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One almost has to feel sorry for Eve Adams at the moment of her humiliating and ignominious defeat in her quest for the Liberal nomination in Eglinton-Lawrence — a defeat that both shows the new weakness of the slowly tanking Liberal leader Trudeau and that would have been unthinkable a few short months ago.

The wheels have come off the Trudeau bus and Adams has paid the price.

Adams defected, under something of a cloud, from the Conservative benches when the Liberals were riding far higher in the polls.

Trudeau, thinking himself poised as both the clear, natural alternative to Harper (despite the parliamentary reality of the NDP holding far more seats) and as cruising to a coronation as prime minister was shifting right. 

The calculation was obvious. The NDP was supposedly “finished” and the Liberals simply had to show that they were ready to govern and to appeal to soft Conservative voters who felt that Harper had gone too far. 

Trudeau thought he could take “progressive” voters for granted.

The NDP had dimmed in the polls, Mulcair was not terribly popular personally and the traditional Ottawa narrative of red vs. blue seemed to have reasserted itself after an interregnum of a couple of years.

In these circumstances it seemed that getting behind candidates like Eve Adams and taking a completely gutless and pandering stance voting for, while also supposedly “opposing”, Bill C-51 probably made sense to Trudeau and his “brain trust”.

Not so much anymore.

Parachuting in such a grotesquely opportunistic “liberal” and backing her candidacy was profoundly cynical on Trudeau’s part and his own party, as his star fades, has now directly repudiated him.

While Trudeau has attempted to shift left lately, it looks to be too little too late.

He has already allowed the mask to fall. There was no principle there — nor even the flawed though very clear vision of his father. There was simply a desire to take power.

This is a common affliction these days in mainstream bourgeois politics and Trudeau is certainly not the only leader guilty of it.

But in a morally empty art where the execution is the key he has failed spectacularly in something to which he had hitched his name.

It is another indication that, in all likelihood, as with Dion and Ignatieff before, a truly weak supposed Liberal saviour has been exposed as little more than a sad and tired farce.

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