The Ghastly Ontario Debate and the Fatal Weakness of Progressives

It only took about fifteen minutes of watching the Ontario leader's debate before I started to wish that I was watching something else. Anything else.

Or just lounging around with my friends on a lovely warm evening, like I suspect most people in the province were doing.

Because it was bad eh?

It was amateur hour. It was horribly mediocre. It was incredibly boring, in a painful depressing way. It was a REALLY bad movie. 

There should have been an onscreen warning of the dangers of operating heavy machinery while watching the Ontario election leaders’ debate. It was that much of a snoozefest...

A television horror show...



All three leaders made slips that likely didn’t play well across unforgiving TV screens. Wynne often refused to look at her opponents, choosing instead to stare straight into camera, a move that made her look rude and dismissive. Horwath often seemed as if she were reading from a teleprompter. And Hudak had a Nixonian problem with his shiny face. He could have used a little more powder, especially on that sweaty upper lip.

And the monstrous sight of Tim Hudak sweating like a pig, while grinning like a gila monster, will haunt me for a long time.

But of course the real horror was that he was allowed to get away with murder. 

The Ontario leaders debate cut to the chase Tuesday night, with the NDP and Progressive Conservative leaders piling on Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne over the scandal that dogged her predecessor before all three turned their attention to their competing plans for the economy.

Because neither Kathleen Wynne nor Andrea Horwath were able to take advantage of Hudak's million job fiasco, or point out that his plans were cooked up in the satanic kitchens of the Koch brothers...



And that Hudak is their little gila monster.

Who they would install in Ontario, liked they installed as governor of Wisconsin their brutish creature Scott Walker...



Who proceeded to rain terror down on the population, and turned the state into a battleground.

And neither Wynne or Horwath were able to even ask a simple question like: "Experts say that your plan shows you can't count? What do you say to that?

Or "Your plan was inspired and approved by some of the most extreme right-wing groups in America. Do you really want to turn Canada into that kind of society?"

Or "what about the lies you told in your latest video. Do you really expect to fool people with that ridiculous oath and that big whopper?



Or all that lipstick.

But then that's the fatal weakness of the progressive movement in Canada. It can't define its enemies properly. It can't come up with a thirty second narrative, a vessel into which all their crimes fit.

So Hudak can get away with going on and on about a gas plant, that both him and the NDP also wanted removed. End up being declared the winner.

Tim Hudak, who has struggled to connect so far in the Ontario election campaign, emerged the clear winner from a TV debate Tuesday evening that saw the Tory leader sharply differentiate his policies from those of his two opponents, while also humanizing a personal brand that had previously taken a protracted pounding.

His American-style campaign is seen as a winning formula.

He also has been studying his U.S. history; “It’s morning in America,” declared the Ronald Reagan campaign commercial in 1984. “Hope is coming,” declared Hudak in his closing remarks. For a politician long stuck in permanent attack mode, this was something new, and clever, in that it offsets the fear of Mike Harris-style negativity that still weighs on the Conservatives.

When it should be cause for concern.

And when of course there is no greater LOSER...



And all I can say is that progressives are going to have to get better at defining the Hudak and the Harper Cons, and much much more aggressive, or they will run over us like road kill.

And we're also going to have to start thinking in terms of videos, for only they can penetrate the clutter of the modern age, or the complacency of dumb Canadians, and wake them from the Big Sleep.

And the good news? I don't think that this debate will sway many voters. And this poll    seems to confirm that. 

Progressive Conservative Tim Hudak won the televised leaders’ debate but failed to close the gap with front-running Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, a new poll suggests.

Before the telecast, voters who tuned in said they preferred the Liberals over the Conservatives by 37 per cent to 31 per cent. Afterward, the Liberals were at 40 per cent and the Conservatives at 35 per cent.

But we are going to have to hit the ghastly tea bagger Tim Hudak much harder than we have so far. As we will have to attack the Harperite cult if we want to destroy them not merely defeat them. 

So when the debate was over, I threw this little video together to get the frustration out of my system and show how I would define Hudak.

Always a brutish Con.

Always a loser.

And always an American...



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