The Zombie Party's followers:
The federal Liberal leadership race was supposed to help the third-place party connect with a new, younger generation of voters and expand its shrunken base.
But an analysis of those who've registered to vote thus far suggests it's done neither.
Almost 60 per cent are 50 years of age or older.
Almost half reside in Ontario.
I was wrong. So were a lot of other people. The working assumption these last few months was that Justin's teenybooper fans would secure his victory. Low attention and low information youngsters would back the Dauphin because he was cute and charming. Keeping in mind that it's easy to be charming when you're so adorable!!!!!
Then comes this bombshell. 60% of those who bothered to register are old enough to have voted for Pierre Trudeau. So much for connecting with the voters of tomorrow. It was the boomers who kept the Dauphin's father in power all those years, now they've returned to vote for the son. There is a touching loyalty on display, something out of a feudal romance. The peasant folk coming to the manor to show homage toward their young lord.
Almost brings a tear to the eye.
Having mistaken Justin's appeal as eye candy we now, after some time, discover that it's more akin to nostalgia. Since the original Trudeau lead singer has taken the Stairway to Heaven, we have to settle for the somewhat shrill cover band. But heck. Just close your eyes and it's still 1968! I still have all my hair! Socialism still makes logical sense!
This is why the Liberal Party makes no sense: Aside from those who grew up with the brand, who really cares anymore? They vote Liberal for the same reason they buy Frosted Flakes. It's what they bought as a kid and they feel comfortable doing it. The Liberal Party is a product that is bought for nostalgia purposes, except nostalgia products are sold in niche markets. Canadian politics, at least outside Quebec, does not allow for niches. Our political system tends toward three party oligopolies: Right, Centre and Left.
The Liberal Party could replace the NDP as Parliament's perennial third place finishers. But the NDP survived all these years because it was seen as a party of principles, reliably attracting union members and granola munching university graduates. These groups reproduce across the generations. You vote NDP because you believe in NDP values. No one votes Liberal because of Liberal values. The Liberals have no values.
A moment of recollection: Jean Chretien the deficit slayer was, less than twenty years earlier, one of the finance ministers who ran up the deficit he was slaying. PM Chretien was basically cleaning up the mess Minister Chretien helped create. This is why I'm always amused by people who argue that Papa Jean was a natural fiscal conservative with a social conscience. Nope. That was John Turner and he left politics in 1975 in no small part because he saw the mess PET was leaving the country.
That's the Liberal Party. They pretend to be like John Turner, but in practice lurch from Trudeaupian socialism to Martinite fiscal prudence as the political winds dictate. The Grits are a classic brokerage party. Thing is that they've got nothing to broker anymore. The Tories and Dippers now occupy the political real estate they did for decades. To survive the Liberals would either have to go further to the Left than the NDP, or further to the Right than the Tories.
There is certainly enough political space to the Right or Left of the two largest parties. Thing is that Justin isn't nimble or clever enough to find it. Such a shift would also mean jettisoning the party's mushy Blue Liberals and many of its long time careerists. What's left of a business when you've fired all the staff and alienated much of your customer base?
No matter how nostalgic the Grit Boomers get in electing Boy Justin, nostalgia isn't enough to deal with modern Canada. The Liberal Party makes no sense and placing a novice at the helm even less.
The father of the Spawn of Satan was first elected as PM not by boomers but their parents, the so-called Greatest Generation. Only two years worth of boomers were eligible to vote by 1968. The boomers now dominate the institutional left and while they have certainly done their best in degrading the culture, they came to occupy that cocoon honestly and to a large degree, without that much inter-generational revolution. In fact their progressive grandparents (Tommy Douglas et al) from that reddest of decades, the Thirties, would likely have approved of their growing statism.
When Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged, the oldest boomers hadn't reached puberty. The professors of the boomers for their university years were mostly not boomers.
Posted by: John Chittick | Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 01:23 AM