Very good analysis Bob - and some well-argued points about the longtime lack of Liberal strength in Quebec.

Ironically, I am just coming back from Brian Mulroney's book launch event at the Fraser Institute - where a veritable Jurassic Park of 1980s Tories gathered with their hero.

Mulroney may still be despised by many but his electoral accomplishments are significant, especially in Quebec.

The other factor Bob doesn't mention is that for three consecutive elections Jean Chretien completely owned Ontario - the Reform-Alliance mad political scientist experiment guaranteed Liberal governments. That in turn led to the imperious attitude of entitlement which voters grew sick of.

All that said, Stephane Dion is not blameless, not as a Liberal cabinet minister and not as a Quebecois who cannot inspire his own province.

It will be fascinating to see how the next election shapes up. Thanks for this piece.

Yes good work Bob.

Of course, the declining seat count and vote share since 1980 does show a huge drop and the lastest drop is Dion's fault as will be the future further fall in October 2009.

Bill, the "experiment" worked quite well. The PC Party is dead and the reformed Conservative Party led by Harper is quite different than what the PC Party would have been right now without the experiment.

Imagine a PC Party with someone like Maureen McTeer or Belinda as leader with the old Red Tories in charge. Quite a different Party I'd say.

It isn't unusual for a party to need a period of rejuvenation and rebuilding, and you rightly note that many Liberals have perfected 'taking things for granted' over the past 10 years.
We opened the doors to our own defeat and continue to harbour the old habit of re-fighting leadership battles, whether real or imaginary.
But the recent loss of Outremont -- where Bill's party seemed to discover that their only hope in Quebec is to run a Liberal -- can be a perfect starting point to the true healing and rebuilding. If it's not done, the country will be divided between ideological driven parties.

When a party's sole real product line is power and winning elections, albeit deodorized and dressed-up for the urbane sophisticated types under the phoney label "strategic voting", what does that party do when it's out of office, out of power, and out of patronage? If Dion has not found an answer, it's mostly because there isn't one to be had.

Brian Mulroney did indeed alter the basic geographic alignments of Canadian politics in Quebec. A recent political science paper, reviewing election studies since the 1960s, attests to that.

But the paper also showed one other fundamental shift in the geographic alignments of the federal parties, the Atlantic Region having become a region of relative strength for the NDP. Yet curiously the paper does not credit Alexa MacDonough for that transformation, perhaps because it was of smaller scale than the Quebec shifts engineered by Mulroney.

I have a personal recollection on this. About a week into the 1984 election I saw a TV news panel item, in which a Quebec Liberal organizer was asked by the host if the presence of a bilingual Quebecer at the top of the Conservative ticket might mean that Liberal hegemony in Quebec was seriously threatened for the first time since 1958. Oh no, replied the Liberal organizer, the worst he could possibly foresee is "a slight diminution in our majority".

From the perspective of 23 years later is looks like the diminution is still going on, now thanks to Jack Layton, another bilingual Quebecer living in Toronto by mistake.

George - I love your approach! If the Conservatives hadn't imploded and gone off for 40 days in the social conservative desert, they might have found a viable leader and still been the party they once proudly were. Maybe Mike Harris would be Prime Minister of a majority government in his second term!

As for Burl Ives, blaming the NDP for running a former Quebec provincial Liberal is a pretty rich for a party that has become addicted to recruiting has-been NDP politicians as their candidates - like Ujjal Dosanjh, Bob Rae, Chris Axworthy - and other former NDP supporters like Dave Haggard, Glen Murray, Lee Rankin, Bill Barlee, etc.

NOTE TO LIBERALS - so far only Ujjal has been elected.

Budd's point about Alexa is well-taken.

" ... a party that has become addicted to recruiting has-been NDP politicians as their candidates - like Ujjal Dosanjh, Bob Rae, Chris Axworthy - and other former NDP supporters like Dave Haggard, Glen Murray, Lee Rankin, Bill Barlee, etc.

NOTE TO LIBERALS - so far only Ujjal has been elected."

