With the NDP leadership debates soon to get underway, I thought I would post some thoughts on what themes and issues the party should be emphasizing.

To form a majority federal government, the NDP will have to make another big leap, from 30 per cent to about 40 per cent of the popular vote, with much of that increase concentrated in growing suburban areas in Ontario and British Colombia. The party will have to win over many middle-class former Liberal and Conservative voters.

In every leaders' debate, everyone watching is looking for the zinger -- the moment when an important question is asked and one of the participants stands there with his or her mouth open, with nothing to say.

It doesn't always happen. But it happened to Tim Hudak in the Ontario election leader's debate on Tuesday night, when he was challenged on the $10 billion hole in is platform's budget and he had nothing to say.

If Tuesday's Ontario leader's debate was a poker game, the player with the biggest bluff to carry off was Conservative leader Tim Hudak -- a gamble that he would not be called to account for the astonishingly large cuts in public services on which his platform's fiscal viability depends.

In every election worth analyzing -- some aren't -- the key political actors are presented with tough problems which they must grapple with on the public stage. If they succeed, they demonstrate fitness for office. If they fail, they demonstrate the opposite.

In the first two weeks of this federal campaign, the three national leaders did their groundwork. And then in the debates, they tested their solutions against each other in an intense clash in front of the whole country -- probably the best direct, unmediated chance to speak to the public any of them will have in this campaign.

How did it work out?

This election, Canadians are harnessing the power of social media with the first ever national Tweetup for Democracy. Leadnow.ca and OpenMedia.ca are co-organizing a cross-country Tweetup to bring people together, online and in-person, to share their thoughts on the parties and their platforms during the 2011 Leaders' Debate.

While the cross-country Tweetup takes place, Leadnow.ca and OpenMedia.ca will also host Debate Watch Parties in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. From coast to Canadian coast, citizens will come together online and off to make their voices... er... Tweets heard.

Elizabeth May has lost her court challenge of the decision to exclude her from the party leaders' TV debates. That's too bad. I would like to see May in the debates -- she is the most natural of all the leaders, actually answering questions like a normal human being would rather than the scripted, anal and cautious replies of all the other "leaders."

If polls showing Stephane Dion to be the clear winner of the French language debate mean anything, at least one thing they mean is that pundits and bloggers are useless, given their dismissal of Dion and their heavy advance discounting of his performance. But then, I suppose, that would mean this blog post was as useless as the rest of them.