The last few years haven't been kind to Canada's Liberal Party. Once a dominant force in True North politics, the party got slammed in the 2011 Parliamentary elections, reduced to only 34 seats. (A sad turn of events when one considers how unpalatable Stephen Harper and the GOP-ish Tories are.) We cats readily admit that the late, great NDP leader, Jack Layton, was a big factor in that race — but Michael Ignatieff, the Liberals' lackluster leader at the time, didn't help much, either.
So, long story short, the Liberals have been plunged into tortured bouts of soul-searching that we're tempted to compare to the Republicans' in America, but won't. (Nobody's in as bad shape as the GOP.)
And why are we cats bringing up all this Canadian political minutiae? Because this is a really big weekend for the Liberal Party. The leadership race is on — which means that if the party ever gets its act together and wins a majority of seats again, the leader they choose now will become their next Prime Minister. And today is the official 2013 LPC Leadership National Showcase in Toronto — sort of a Canadian version of the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. There'll be lots of gladhanding, politicking and speechifying. Then, from 5 p.m. until April 14, party members nationwide will be able to vote online for their next pooh-bah. Neat!
But we're not sure anybody would care about all this if it weren't for Justin Trudeau. At 41, with five years of MP-ship under his belt and having beaten a brawny Tory Senator in a charity boxing match last year, Justin the Buff is fighting again — this time, to bring the Liberals back from oblivion.
There are a lot of knocks on Justin that might sound familiar to us Democrats: He's too young. He hasn't proven himself. He's just a celebrity, a fundraising machine. He has a funny name. (Okay, not "funny," per se, but one that carries a lot of negatives as well as positives.)
But they don't seem to be getting much traction. Heck, a recent poll showed that Canadians thought Trudeau was getting a free pass in the leadership race — and they don't care! In fact, a Liberal Party led by Justin would beat the Tories in a hypothetical election today.
So, this latest Trudeau bears watching. How do we cats know? Well, his URL is, simply, justin.ca. No further explanation needed. Can you imagine a Harper website at "stephen.ca"? We didn't think so.
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