Canada

The way the entire Liberal party basically didn't respond to the smear campaign against them -- on top of displaying an incongruent level of confidence -- had me for quite a while wondering if they had something smart planned. And there is room for interpreting their moves as chasing one or more of these strategies:

• Run a political decoy (Trudeau) until the last minute to defuse the smear campaign
• Save all dirt on CPC until election season to blitz their support when it's most impactful
• Use a disastrous Dumpster administration to expose CPC's populist platform

But in the last quarter of 2024 the LPC spent so much time struggling precariously to run out the clock that I abandoned all of these possibilities -- or at least any of them still having a viable path.

Ultimately, Trudeau's moves worked flawlessly to massive effect, but they relied on far too much luck, some of which could not have even been predicted as a possibility. When Trudeau announced his resignation, he was completely out of time and chips, without any of the requisite win conditions in place yet. If LPC's actual plan was some subset of the result we got, then they are master gamblers (and maybe actors) with stones of stainless steel. The only way I could believe now that they had a plan along any of these lines and were remotely in control of the situation is if Singh was in on it. And if he was, that was one hell of a political sacrifice.