Some people go through life backing the wrong horse race after race. From a distance, you can't help but feel sorry for them. But when they jump on your bandwagon, well, most of us break out in a cold sweat.

I mean, what if curses are real?

Do you think Michael Ignatieff wonders that?

Michael Ignatieff had a very successful meeting with the Edmonton Women's Policy Association, a club within the Women's Commission in Edmonton on Sunday, June 11, 2006. This club has been active for nearly two decades. We had 27 women and 5 men at the meeting. Many of these people were undecided voters and had some tough questions for Michael.

Of course, everyone was impressed with how smart he is and the detail behind all of his answers.

This club sent letters to all campaigns, asking for the number of women in key positions in the campaign and for a meeting. The Ignatieff team was one of the first to respond with the names and positions of the women. Michael has clearly made a serious effort to be inclusive. His was the first campaign to respond with a date for a meeting. Interestingly, after he said yes, many other campaigns that had said maybe or no changed their minds.

Thank you Michael,

Debby Carlson
Alberta Vice-Chair

Ah, Debby Carlson.

She was an MLA in the Alberta legislature, representing the provincial riding of Edmonton Ellerslie since 1997. In 2004, she decided it was time to move on.

She must have decided that being one of only six Liberal MLAs was a losing proposition. Time to join a winning Liberal team! The federal team of Paul Martin!

She won the hotly contested nomination for Edmonton Strathcona in 2004, and only after an appeal of a razor-thin victory:

Liberal MLA Debby Carlson has been confirmed as the party's federal candidate in Edmonton-Strathcona after an internal party panel dismissed an appeal of her five-vote nomination victory over rival Jonathan Dai.

Do you think she felt lucky that day? During the election, she felt that times were a-changing:

What I'm hearing on the doors is that Edmonton Strathcona wants in!!! You want to be on the winning team for a change. Paul Martin is a winner. A vote for me puts Edmonton Strathcona in the winner's circle in Ottawa when decisions are made that affect you right here at home.

Of course, the Sponsorship Scandal took its toll. Six weeks after the "winning team" comment, Carlson realized she might not have picked a winner with the federal Liberals under Paul Martin, any more than she had with the provincial Liberals:

Other Liberals who had high hopes of making breakthroughs in Edmonton aren't feeling as confident as they were six months ago when it looked like they would be able to ride Martin's coattails. The $100-million sponsorship scandal brought the new prime minister's high-flying popularity crashing to the ground.

"We never said it was going to be easy," acknowledged Debby Carlson, a former Liberal MLA running in Edmonton-Strathcona. "What I'm getting on the doorstep is that people are satisfied with the way the prime minister is dealing with it."

Right. Well, as it turned out, the voters weren't satisfied, and Conservative Rahim Jaffer won the riding by 5,000 votes (which I suppose in Alberta counts as a close win for the Liberals). Paul Martin, of course, led the Liberals to a victory overall, despite Carlson's failure to take Edmonton Strathcona, but went from a 168-seat majority government to a 135-seat minority. History will probably record that government as being one of the most ineffectual since Confederation.

So much for Debby Carlson picking a winning team.

Now she has hitched her wagon to Ignatieff. I wonder if her luck is going to rub off on him.

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