Strange days indeed

Its wrap up time.
Steve at Far and Wide does his Best Of Election 2008.
On the strategic voting front, Scott describes strategic voting in a way that finally makes sense to me, Cyberwanderer is for it, as is Woman at Mile 0, and RossK provides some links that show you how to vote strategically.
Jason Cherniak writes about why Stephane Dion should be Prime Minister.
I agree.
I must admit, at the beginning of this campaign, I did not think Dion realistically had much of a chance of beating Harper -- I thought Canada would be lucky to avoid a Conservative majority government. But over the last five weeks, whenever Dion has been knocked down, he just keeps getting up again. And he has landed some telling blows of his own -- he was ready to step up on the economy, and Harper was not; he has talked directly to Canadians and to the media throughout the campaign, and Harper has not; he expected Canadians would have the intelligence and thoughtfulness to comprehend and consider supporting a Green Shift policy, while Harper pandered to his base with divisive speeches about jailing 14-year-olds and cutting support for arts.
For all of his leadership posturing, Harper and the Conservative war room have run one of the clumsiest and most cynical campaigns in Canadian history. The StealthCons demonstrate how Conservative candidates were instructed not to defend what the Harper government is doing or plans to do -- I'm glad that Canadians are not going to reward such disrespectful behaviour.
As for Dion, he has shown Canadians what he stands for during this campaign. The Calgary Herald writes:

It took several weeks, but Dion gained his sea legs in time, his advisers hoped, for Canadians to have a second look at a man who learned on the stump how to show his conviction and to laugh at himself, especially his speaking style.
"Stephen Harper may speak better English than me," he began to tell each crowd for a guaranteed roar of approval, "but I speak the truth better than him in both official languages."