Chilly in Toronto

Face it. As a Democrat, liberal, and/or progressive, you've been conditioned to anticipate the failure of our national office candidates, no matter how well they campaign, how far ahead they are in polls with less than a month to go, or how pathetic the competition.

And admit it, when you've allowed yourself to harbor such doubts you've bitterly comforted yourself with fantasies of moving to Canada. Toronto's cosmopolitan (as Rudy! would say), right?

Think again.

The Toronto Police Service has established a task force to investigate the attacks and has strengthened patrols in the two affected neighborhoods. (By Wednesday night, Ms. Waltman Daschko had received two visits from officers making sure all was well.) But the police have offered no comment in public, or to victims, about who or what may be behind the attacks.

The crimes fit a distinctive pattern, victims say. The brake lines on the cars, some parked on streets, were cut using a knife. The scratches on the cars similarly seem to have been inflicted with a knife. The most distinctive element is the graffiti. It generally takes the form of either the party’s name or the name of a prominent Liberal politician (including the premier of Ontario who is not involved in the current federal vote) followed by the word “Lies” — all spray-painted in a tidy cursive script.

Around the corner from Ms. Waltman Daschko, Brent Johnston and Meredith Strong escaped the graffiti on their house, but not the car sabotage.

Near noon, Mr. Johnston jumped into their nine-month-old hatchback to pick up their children from a karate class. As he backed out of the driveway, dashboard warning lights flashed the word STOP, but the brake pedal was responding only sluggishly.

“It was very, very eerie,” Mr. Johnston said. Some residual strength in the brakes and the car’s slow speed allowed him to stop the vehicle, he said. Suspecting a mechanical fault, he switched to the family’s other car and asked his wife to call the dealer. It was only after the dealer told her she was the second customer to call with such a complaint that day that she looked at the passenger side of the car and found the two large Ls — presumably meaning “Liberals Lie” — gouged into the doors.

Other drivers had more terrifying experiences. Andrew Lane, who works for Carolyn Bennett, the Liberal candidate in the area, found that his brakes were nearly gone as he neared a major cross street. He managed to stop but not without narrowly avoiding a collision with a bus.

The raging frustration of the Right is not confined to the United States.