But that's not quite right. Think back to the early days of her campaign: she positioned herself as "the only one who can beat Rob Ford." It was ALL about him, Tory was a non-entity. But for some reason, here strategists' bone-headed approach was to try to beat Ford by playing Ford's game. So she was all about short slogans and repetition, keeping taxes low, personal anecdotes, etc. etc. Any hint of lefty progressive type stuff was kept safely under wraps. She moulded herself into a fake populist politician, it was a poor fit and it showed, and her base hated it.
The thing that really killed her, though, was Soknacki. She spent the entire summer in centrist guise, saying all the wrong things, while here was this principled, progressive, proud nerd type saying all the right things (I hate to say it, but from the relative safety of being essentially a fringe candidate, with a lot less risk involved in taking a hard line on policies---for example, imagine the fight on his hands if he'd been elected and actually tried to remove street parking on major arteries). Chow's natural base ate it up and shifted allegiance en masse. If Soknacki had never come along, she might have been able to keep them, who knows. But his very existence underscored the disappointment in her campaign position, and he almost forced her to shift tactics and adopt more clearly stated leftist positions (ditching Warren Kinsella in the process---I wonder how much of this fake populist messaging was his doing).
Soknacki dropped out but the damage was already done. I get the sense that many former Chow supporters honestly felt betrayed, and are now reluctant to come back to her and unsure of what to do. Which, in my opinion, is crazy in the face of the alternatives, and a pretty terrible outcome of this campaign.
