rabble.ca‘s own election roundtable has been debating and analyzing the issues in campaign ’08 from a progressive point of view, together of course with your comments and the usual vigorous discussion on babble.

In terms of post-debate analysis, James Laxer compared Harper’s strategy to the famous “rope-a-dope” used by Muhammed Ali against big George Foreman: “Appearing tranquillized himself, he tried to lull viewers into a zen state in which they would not think that cuts to the arts, locking up 14 year olds for long sentences, and dismantling gun control were all that bad.” And while the French debate wasn’t exactly a Rumble in the Jungle, the four opposition leaders did land some hard body blows to Harper. But, as Blair Redlin points out, Dion didn’t score any points on Afghanistan – his flailing around on the war missed the target entirely.

Scott Piatkowski declared Layton a clear winner of the English debate: “He had the only real memorable lines of the debate [to Harper: ‘Where’s your platform? Under your sweater?’] and he combined substance with an excellent sense of timing and a strong delivery.” Alice Klein feels that Elizabeth May showed she belonged, “with her smart, articulate and well-informed stabs at Stephen Harper.”Here’s a quick round-up of some of the other coverage from debate week on the hustings:

Before the first salvo from the leaders was fired at the Ottawa debates, the Housing Not War! campaign shot off a media release illustrating the connections between the cost of war and the housing crisis. To his credit, Jack Layton picked up on a related theme in Thursday night’s English language debate, referring to the “peace dividend” that could help increase social spending after the troops are brought home from Afghanistan.

The NDP, along with the Greens, also scored some points with the Polaris Institute, as they (unlike any of the other parties) agreed to “Turn on the Tap” and phase bottled water out of their campaigns.

Corvin Russell, meanwhile, scolds all the parties for the lack of big ideas on offer, faced as we are with global social, economic and ecological crises. And rabble columnist Jessica Yee looks at the issues that matter to the Inuit this election.

Aside from the debates, the big story this week was the revelation that Stephen Harper had literally echoed the pro-war speech of his ideological soulmate, former Australian PM John Howard. Matthew Good weighed in on the ramifications of this episode of plagiarism. In the television debate, Gilles Duceppe made Harper squirm and finally confess that the Iraq War was a mistake. Blogger Fred Wilson called this “the most humiliating moment of all [for Harper].”

As we head into the final 10 days of the campaign, keep your eyes on the rabble election blog for all the best progressive coverage.