duceppe is a good debater, and he zinged all three of them. mulcair is again great at articulating a terrible set of arguments that don't belong attached to the ndp, and trudeau is again saying the right things, if at times unconvincingly and often times smugly. and i couldn't care less what harper says. same old same old.

the duceppe factor is what is important, here. see, he can take positions the others can't because he's not actually running for prime minister. so, letting him into the debate immediately changes the narrative. he also has different swing issues with each of the other parties, fighting with harper for caq votes, trudeau for liberal votes (however unlikely) and mulcair for pq votes.

he got a few good ones in on trudeau, particularly relating to his more right-leaning positions. corporate taxes. free trade. these are the reasons that people like me would *like* to vote for the ndp, if their leader wasn't such an obvious conservative. then again, we all know the liberals are a bay street party. they're just unique, in being a fair bay street party. if that helps anyone, it's mulcair.

but, remember: everything is upside down in quebec. trudeau has little to gain from duceppe, but a lot to gain by sucking right-leaning provincial liberal support away from harper and mulcair. it's the right argument to make, in quebec. even if it leaves people like me gritting my teeth, and wishing the ndp hadn't fallen down the rabbit hole.

something strange happened about halfway through the debate, though. duceppe seemed to begin to subtly indicate, several times, that he was endorsing trudeau. it's just the way he presented things, to make trudeau appear in a more favourable light than mulcair. subtle? very. who knows if it gets picked up. but, it's there, and is likely reflective of internal bloc calculations. if you want to call them that. the bloc campaign at this point is not exactly highly funded.

so long as duceppe is showing up at these things, he is going to win almost every debate. he's just not as restricted in what he can do, and it gives him a massive advantage. but, i'm not convinced he's going to win very many seats. it's hard to guess how a four way split like this turns out....

i don't see an obvious winner, otherwise. duceppe maybe hit trudeau harder than he hit the other two. but, the nature of the quebec spectrum is such that it might actually help him. he seems to have hit harper off guard repeatedly, leaving him without any kind of coherent response: he just stated things unconvincingly. and, while mulcair was maybe most prepared, his responses were quite often cringeworthy from a left-of-centre perspective.

i don't see it affecting the unfolding of existing trends

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/french-language-debate-party-leaders-quebec-1.3255075