Is Joey Pants Going the Distance?

Probably not, but what he does will decide who the next mayor of Toronto will be. As Royson James said in the Star on Tuesday, Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone is the kingmaker in this race now. If he stays in the race, Rob Ford will win. If he gets out, George Smitherman will.

That thinking is predicated on the fact that the supporters of Pantalone, a committed big government liberal and mentor to David Miller, will never support the populist shitheadery of Ford. Therefore, if he keeps campaigning, that's 16 points that Smitherman will never have. And sixteen points, if the recent Global poll is even halfway right, will be the difference of a blowout victory for Smitherman or a squeaker of a win for Ford.

Sarah Thomson's support was diffuse, whereas Pantalone's is as monolithic as it gets. His voters are every bit as ideological as Ford's are. They'll grudgingly vote for Furious George, but voting for Big Rob, who they rightly see as a pig and a dolt, is a bridge too far.

All things being equal, I have a healthy respect for Joey Pants. I long ago stopped caring what the government pisses my money away on, since the majority of the delusional and greedy populace is always going to want subsidized sports stadiums and a municipal ice cream castle for every child upon their graduation from fucking pre-school. I could write about how silly it is three times a day for the rest of my god damned life and I'll never change enough minds to make a difference.

But I can insist that the bastards pay for it. If you want a zillion new subway lines, I can demand that you cost it with actual numbers that make sense. I'm sick to fucking death of the "I Have a Dream" school of budgeting that I've seen out of everyone from George W. Bush to Dalton McGuinty.

Pantalone and Sarah Ford - and to a much, much lesser degree, the wholly ridiculous Giorgio Mammoliti - were the only candidates in this campaign who bothered even trying to reasonably cost out and pay for their promises. Ford, Smitherman and Rocco Rossi are all either lying, stupid or both. All three of them are running on the same stupid platform of wishful thinking, and even David Miller was more responsible than that.

Granted, I would never do anything crazy, like actually vote for Pantalone. Just because I know that I'm never going to cure the idiot public's appetite for subsidized everything, it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm going to enable it. I'd rather vote for a transsexual again. But I do respect his honesty.

Well, he's mostly honest, anyway. Joe's campaign manager, John Laschinger, went running to the Toronto Sun yesterday to laughably insist that his guy is in it to win it. And that's a courageous position to take ... if you're trying to get Rob Ford elected. Even Ford's brother and campaign manager, Doug, has admitted that Pantalone dropping out and endorsing Smitherman would be a game-changer.

Which brings us to the dying dreams of Rocco Rossi, which is like porn to me. Ford's friends in the blogosphere have extra rough on Rossi because they know that his vote comes almost exclusively from Ford at this point. And that shouldn't surprise anyone, since Rossi's entire platform has consisted of being a balder, thinner version of Ford for the last few months.

The only reason that Rocco ever got the 7% of the vote that he has is that a certain portion of the population thinks that bald gentlemen are more sensual than portly fellows with drinking problems and anger-management issues. Well, as a bald guy with a drinking problem and anger-management issues, I should be mayor. I'm the best of both worlds.

Team Rocco's mantra for the last couple of weeks has been that if they drop out, their vote goes almost exclusively to Ford. So multiple sources within the campaign are looking for a "dignified" way to drop out.

Rocco Rossi’s advisers eagerly await the next opinion poll, with some saying he should withdraw from the mayoral race if he doesn’t get a bump from Sarah Thomson’s departure.

The Star spoke Wednesday with more than a half-dozen of the advisers, including several campaign co-chairs, many of whom have taken part in campaign conference calls since Sunday.

“The question is can Rocco be a factor in this race with enough support to be a ‘1, 2, 3 player’, or will he stay in the single digits and be a Ralph Nader to Rob Ford,” said one senior adviser, speaking on background and referring to perceptions that Nader’s candidacy in 2000 siphoned votes from Al Gore and handed George W. Bush the U.S. presidency.

Contrary to their previous protestations, the Rossi campaign seems to be quite comfortable with the idea of Ford as mayor.

Two participants in Wednesday morning’s campaign call said it ended with Rossi saying something like: “For now, we’re seeing where things fall, if the Sarah vote is coming to me.”

Another insider said the campaign is looking for an exit strategy so Rossi can bow out gracefully. “The writing is on the wall, but (Rossi) wants to see how this Sarah Thomson thing plays out,” the insider said.

There's no reason in the world that Sarah Thomson's vote would go to Rossi, who in most recent polls had even less support than she did. Thomson made it clear that she priority over the last two weeks has been to stop Ford, and supporting Smitherman is the clearer way of doing than going to Rossi, who seems as though he was actually born to lose. Furthermore, Rossi's most senior people are debating among themselves whether they should deny Ford the mayor's chair.

Not that it matters all that much. Pantalone has nearly twice as many committed voters than does Rossi, none of whom will go to Ford, while at least some of Rossi's vote will go to Smitherman. And that assumes that Rocco's support has even stayed at its already pathetic levels throughout this week's cataclysmic events, which I highly doubt. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the next group of polls show him at four or five percent.

I expect Joey Pants to drop out no later than Monday, while Rocco Rossi vaingloriously fails to realize that nothing he does matters at all, at this point.

Of course, all that does is submerge us into the Dark Age of Furious George Smitherman's Awful Reign, which will be just as bad as a Ford victory and probably worse than the Miller years. Sure, he's a bald guy with a temper, but he's not the ladies' man that I am.

I guess I should start raising money for my 2014 challenge, huh?


Note: Chances are that I'm going to hear that I've been taking it easy on Furious George, which is sort of true. That's because he hasn't been much of a factor in the last few months. In light of the Gobal-Ipsos poll and the Thomson withdrawal, he is now. My knives will be coming out for him shortly.

To my readers outside the city, fear not. This loathsome and silly election will be over three and a half weeks and I'll return to writing about stuff that more of you can relate to. All things being equal, I'm amazed that my hits have gone up during this mess and not down.

I thank you for your continued patience.