Liberals Convert the Choir, Seek After Faithful With Platform: Day 9

For those following the election closely, today was bound to be a monumental one, either for good or ill, for each of the main parties. The Liberals announced their platform today, titled "Your Family. Your Future. Your Canada.", which borrowed heavily from the Tory strategy in 2006 to provide 5 key planks and then a bundle of other details. The question is did it work though?

The answer heavily influences who won today's battle on the campaign trail and, given the feedback and optics of this platform release, there is relative ease in saying that the Tories were quite happy with what they saw today. While it was obvious in reading through the highlights of the Liberal document that the opposition party is heavily relying on retail politics, the scope of target voters that would appreciate the document, combined with the fact that the economy is hardly highlighted will be giving the Conservatives an extra edge during the remaining month of the election period. The media has been constantly reminding us for years that Canadians don't love Stephen Harper, they just respect him and it's hardly a struggle to see the average Canadian's opinion of Harper's premiership during the economic downturn as being a major influencing factor. The Liberals, while running a very good campaign, image-wise, so far, have mistaken people warming up to Micheal Ignatieff's smiling face for a budding trust in him to manage the economy. If the Tories begin to wake up and put these factors together, it would be a lethal month that the Liberals are now facing. The document is far too insular, attempting to appease recent Liberal base grievances with the Conservatives while failing to understand just why Canadians sent the blue party to Ottawa with successively stronger minority mandates during the last five years.

Put another way, for those who loath the incumbent Prime Minister are frustrated with his ability to attain 40% nationally in recent polls just by hum-hawing through the last week of campaigning, just imagine what he'll be pushing if his team clues into the gift that Mr. Ignatieff just handed him...