Final Stretch Blues

Political bookies have not budged from their original odds. Despite various news articles and voter polling and other dirty chicanery, the conclusion of the great national game of elect-the-PM is not in doubt. The Opposition shift was the wild card, nobody had pools on that. My smug bets on Political Maverick Jack Layton and the NDP are withering before my eyes. I don't answer the phone anymore, and there doesn't seem to be anything to believe.

The final stretch of the federal election has seen various desperate acts. Liberals, formerly quite comfortable about being the Opposition's prime spokespeople, have made certain panicked attempts at stemming the NDP flood. That flood, incidentally, might still just have been a PR break backed by ineffable poll numbers and a questionably realistic spirit of change. Similarly, the Conservatives have gunned for the NDP and have recently pulled a final smear tactic that may sway voters who are willing to believe allegations AKA everybody who was going to vote Conservative or Liberal anyway.

But the thing about politics is that even when other parties begin to panic, and the slander is thrown around, there's still no clear picture about anything. It's nice that Harper and Ignatieff are sweating, but where will the new competitive spirit lead? More sameness? Independent actors can 'reveal events' that bring campaigns, burning, to the ground. My expectation? Harper is the obvious forerunner, but Layton has had the optics from day one – still there was an insistence on Liberal/NDP backbiting. Ignatieff seems to have held on to everyone who was a Liberal before the election. In a sense it doesn't seem like anything will change, which makes all the hullabaloo rather ironic.

There is the HST question, the deficit, Family Subsidies, and the global image of Canada to worry about – among other things that are downplayed in favor of 'optics'. Well we can't just forget the G20, which managed to alarm only Canadians while the rest of the world snickered, and in view of what happened in 2011 so far, was mostly a costly and pathetic spectacle. Who can we blame for that? Is it even important to ask that question?

Mostly I'm surprised that, all things considered, the only thing that has really changed since March is the weather. If anybody was crazy enough to attempt to transcribe the whole 2011 Federal Election into music, it would be a set of absurd repetitious notes – a monotonous cacophony. Morse code. SOS. Things destabilize. When the static finally clears, the television screen blazes proudly with blue light and a reassuring message, "Canada, we are here for you."


Pity they're all here for us in disguise: