Jack Layton needed to kick serious butt tonight in the English language debate if he had any chance to replace Dion and the Liberals as official opposition.
He failed. He had the best one liners, and you could say he won the debate, because he did. But he did not win it in a way that will advantage the NDP.
He spent most of the night attacking Harper, when he should have been all over Dion.
Did Layton dislodge any Conservative voters who will now vote for the NDP? No.
Did his attacks on Harper persuade voters for any of the other hippy parties to vote for the NDP? No. Those leaders were repeating the same attacks.
Layton needed to distinguish himself, and by merely being the best of the left in attacking Harper, he did nothing to increase his vote count. At the end of the day, I don't know if the NDP will end up getting any more seats at all after such a wasted effort.
Opportunity lost. Oh well, you can bet the new NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, won't make the same mistake.
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6 comments:
He went after Dion a fair amount. It will be interesting to see how the polls react to this. I predict that the NDP will pass the Liberals by Monday.
No Taliban Jack did not win the debate. He resorted to sleazy personal attacks on Harper and Dion during the entire debate. That is not debating.
Debating means point counterpoint and he did not do that. He just kept using tired attacks like the sweater and Bush tactic. Made him look ridiculous.
He will never be PM in this country.
I laughed so hard when he said at the end Just take a deep breath and do it. I wondered yeah a deep breath of what???
I thought Layton had a good debate. Those who can't see through his smarmy lies might possibly be influenced by him. Dion certainly blew the debate entirely.
I have read a lot of people say May did well, maybe she had some substance, I just found her to be soooo damn annoying. Forgive me, I usually don't get bothered my peoples style, voice, accent (Dion's English does not bother me at all).............but listening to May makes me want to vomit.
Harper took the punches nicely, it made him look good when they were all ganging up on him. He came out with a few scratches, not cuts. At the worst, people might say he did neutral, to be fair I think he did good, not great.
I am begining to like Duceppe a lot, he does have an interesting way with the English language.
Ditto in regards to the Layton swearter comment, tasteless. I think the man is secretly in love with George Bush or something. I wonder how many times he has said that name during the course of a day for the past 5 years.
Dion.............not much to say.
Layton has to attack Harper because Harper is the Prime Minister and has policies that are opposed to Layton's. When Layton attacks Harper, he attracts those who vote Liberal because they are under the mistaken impression that Dion is Harper's challenger.
And Layton got the best quip of the night against Dion.
I agree, le politico. Like I said in my most recent post, his performance mirrored that of Joe Clark in 2000 (whose efforts won him his seat in Calgary centre and ensured vote splitting on the right). Thus, electing more Liberals.
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