Partying like it is 1996 with Kennedy led Ontario Liberals of 2012

4:25 in the morning of December 1 on the floor of the old Maple Leaf Gardens, on the northwest corner of Carlton Street and Church Street in downtown Toronto, the 1996 Ontario Liberal Party leadership convention chose the new Leader of the Official Opposition after a lengthy six month ground battle on the fifth and final ballot, after various technical difficulties and failures hanuted the old house from noon the day before onward. Though divisions remained strong among the provincial Grits, who had been just recently whipped by a united Ontario Progressive Conservative machine that ran under the Common Sense Revolution brand name with Mike Harris as its leader and brand new Premier of Ontario, this long camapign and longer still convention actually led to a party unity in of itself for the Liberals, who had been in dire need of any form of it. But the man that lead the whole night by approximately 200 votes in each of the final four ballots, a charismatically left winged social activist Gerard Kennedy, lost out on the fifth by roughly that same number to a bland right winged fiscal restraintist Dalton Mcguinty Junior, despite the helping hand given by Mcguinty rival Joseph Cordiano, looks to be trying his hand politically once again.

But things have changed drastically for Kennedy, making his first leadership foray look as though it was just a simple walk in the Parkdale—High Park riding, compared to any recent jaunt he may now take.

Having now lost the Liberal leadership both provincially in 1996 and a decade later federally in 2006, Kennedy goes into the race with the majority of his campaign team currently working for Justin Trudeau on his federal campaign for leadership of the Grits in Ottawa, which already puts him behind the eight ball, likely would work hard against him to be as successful as he could be. Also losing the federal Parkdale—High Park electoral district to the New Democrats in the last election simply makes him a private citizen, neither a current Member of Provincial nor Federal Parliament in either legislature, running for an office that needs him actively on the ground as soon as he is elected leader and becomes the Premier, which makes his run one seen as going long or going home, as he will not be MPP of Parkdale—High Park or York South—Weston without the crown. Now perhaps the lessons of former Ontario Liberal Premier Harry Nixon, former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin Junior and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will be viewed through the lens of the current provincial leadership race for the Grits with a Kennedy win, where even a Ernie Evesesque avalanche awaits, but much of this depends on Trudeau and the federal Liberal rebuild in Ottawa and how it goes in the new year.