I Refuse To Do A "Wynne" Pun

It's time for a post-mortem on Thursday's provincial election.  With Ontario's Liberals facing a billion dollar scandal, they somehow expanded their minority into a majority.

I mentioned in the past that PC leader Tim Hudak is a poor political strategist, because he tries to speak to both the centre and the far-right, alienating both in the process. This election was a good example: With the government mired in scandal, all they had to do was stand around looking reasonably competent and they'd win. But instead, he had to go and announce his plan to cut 100,000 government jobs.

It's hard to keep track of all the ways that was a bad move:

• Though the Tories wanted the spotlight on the Liberals, they moved it to themselves.
• It made the rather predictable comparisons to Mike Harris very easy.
• It pushed unions and other interest groups to pull-out all the stops.  The Liberals hardly needed to run their own attack ads with so many groups lining up to go negative.
• The centrepiece of the PC campaign was the "Million Jobs Plan" but the vagueness of that plan was emphasized when put next to a solid promise to axe thousands of jobs.
• Presenting the elimination of jobs as a campaign promise looked very out-of-touch.

The commonality in Hudak's miscalculations is that while he comes across like an ordinary guy, he doesn't understand that he sees the world through the perspective of someone deep in the Conservative machine, and thus he reacts to things in a different way than most. Lots of people think - as he does - that government is big and bloated, but he doesn't realize that most people don't translate that into a desire to eliminate jobs. Similarly, many dislike the power of unions, but most don't hate them with the passion he does.  Unfortunately, this sort of political miscalculation is likely something that we'll see more of in the future, as so many people retract into media catering to their political beliefs.

And that's why I'm a little worried going forward. A surprise loss can be a time to reflect on what's been done wrong, but it often turns into excuse-making and incredulous head-shaking about the voters. And before election night was even over, Tory-friendly media outlets were already framing the loss as a strong performance except for Toronto. And judging by what we've seen of Hudak, he's probably now mumbling angrily about labour unions conspiring against him.

As for the New Democrats, they might be more disappointed, since they did trigger the election on what they must have thought were good circumstances for themselves. At first, it looked like the irony would be that they would gain seats in the process of putting a profoundly anti-labour government in power. Instead, the irony is that they will end up with the very same seat-count, but having lost their power because the Liberals won a clear majority. It's like a political Aesop's fable.

Either way, you have to wonder what they were thinking. Combine that questionable strategy with their bland performance, and I wonder if Jack Layton's federal breakthrough has gone to their heads, and they now think they can win any campaign. Andrea Horwath came across as political and distant. She was reminiscent of the federal leaders they had following Ed Broadbent, who were competent and non-threatening, but lacking in the passion a smaller party needs.