Who would have thought just one week ago that Denis Coderre's spectacular resignation as Quebec lieutenant would turn out to be the least of Michael Ignatieff's problems?
With Coderre replaced, Ignatieff faces something much more challenging: polls showing the Liberal Party quickly slipping and its leader losing popularity faster than you can say "Conservative majority."
On Tuesday, a Strategic Counsel poll for the Globe and Mail and CTV put Harper's Conservative Party at 41 per cent - majority territory - with the Liberals at only 28 per cent. A growing number of female voters, usually more progressive, are also turning their backs on Ignatieff.
Yesterday, according to an EKOS-CBC poll with a margin of error of only 1.7 per cent, the Tories stand at 39.7 per cent and the Liberals at 25.7 per cent. With solid regional and sectional samples, it shows the Liberals losing support across their traditional strongholds: Toronto, women, the Maritimes, minorities and, yes, even university graduates - a low blow for a leader with a long career as an international academic and author.
In Quebec, Conservatives and Liberals are neck-and-neck, with the Bloc still leading at 39 per cent. Even in Ontario, the Conservatives lead the Liberals by almost 10 points.
But no data tell the story like this one: 51 per cent say they disapprove of the way Ignatieff is handling his job.
For EKOS president Frank Graves, "this is a dramatic setback for the Liberal Party." He adds: "It appears to be driven by a collapse in Michael Ignatieff's popularity. Ignatieff has gone from a very positive approval rating when he assumed the leadership less than a year ago to a decisively negative one."
You can almost hear Stéphane Dion wryly whispering: "Welcome to the club!"
In reaction, the Liberal leader, recently dubbed by Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin as "Narcissief," became unusually humble: "If there are things I need to do better, I am certainly going to be ready to try, because I want to listen to Canadians and improve my performance any way I can."
Then he promised: "I've got to lift that big frame off and let Canadians see who I really am, and we will be doing that." That would be dandy if he hadn't been saying the same thing ever since he took over the Liberal Party.
Last spring in his get-to-know-me campaign, he published yet another autobiography - True Patriot Love. But the problem was that, as with his ongoing lack of any clear platform, this book had nothing of substance in the crucial ideas department.
In that sense, Ignatieff made the same mistake as Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois did in 2008 when she published her autobiography, Québécoise!, which was devoid of any concrete vision for the future. This is called missing a golden opportunity to tell voters why they should pick you and not the other guy.
Still, some Liberals try now to console themselves by telling stories of past Liberal leaders - going all the way back to Lester B. Pearson - who got creamed in opposition before they finally took power. Nice try!
The difference with past leaders is that they didn't have to face a united right, a determined and strategically obsessed prime minister, a divided Liberal Party and a leader who recently spent close to 30 years abroad.
A leader who, according to renowned political scientist Stephen Clarkson this week on Radio-Canada, "has no political experience, didn't know the party's program and the staff. He had everything to learn, except for where Canada is on a map."
"Politics," he added, "is a very difficult thing to learn at 60." So it seems.
So Liberals better hope that he'll be a faster learner from now on. If he isn't, Harper's chances of getting a majority go up. And if Harper is working hard to adopt a more centrist approach to governing, chances are it is for mostly tactical reasons.
But the bottom line is that there is little reason why a politician whose belief system is as clearly right wing as Harper's wouldn't show his true colours once he enjoys the stability of a majority government.
Can Canada afford four or eight years of ultra-conservatism? Ask the Americans who just came out of it themselves.