i don't see any value in this liberal strategy to try and deflect from trudeau's privileged class status, not because it isn't in some sense a liability - and it should be stressed that this is an about-face from the glossy magazine photos that i criticized - but because it isn't believable.

everybody knows that justin trudeau is an aristocrat. so, attempts to deflect from or distort this seem like an attempt to construct a parallel reality, which i guess is only really an error insofar as it is so transparently fraudulent. they're just replacing one unbelievable narrative with another.

campaign rhetoric aside, no sane person thought justin trudeau was going to be a representative of the middle class, and that's not why he got elected. he was elected on a social liberalization platform, which was a bundle of ideas that included the right to wear scarves in public and the right to smoke up without going to jail. there was maybe some hope that he might bring in people that would help ensure our descendants have the right to live on a habitable planet, but these are the kinds of decisions that are made by corporate aristocrats, and the hope that he might have some influence was actually reliant on him using that elite status for influence.

i guess the cynical analysis is that the narrative shift is meant to accompany a policy shift that will align the liberals to the center-right, which is where they have tended to stabilize towards during long periods of safe governance, and where they've largely sat since coming back into office. they've tended to avoid this kind of messaging, but the recent absorption of the aging progressive conservative intelligentsia may be leading them to project phantom demographics into the future. that swing vote won't be replaced, when it dies, and it's almost dead; instead, you'll have a fundamental shift in the number of voters that call themselves 'liberals', because they always have been - and whether this is a 5% or 10% tipping point will determine if the conservative party is a viable vehicle moving into the future, and whether the ndp is a perpetual opposition party or not, as these no longer young voters have now overwritten their parents' conservative identity with their own liberal identity, and are consequently reachable from the left. the fact that the ndp is currently a distraction, at best, doesn't affect the demographics that are emerging.

in canada, that means a shift from a left that takes up 60-65% of the spectrum to a left that takes up 65-75% of it.

but, this is what happens to all liberal governments - they get some support from pragmatic conservatives at the beginning of their mandate, and then design their policies to try and appeal to conservative voters, then get confused when they crater on both sides, as those pragmatic conservatives still always prefer the conservatives, in the end.

if it were up to me, i would not be having trudeau making apologies for his status. i'd be having him demonstrate results to the cameras.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.