Rachel Notley Owned the Night

The story at the #abvotes Leadership debate was of Jim Prentice making the biggest tactical error of a career full of them.

He spent the night building up Alberta's already popular NDP leader into an unquestioned legitimate contender to the highest office in the province.  At every opportunity, repeatedly and ostentatiously he turned his back on Liberal leader David Swann and Wild Rose leader Brian Jean.  The intent was to diminish them both with a priority on blunting the Wild Rose (Though both assisted mightily in promoting their irrelevance, Swan with his cadaverous, ghost at the wedding stage presence, a tired old man who knows what vote he had has fled to the NDP and Jean with his wide vacant eyes and child's haircut, for all the world Opie from the Andy Griffith Show as played by William H. Macey, mindlessly droning his single message anti-tax right wing orthodoxy.) and that it most certainly did, but if Prentice thought it was safe to promote Rachel Notley based on the assumption she can't win in the country he may have miscalculated badly, we will know in a little more than a week.

The spectacularly condescending and pompous "I know the math is difficult" gaffe is going to do more damage than people think - possibly fatal damage.

I think the credibility he afforded Rachel Notley, combined with his own unlikable, insufferable prick demeanour and her sunny but no nonsense professional presentation sent a lot of on the fence voters Notley's way.