I think a lot about Tom Mulcair these days.

And not just this one photo of him on a wharf â€” I like to think it's a wharf, it may just be a marina — with his shirt open, gold chain visible, a small forest of microphones in his face.  There he is, looking like he's some 70s low-end film producer talking up the latest sure-thing hit from one of his It Girls.  Anyway, I'm not thinking about that.

What I can't stop thinking about is how Mulcair walked into the 2015 election as the NDP leader with a shot to finally do it and become prime minister.  And so he and his team started a campaign with a plan.  One they stuck to rigidly.  Mulcair's NDP was slow and steady, competent, totally trustworthy with the keys to the corner office.

Along the way they made few tweaks around the edges.  But they were a party badly outflanked.  And by the time they'd realized the Liberals had turned left and were stomping all over their communication lines, it was too late.  They'd been routed.

And so I've been thinking about Mulcair as the Québec election has ambled forward, with François Legault and the CAQ leading the way.  Polling aggregator Philippe Fournier at Québec 125 has the CAQ in a fairly comfortable majority territory.  So, Legault has clearly come into this with a plan.  He and his party are leading the polls by a comfortable margin, so they're going to hold to that plan.  But there are some worrying signs there, if the CAQ care to look at them.

First, we've found out this week the CAQ has been dropping key words and phrases from its published platform.  Words like "hydraulic fracturing of gas" and "responsible oil extraction."  The party had promised a 20 per cent reduction in immigration.  That's now just a "temporary" reduction in the level.

Here is a front-running party taking some of the bite out of its more, shall we say, difficult positions.  Fine-tuning around the edges, and so on.

What it isn't is a major correction.

Which maybe isn't needed, who knows, it's early!  There's still a whole month to go — and three debates — until Oct. 1 when Quebecers hit the polling booth.

But the trouble with winning is you can't see when it is that you're losing.  By the time it's clear you've lost ground, you're so far gone you might as well accept you're fucked.

Which is why it was interesting that when the NAFTA mess was unfolding in Washington last Friday, Legault was the odd man out.  The other three party leaders* made their way to an press conference organized by a Québec farmers' union just outside Montréal, and pledged their solidarity to Québec farmers.  There they were in Longueuil, swearing in no uncertain terms how they would scuttle any NAFTA deal that would harm Québec poultry and dairy farmers.

Legault, meanwhile, was elsewhere in the province swearing in no uncertain terms he would scuttle any NAFTA deal that would harm Québec farmers, and answering endless questions about why he wasn't swearing these things alongside the other party leaders.

What it comes down to, is he and his party have a plan.  They planned to be in Chicoutimi that morning and so there they were.  Damn what else may be happening.  So there he was, where he was supposed to be, according to plan.

Which brings us back to 2015.  The NDP plan was to position the party as fiscally responsible.  Stephen Harper and his Conservatives had, for years, set the bar that only a party willing to avoid deficits was fit to run the country.  This became something of an orthodoxy.  The old saw goes most Canadians are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, yeah?

The trouble comes when that ground disintegrates beneath everyone.  In 2015, Justin Trudeau changed the rules by declaring, upfront, that he'd happily run deficits.  Mulcair was left looking flat and stodgy.  There was no fiddling around the edges that could fix this mess.  And he couldn't go and out deficit his Liberal opponent after making such a show of his staid responsibility.

Now, I don't know who benefits most from the CAQ losing their place.  Conventional wisdom says it probably goes back to the Liberals, and Philippe Couillard gets to stay as premier.  But the PQ's Jean-François Lisée** is out there having so much fun â€” have you seen that bus? â€” that it gives me a certain amount of pause.

But for the moment it's not really important who it is taking advantage of Legault if he's losing his grip.  The important thing is that if he is losing his grip, he's not making the sort of major corrections that might turn things around.  And if he waits too long, he's going to end up following Mulcair.

Which is fine, in its way.  I understand the Université de Montréal is nice this time of year.

***

* A few days previous, Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard literally pulled out a "Just watch me" when he was asked what he would do if the federal government bent to American demands.  This is not an issue where Québec politicians play with a light touch.

**Lisée's predecessor's predecessor, Pauline Marois, was premier until she lost her grip on things in the last election.  She clasped hands with Pierre Karl Péladeau, and he raised his fist in favour of an independent Québec.  And then…poof!  There the election went.  Despite his central role in the PQ's electoral loss, PKP would, briefly, become the party's next leader before quitting.  It was an odd time.