CBC.ca's Ontario election commentators sat down last night to watch the leaders slug it out in a televised debate. We asked David Docherty and Don Wanagas to compare notes on how the contest played out.
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No matter how clever or media-friendly their campaigns are, party leaders who start the race at a distant third in public support can hardly be surprised if they don't get the same attention as the frontrunners.

But there is another reason that the New Democratic Party is struggling to be a player in the campaign of 2003: the party at the other end of the political spectrum has essentially ignored it.
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For a while there, it looked like the Conservatives might actually catch a few breaks this week in their campaign to staunch the flow of public opinion away from them and into the Liberal pond.
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As we hit the middle of the election campaign, a recurring theme has emerged from the Conservative camp. There have been subtle – and some not so subtle – messages to the province's most socially conservative voters that the Tories are listening to their concerns.
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It was no coincidence that the man the Ontario Liberals dispatched to respond to the attack ads directed at their leader by embattled Conservative forces happened to be the party's deputy whip, George Smitherman.
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Recent electoral history suggested that this would be a very negative personal campaign, even though conventional wisdom suggests that negative campaigns simply turn off the electorate. But in this case, conventional wisdom is wrong. Like Willie Sutton, who robbed banks because "that's where the money is," political parties go negative because that's where the votes are.
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When Premier Ernie Eves called Ontarians to the polls this week, he said voters would have a clear choice when they cast their ballots on Oct. 2: They can stick with him and a Progressive Conservative government that has worked hard the past eight years to protect people's interests. Or they can throw in their lots with free-spending Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty and "his special interest friends."
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There is an old definition of slapstick that runs something like this: A man is walking down the road and up ahead of him is an open manhole cover. We see the man's feet, then the open manhole. As the man gets closer and closer, we anticipate he will fall down the manhole. He concentrates on the manhole and neatly swerves to avoid falling in.
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