A few observations re #CPCLeadership:

First, props to Erin O'Toole and his campaign. This thing should have been a foregone conclusion. MacKay entered with all the endorsements, all the name recognition, all the structural advantages. It should have been a slam for him #cdnpoli

But MacKay - who has always seemed better at politics than he's actually been at politics - made a ton of unforced errors and emerged blurry. Still, the more significant factor IMO is that O'Toole ran a better campaign: a clear strategy... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

…a clear message, gave SoCons a comfortable second stop and outhustled on organization. MacKay lost it. But that's not a complete telling of the real story. O'Toole won it. Sometimes you run the better campaign and it doesn't matter. This time it did #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

So, O'Toole is the winner. Now he has three tasks. First, he has to introduce himself to Canadians. The public knew MacKay. The camera blesses him. Voters were unthreatened by him. He was familiar. O'Toole is a stranger... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

...and he must figure out how to stop selling to Conservatives alone and start selling to the public. Trudeau has vulnerabilities. To leverage them, you must first meet the test of not disqualifying yourself as an option. #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

That means O'Toole has to move quickly to tell people who he is before his opponents do it for him. And they will - because, man, his opponents have been handed a shit-load to work with after this race. The same crisply defined message that beat MacKay... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Could become the foundation of a failed general election outing. This is O'Toole's second task: He must reconcile his 'True Blue' brand and his appeal to SoCons with the need to build a voter coalition that is bound to be suspicious of these attributes #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

This is the part where my #CPC pals will rush in and tell me I'm wrong, that I'm exaggerating and that this is the hoary old chestnut of Libs shaming/scaremongering re SoCons. But I'm sorry, that's horseshit. It is a real problem. A huge and real problem. #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

First, they will tell you that Conservatives win when they run as Conservatives. Not really. They win when voters are exhausted by years and years of incumbent Lib governments and they finally turn to the Cons as part of an unstoppable desire for change. #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Second, they win when they move to the middle and shave off the SoCon edges. What did Harper do after 2004? He put the f***king clamp down on the Randy Whites to ensure that he didnt have to carry that big heavy bag of SoCon rocks around in a gen elxn #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Since he left we've seen twice in a row that you cannot seem to win the party's ldrship without embracing the SoCons. Scheer was one and that was easy. O'Toole has either become one or sufficiently masqueraded as one to get their votes. Either way... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

He bears that burden now and he has to figure it out. The second thing that Cons will tell you is that Leslyn Lewis has shown there's a way to be a SoCon and remain appealing. Don't believe it. Yes, she outperformed expectations. #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Yes, she's a living example of the voter coalition they need to build to win - urban, female, not old and white. But I am a contrarian on her upside. She's compelling. But I don't believe packaging SoCon views better makes those views acceptable to voters #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

In fact, I think there's a HUGE risk that my friends in the #CPC will convince themselves that they've found a way to nuance and present SoCon policies to the public as part of a spectrum of acceptable opinion. That would be nice for them to think #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Because it suggests that they might be able to avoid choices that are hard as hell and that involve taking stands that might alienate key portions of their base in order to appeal more broadly. All parties must deal with this hardship. But... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

the modern post-Harper edition of the #CPC has made this challenge uniquely brutal on itself. They are now so reliant on the SoCons in intramural exercises that standing up to them later becomes a punishing thing to contemplate. So pretending the circle #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

can be squared by putting Leslyn Lewis on TV is just that: Pretending. It won't hit O'Toole tomorrow. Or next week. It won't rob him of the ability to slam Liberals right away out of the gate. But before the next elxn O'Toole has to box up and contain #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

the SoCons just like Harper did after '04. Or he will lose, just like Scheer did. And it isn't JUST the SoCons. It's also the extremism. Destroying the CBC, absenteeism on climate change and other positions that his social media campaign highlighted #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Now become coalition killers. They become barriers to a big tent approach. And he has to figure that out. My guess is that we'll see a false start. His team will bullshit themselves into believing these things can be reconciled. Maybe by whispering that... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

he's always been a moderate at heart and he just did what he had to do in order to beat MacKay. That won't work. The real secret of his campaign's success was coherence. Replacing that with incoherence in appealing to the general public would be a... #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

violation of their own logic. Hard choices and clear positions are required or he will run into the same brick wall that is still stenciled with Scheer's outline. If MacKay had won he could have done it because his victory would have been a mandate. #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

But O'Toole's win means that no such mandate exists. It will require a breach of one sort or another - with the voters that gave him the leadership. Or the voters that hold the key to 24 Sussex. The third task O'Toole faces is Quebec. Sure, he won it #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

hands down in the ldrshp and that spelled MacKay's Waterloo. But that counts for nothing in the general. It isn't even so much that O'Toole has to win even Harper-esque seat totals - the Libs and BQ make the province tough. But like climate change #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

he can't afford to send a signal of indifference. Compete for those Bleu seats, win a few of them, connect with Legault and get better at French. Making that effort is vital to avoiding self-disqualification. It will also make him a better Leader #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership

Final point: The voting debacle. It was a mess. It hands opponents and media a talking point/question mark. But it doesn't matter. It's all about what comes next, not what happened on a Sunday during the summer during COVID. No one watched anyway #cdnpoli #CPCLeadership