Well folks, we are doomed.

When 40 per cent of the live-polling — self-polling — audience for a televised mayoralty debate gives Rob Ford leading chops on the question of leadership, then Toronto has the mayor it deserves and might very well get stuck with again.

Of course, that kind of tweet-here/text-there pulse-taking is unscientific and, many will assert, useless. I’m not so sure. Just as the professional pollsters can influence attitudes, even when their numbers turn out to be upside-down wrong, slapdash polls are capable of generating trends.

Off the results of Wednesday’s freewheeling CityNews debate, Mayor Rob Ford is trending, as they say in the social media universe. He performed above expectations, though the bar was admittedly set way down low.

More on the Toronto election:

Chow leads Star poll as debate winner

Chow’s bus pledge recalls a ‘plain vanilla’ truth about transit

At first debate, Rob Ford holds his own with tested strategy

Full coverage on thestar.com

Difficult as it is for me to admit, RoFo carried the day. Sure, it was often on the back of nonsense “facts,” impugned statistics and self-serving claims. But that’s as deep as the discussion need penetrate often, most especially with an electorate that tunes in only superficially and sporadically. Those bumper sticker (headline-primed) declarations resonate because they de-complicate things. And that has always been Ford’s forte — simplifying and dummying-down. For heaven’s sake, Ford’s even managed to convince a whole lot of folks that he’s one of them, Regular Guy, and not the inherited-wealth son of privilege and connections.

Yet for someone who can’t speak publicly, barely capable of stringing a cogent sentence together, Ford was transformed into The Great Communicator, if merely by comparison with the mealy-mouthed sound-bites offered by his rivals. Only Olivia Chow came close to scoring outwitting, out-trashing points, though her delivery performance was unusually tepid for somebody who had spent years in the mosh pit of Toronto’s city council chambers.

Chow got all anecdotal, quoting conversations with worried city residents and offering urban scenarios — the bus that never comes, for example — that may have been entirely truthful but sounded boilerplate and contrived.

Karen Stintz got all mommy, on three occasions referencing her kids as if there were something exceptional about having a family.

John Tory went too conciliatory, clearly banking on clamour-fatigue in municipal politics in the selling of self as antidote to what Toronto has experienced with its last two either-end-of-the-spectrum chief magistrates. “I want to take this city not left, not right, but going forward.”

David Soknacki got grim and chillingly bureaucratic, yet was bullied easily into the corner where Ford wanted him. Who is David Soknacki, the electorate is surely wondering. Ford told them, repeatedly, making plain-speak mincemeat of the candidate. Why, you’re the tax-and-spendthrift who was budget chief, thrice, to “your friend and boss” David Miller. “When you were budget chief, you caused this mess that I had to clean up.”

And RoFo went where he’s always gone before: “I’m the only candidate that has a proven track record of success watching every dollar that goes out of city hall. You know I don’t flip-flop . . . I have saved the taxpayers a billion dollars just like I said I was going to do — (“A billion dollar lie,” said Chow; “That billion dollars is only in your imagination, Mayor Ford,” said Soknacki) . . . Our city is booming . . .”

Zingers were few and derivative.

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Chow to Ford: “Your gravy train has turned into a train wreck.”

Soknacki on Ford’s council and committee attendance: “You missed practice and sometimes didn’t even show up for the game.”

Ford to Tory: “You had your shot at the province and fell flat on your face.”

Chow to Tory: “I don’t need to take any lessons (on leadership) from you because we’re not on the golf course right now.”

In many ways, the debate was lively and informative, or chaotic and mis-informative, also playing into Ford’s wheelhouse.

Stunningly, not until nearing the end of regulation time did anyone — it was CityNews reporter Cynthia Mulligan who went there via query — directly mention the crack cocaine scandal that has, more than anything else, dominated and defined Ford’s tenure as mayor. Can you imagine what an American panel of interrogators would have made of this gorilla in the room? I’ll tell you: They would have gone ape-snit.

“Everyone has skirted around the issue of scandal,” Mulligan noted. “You have admitted to smoking crack cocaine. There’s a police investigation underway. How can voters trust good judgment in you?”

Ford, predictably, stuck to his tiresome, side-stepping mantra. “People have heard the story. It’s rewind, rewind, rewind. People know my track record. I’m the first one to say I’m not perfect.”

Which is not an answer, never has been.

Yet he gets away with it, time and time again, doing the RoFo shuffle. Even at her purportedly “scrappy” best during the debate, Chow failed to exploit and maximize this low-hanging fruit. “Rob Ford has made Toronto an international embarrassment. Enough is enough.”

Embarrassing Toronto is the least important aspect of Ford’s self-professed cocaine use, his “drunken stupors” and his consorting with alleged gangsters. Must we provide crib notes for the Flailing Four?

We are only three weeks into a campaign that’s going to last nine months.

Longer than the Leafs season. Longer than the Raptors season. Longer than the Jays season.

If RoFo waltzes off with the championship trophy again, Toronto should be bonked upside the head with it, folks.