Thursday, August 28, 2014

David Cunliffe looked and sounded like a PM in waiting last night. Key?------- well----

The ‘great debate’ last night had all the markings of a ‘turning of the tide,’ for David Cunliffe. Despite the fact that the text-in’ voting broke down, he did well. The dial they had registering ‘agree or disagree,’ consistently had David in the lead. It hardly varied in its favourable response for him. DC sounded great and looked the part, even though at times he did display that slight tendency to patronise Key or to over-speak him. That wasn’t hard to do though, because Key spent most of his time, looking like a’ possum trapped in the oncoming beams of a fast approaching bus!’ I was surprised that the ‘Dirty Politics,’ issue that has dominated the scene for the last few weeks, didn’t really get a look in. For a change, we actually had sensible debate about the issues and the ‘one liners’ chucked out there, by DC seemed to paralyze Key re any sensible response, or get him to move away from the same old, same old responses. For DC this debate was most definitely a ‘make or break’ time. If he had not done well, he may as well have thrown in the towel and we would have seen the Labour Party dawdling to the finishing posts, in the knowledge that they were on a hiding to nothing. That now is not the way it is going to be. The so-called polls have had it wrong many times I the past and this time the gap between reported results and the actual ‘feelings’ on the ground are indeed wide. This election is shaping up to be far closer than many pundits would have us believe. We are going to see more debates and I suspect Key will be going to his ‘people’ to see what he can do to curb the newly found confidence of David Cunliffe. Expect some ‘more dirt to emerge from the side-lines. Maybe that will not actually help DC in a direct manner, but it could well confuse enough National voters to keep a few of them at home, just like Labour ones did in the last election. We all know that elections are not won---they are lost! www.authorneilcoleman.com