With the Ontario election campaign sputtering to a finish, Ernie Eves has been reduced to this: “We are not toast.”
As stirring defiance in the face of overwhelming odds goes, it’s no “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.” Any canvasser motivated to hit the bricks and take their lumps at the doorstep after that speech is a true believer indeed.
Not toast? Ernie and company are a full-on breakfast buffet. Not that it’s easy to stare certain defeat in the face… especially when the rules of politics dictate that you can’t admit publicly just how screwed you truly are.
In genuinely dire emergencies, some politicians do wave the white flag to avert total annihilation. Ujjal Dosanjh admitted in the dying days of the 2001 B.C. election that the Liberals were going to take the election, and pleaded with voters not to give Gordon Campbell carte blanche. We ended up with two MLAs. (Quality over quantity can only take you so far.)
Others give a contrite “I’ve heard you.” President Bush I told voters shortly before the 1996 election that he’d been chastened by their anger, and there was no longer any need to punish him at the polls; it didn’t work any better than Dosanjh’s concession.
So forget terms of surrender. The consensus seems to be: Don’t hand your opponents a morale-booster, and don’t take the wind out of your own supporters’ sails. “The only poll that matters is the one on election day,” you say with a brave grin. Or “Our internal polls show that the momentum has shifted.” (This doesn’t necessarily have to be a lie, provided nobody guesses that the shift in question is an acceleration downwards.) Or — if things are just painfully frigging bleak — “A week is a long time in politics.”
Anything but “We are not toast.”
