Susan Delacourt: One word leapt out at me in a piece you wrote for this paper last week, Matt, and it was this one: “killed.” As in, the Conservatives got killed in the election. I agree that their hopes got killed — especially the hopes they had when they were 20 points ahead of the Liberals. But here’s the thing: I’m not convinced Conservatives are staring down that reality. The early indications, in fact, point to more of the same from Pierre Poilievre and his team.
Matt Gurney: I was using that word more as a play on the phase “election post-mortem” than I was to describe what I think happened to them. I’ll confess something. I don’t know what to make of that election. It’s different from any other I’ve covered. Something wild I discovered when writing my column is that Poilievre got a bigger share of the vote this time than did the last five PMs to win a majority. So I can get why Tories might want to stay the course and write this one off as a fluke. They could be right. They could go wrong, though. Someone needs to be that guy in the room and get them thinking about that.
