely unexpected. ‘Moderator’ Steve Paikin actually stopped the debate there and entered the debate himself. Just to make sure that the public understood precisely the reference that Stephen Harper was making, Steve Paikin not only repeated the claim himself, but further elaborated on it by giving the name of the clinic and so forth. Paikin thus saved Harper from having to get himself bloody, by personally ensuring that the knife was into Layton deep enough.
Layton, obviously flummoxed by being attacked on both sides by the moderator and the Conservative leader, only retorted that the grand daughter of Tommy Douglas (an NDP supporter) thinks that that qualifies as public health care.
In my opinion, Layton collapsed like a house of cards for about the next 20 minutes of the debate, clearly having lost the vigour, energy and confidence that had characterized his performance prior to the Paikin incident.
Because of this incident, I was shocked to learn that Layton had placed second (behind Harper) in the English language debate according to the polling firm Ipsos-Reid. I was certain that he would have fared much worse.
But then again, I thought that Gilles Duceppe slaughtered everyone else at the French Language debate, but Ipsos-Reid gave the debate to Dion (who I thought at best tied Harper for third behind Layton and Duceppe). I also thought that the English debate would have been called for Elizabeth May who, in my opinion, was the winner, but Ipsos had her in third.
I guess I should get out of the debate predicting business and stick to the polling and seat projection business.
It’s been my experience that Marxists are a peculiar bunch. Peculiar not in a bad way necessarily, but just peculiar nonetheless. Most of the orthodox Marxists I’ve met want people to get engaged in politics; want people to get interested in politics and social movements; but we just don’t want people to be interested in what I suppose can be termed the ‘pop culture’ elements of politics at all.
Paulitics 
Tories tank in the East, NDP hits 1 year high nationally
Published 31 July, 2007 Atlantic Canada , Canadian Politics , Canadian Politics (domestic) , Conservative Party , current events , Dion , Elections , Elizabeth May , Green Party , Harper , Layton , Liberal Party , NDP , New Brunswick , Newfoundland , news , News, Commentary & Op/Ed , Nova Scotia , politics , Polls , Progressive , socialist realism 6 CommentsUsing the highly accurate technique used in the polling industry known as the ‘rolling average’ (the concept of which is familiar to anybody who’s visited the Paulitics Polling Resource), it is obvious that the Conservatives are in trouble in Atlantic Canada.
Now, before I show you the actual graph of rolling averages for every poll conducted in Atlantic Canada in the past six months, do keep in mind that the technique of rolling averages, by definition, makes huge swings in popular support less marked. Thus, both spikes and drops in support tend to be flattened and appear less dramatic.
So, with that, let’s look at the rolling averages for Atlantic Canada courtesy of the Paulitics Provincial/Regional Polling Resource.
So, on the 28th of March of this year, the Conservatives were at roughly 37% in support in Atlantic Canada, which was an improvement over their 34.7% showing in the last federal election. However, since then, the Conservatives have dropped 12.4% — not in an individual poll, but in the rolling average of polls.
Put another way: Take 3 Atlantic Canadians who voted Tory in the last election. Now take one of them away and dress him in either NDP orange or Green and what’s left is how many Atlantic Canadians polls suggest would vote Tory in the next election.
Moreover, at the national level, we see declining support for both the Liberals and the Conservatives as demonstrated here (in fact the combined Liberal & Conservative parties’ rolling average has never, in the past 12 months of rolling averages, been lower than it currently is: 62.4%).
So take these two phenomena together and we have very bad news for the two mainstream, uber-capitalist parties; very good news for the three smaller, less capitalistic parties; and even worse news for Peter MacKay.
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