Nothing is set in stone yet

(Politics again, at least to start things off. You have been warned)

I made a mistake and spent the last 10 minutes of my evening on Wednesday watching the political analysts on CBC discussing the upcoming election. They are all certain that the Conservatives are going to walk into a majority on May 2, and that sent me into a teeth-grinding fit of frustration as I was trying to get to sleep.

But finally, after tossing back and forth for almost an hour, I realized something about the nature of polling and the alchemy of elections. No matter what a particular poll might say, the election isn’t final until the votes have been counted. What a tiny sample group may have said to a phone pollster is a poor indicator of the actual mood of the country’s millions of voters.

But creating this illusion of certainty and inevitability works in the Conservative’s favour. It is the laziest way to court the undecided voter. I suspect that a lot of these voters are the people who want to go with the flow and they will vote the way that the country expects them to vote. The party puts forth the assumption ‘we are going to win a majority’ and the media starts to repeat it, strengthening the claim. A few selectively chosen poll results are tossed into the mix, and voila! The people of the fence vote blue, and democracy gets a kick in the throat. And, by giving in to the despair myself, I was adding strength to this version of the political reality.

So what does that mean for anyone who is passionate about getting rid of Harper? It means we have to stop accepting the failure narrative. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. We have to make our voices heard as we spread the message to the undecided in the middle: There is hope. Everything is not yet lost. WE CAN WIN.

I mean, c’mon, we’re up against a pudgy white bread of a man who’s afraid of reporters and one-on-one debates. He’s hoping that most of us stay quiet and stop asking the questions that make him look bad. Because when we ask questions, the decent people in his party start to ask too, and the answers might just make those sensible Conservatives stay home.

I think I Leveled…

Which is nerdspeak for ‘I have just achieved the next rank in this task/profession’. I am now one Dad level higher than previously, and it strangely had almost nothing to do with Max.

We went out to the Oldtimer’s Charity hockey game tonight, just the wife and I. During the second period, the hockey pros played against a kid’s team. The kids weren’t more than 6 or 7 years old, some of them still very wobbly on skates. I had a little flush of excitement as I thought about my little dude being out there like that someday, but this time it faded pretty quickly. This isn’t a bad thing, though. Instead of daydreaming about my own kid, I was able to watch these kids have a great time and feel good for them.

Max might end up on skates playing competitive hockey someday, but then again, maybe he won’t. There will be no shortage of interesting activities for my song and dance man, and whatever they are I will have a blast watching him and cheering him on. I’m happy that tonight I could cheer on the tykes on the ice and have just as much fun and contentment as I do when I’m watching my own boy.

Also: tonight was a nice night out on the town with my wife. The lad was teary when we were leaving, but his aunt scooped him up and cheered him up so quickly that the tears were already drying as we stepped out of the door. You never like leaving a sad boy, but he was in good hands, and it’s good for all of us to have these evenings separated from each other.