So very true Bill, and an extension I think of the fact that winning and power are the entire raison d'etre of the Red Party. There is a cosmetic need to appear to be taking thought and idea injections from other sources, including not only failed NDPers, but departing Tories as well.

In recent years there's been Brison and Stronach, but does anyone remember Jack Horner from the 1970s? Once ridiculed as the ultimate Alberta Tory Redneck Diefenbuddy by all good Toronto Liberals, he was warmly and immediately welcomed into the Trudeau Cabinet the minute he got fed up with Joe Clark and went shopping. It sort of reminds me of Ujjal's quip to Gurmant Grewal, "Cabinet is quick!"

Seems as if both the media and the NDP cannot help but parrot Harper talking points.

Lest we forget that after a year of fairly shrewd political panders to the public, the conservatives have failed to pull out of a statistical tie with the liberals.

Failure to do so underlines the fact that the Conservatives under the very best of circumstances (coming off a massive opposition scandal, exploding economy, inherited surplus budget) still cannot pull away more than a couple points.

The 2006 campaign was undertaken in the very worst of circumstances for Liberals. You had multiple scandals unfolding during the writ period, infighting and a pathetic national campaign. The 2007 campaign will be done under a more or less even playing field.

When the media bluster and pollyanish NDP predictions clear, the Liberals still have an enormous machine, will have an extremely attractive platform for Canadians, and enough money to at the very least win back a minority government.

Any predictions otherwise are simply wishful thinking amongst the socialists and neo conservatives who share the common objective of bringing their own unique brand of extremist politics in Canada to fruition.

Interesting article and interesting commentary. In 1984 I worked on Paul Manning's campaign for the federal Liberals in Vancouver Centre. He was swept away in Mulroney's landslide, coming in third behind victor Pat Carney, and second to the NDP's Johanna Den Hertog. I remember talking to one of the campaign organizers as she cleared up papers in Manning's campaign office on election night. When I remarked to her that she didn't seem very upset, she responded that the Tories wouldn't last and that Canada was, after all, "a liberal country". I've never been sure whether she meant big-L or little-l. In any event, the country certainly has changed politically in the past 20 plus years.

Bill, who blamed the NdP? They pulled a incredibly brilliant strategic move, and maybe there's more in the socialist toolbox that Mulcair agrees with then previously known. He was a liberal who was, and apparently not alone, not a fan of Dion's.
Because i know you love the politics in BC here, where its right and left and blame the rest, you'd love to see Layton as opposition leader. But while everyone talks about how the Liberals are only about power, it seems that during there times in office they've managed to do somethings pretty right besides some bonehead moves.

It will a great day in Canada if the NDP can pull themselves up to the point where they become the Official Opposition and the Liberals don't have party status, under a Conservative Govt of course.

Canada should reach the point reached by the British a long while ago when the Liberals split and they became a two party state of Conservatives and Labour.

A non-ideological Party addicted to power alone should never be Govt.

During the Liberal leadership race, I told a Liberal friend of mine (Kennedy backer) that I thought Rae would win but I hoped Dion would win. As Harris tagged McGinity with "he's not up to the job."

Of course, the Liberal Party in Quebec was mostly run by "volunteers" who received their brown envelopes. When the envelopes stopped so did the work.

That Great Reformer, Jean Chretien destroyed the means of electing Liberals in Quebec with Bill C-24. Harper deepened that wound to inflict the whole Liberal Party and Dion's hard wired Liberal arrogance will cause him to conduct the final act of political hari-kari that does the Liberals in.

Oh, and Bill, the SoCons were merely a faction - not the whole Reform Party. Some of us just really wanted to Reform the corrupt political system that the Liberals and PCs created.

All that's left really is the undeniable strength of the Liberal brand

All brands end up going stale after awhile.

Anyone still buying Atari games?

An excellent take on how the party has become like the New Democrats. "We will tell you what to think because We know what best for you". They have had all kinds of town hall meeting, only the chosen few are listened too.
Again, A Great Concise Take on the Party problems.