Angry in the Great White North

Can the Liberals form a government?   Not likely, say senior Liberals speaking to Bob Fife of CTV News:

Now senior Liberals are telling me in a best case scenario that they have right now is that they might win 120 seats. Well, 120 seats does not give them the role of the government so they've got their work cut out for them if they head into an election campaign. And they are determined to do that. It will be a hard slog for Mr Ignatieff to be able to come out ahead as a Liberal minority government. It's not going to be easy.

Best case is 120 seats, means there is an outside chance of the Liberals forming a minority government.  But that's an outside chance, at best, especially since it is possible that with 120 seats, the Conservatives could still have slightly more.  Clearly the Liberals are expecting a more likely outcome, in their view, of a weaker Conservative minority, with the Liberals falling somewhere well short of 120 seats.

So Michael Ignatieff is not the prime minister, and the Liberals have spent millions to get nowhere.

Or have they?

From January 2008, when Michael Ignatieff announced he was supporting the Conservative budget:

While Ignatieff said he hadn't spoken to [NDP leader Jack] Layton on Wednesday, the Liberal leader wouldn't rule out the possibility of a future coalition.

"I won't exclude any hypotheses ," he said "A coalition that has done this good work may also still have opportunities to serve the national interest."

Michael Ignatieff clearly has problems with any coalition that includes the Bloc Quebecois.  But he also believes, I think, that the Liberals can significantly increases their seat count if an election is held this fall. 

Maybe Michael Ignatieff wants to get back to the standings at the beginning of the 39th parliament.  After the votes were cast, the Conservatives had 124 seats, the Liberals 103, the Bloc Quebecois 51, and the NDP 29.  There was also one independent. 

Under this configuration, a Liberal-NDP coalition would have sufficient seats to outnumber the Conservatives.  No formal promise of support from the Bloc Quebecois would be required.  And this plan doesn't even require reaching the unrealistic plateau of 120 seats, and it also allows for the NDP to drop a huge number of seats, which many expect will happen in a fall election.

Speaking with his typical pedantic arrogance, Michael Ignatieff never excluded the hypothesis of a coalition sometime in the future.  Well, the future is now.  I am certain that Michael Ignatieff and the hawks in the Liberal Party, desperate for power and for the access to money that comes with government, have set their goals lower than winning.

But then Michael Ignatieff has never had to win anything to get to where he is today. 

Michael Ignatieff got himself appointed leader of the Liberal Party without fighting a leadership contest.  Michael Ignatieff himself appointed as candidate for the safe Liberal seat of Etobicoke-Lakeshore without fighting a nomination contest.

When, exactly, was the last time Michael Ignatieff actually earned something against a determined foe?  It seems like somebody hands him the prize for just showing up.

What is Michael Ignatieff's plan for a fall election?  Just show up, lose, and somebody will still hand him the prize.

It's not just his strategy. It's his style.

The Liberals under Michael Ignatieff don't need to defeat the Conservatives.  They just want to turn the clock back to before Stephane Dion led the Liberals to disaster.  The only good thing that Stephane Dion did was break the taboo about a coalition with the NDP.  So if the Liberals could return to the seat count before Stephane Dion defeated Michael Ignatieff for the Liberal Party leadership, Michael Ignatieff will embrace that one legacy of Stephane Dion's, and get himself appointed prime minister without actually winning the election.

Michael Ignatieff made certain in January not to rule out a way to play out his favourite strategy for winning without actually winning.

Don't exclude the hypothesis.  Michael Ignatieff didn't.

[And Michael Ignatieff's denials are ambiguous at best, based on the falsehood that circumstances in January are the same as now.]