With two weeks to go the Ontario election race seems to be tightening in several ways.  One is that Liberal collars are contracting as the scale of their looming debacle becomes clear.  Another is that the NDP is closing in on the Tories in many polls because, I would argue, only the socialist party is giving people something to vote for.

Not, I hasten to add, something they should vote for.  The NDP are correct that the Liberals have been ethically sloppy in expensive ways since 2003.  But their conviction that the Liberals' other main governing sins have been spending too little and trusting free markets too much would be laughable if its potential implications weren't so serious.

Electing an NDP majority would provide voters with a stark lesson in the defects in such thinking.  But there must be a cheaper way to get an education.  And while a Liberal-NDP coalition would not fall into that category, it may well be our next class in the school of hard knocks because a Tory minority is not conceivable.

In both ideology and sensibility the Liberals and NDP are far closer to one another than either are to the Conservatives, and if no party wins an outright majority of seats we must expect an NDP-Liberal coalition as instructive as it would be expensive.  The question is whether the Tories can still pull out that majority.

It's an odd question given that two weeks ago the election seemed to be Ford's to lose.  But the prevailing wisdom, apparently within Ford's camp as well as outside, was that the best way for him to lose it was to be loud, rude, ignorant and right-wing.

It could have happened.  So they crafted an approach in which he tried to be subdued, polite, vague and centrist.  And where Patrick Brown, before being derailed by unsubstantiated allegations of sexual harassment, had a detailed left-wing platform, Ford has no platform at all, on the apparent ground that that things you never say cannot be criticized.

To some degree it has worked.  He has avoided grisly "gotcha" moments and swiftly dumped Tanya Granic Allen over an ill-advised "I almost vomit in disbelief" over sex ed in Croatia four years ago, and her reference to Muslim face veils as masks.  But there is a downside to this lunge for the centre, one the boys (and girls, men and women) in short pants seem unable to grasp.

It is not that a Conservative party that eschews conservatism will be accused of a hidden agenda.  It will, as part of the standard abuse that rains down on even mildly right-of-centre candidates regardless of what they say or how they say it.  The danger is that the public will become convinced that there is no agenda, hidden or otherwise, behind which to rally, and won't rally.

It might not seem to matter.  Those right of centre surely have to vote Tory regardless, along with those determined to be rid of the Liberals over ethical lapses or fiscal incompetence.  But in fact people can simply stay home, or decide the NDP are as good a way to be rid of the Liberals, because they fail to perceive what is at stake.  Remember, not everyone follows politics closely.

A peculiar contradiction apparently lurks in Tory thinking, a simultaneous conviction that a large number of voters are secretly right-wing and that any mention of right-wing policies will expose those voters and the party and spell ruin for both.  Personally I suspect the conventional wisdom badly underestimates the appetite for genuine conservatism across the board given the extraordinary phenomenon of Jordan Peterson.  And I'm certain it underestimates the appetite for coherent fiscal conservatism.

People suspect the situation is dire and cannot be fixed with sweet nothings.  It's why they supported a Mike Harris, Ralph Klein or Ronald Reagan.  But when they hear a candidate like Doug Ford speaking of increasing spending, finding efficiencies and avoiding cuts, many swing voters do not think he has secret plans so awful that like Voldemort they must not be named.  They conclude that he has no real idea what's going on, or that the problem cannot be as bad as they feared.

As I've observed before, there are drawbacks to running as a mushy centrist whose response to every policy or PR crisis is to promise more spending.  One is that you'll govern the way you campaigned, with politically and fiscally disastrous results.  The other is that you won't get to govern at all.

It doesn't matter that Doug Ford is regarded as a scary right-winger by people who would never vote Tory.  It does matter that he's failed to give many who might any important reason to support him.  Hence the tightening polls and possibly fiscal noose come June 7.