It now appears that the other contenders have bowed out of the running and Michael Ignatieff will be the new party leader.

In statements following this, he promptly showed that Steven Harper has his balls in a jar somewhere:

Ignatieff has cautioned against automatically trying to topple the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a strategy that the party had contemplated only last week. Even so, a new Liberal leader is expected to move quickly in a drive to rebuild the party into a credible alternative to Harper’s Conservatives.

It appears that the fact that the Conservatives are on every media outlet in Canada screaming like scalded babies has made Mr. Ignatieff concerned that they might say something bad about him.

To paraphrase Josh Marshall, why would the voters believe that you can fight for them if you cannot fight for yourself.

Stephen Harper put out an austerity budget in the middle of a recession because he’s a lunatic. He tried to gut public campaign finance because he is a lunatic without scruples.

If you won’t work with this man, you will be his bitch.