It looks like there are only two serious canidates in the campaign - Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae. Dominic LeBlanc is running as well, but he not nearly well known enough to win.
The race has no woman it, but this is about par for the course in Canadian politics, we are still short of strong female politicians.
The fact there is not a single serious candidate from the west is a problem for the Liberals. Hedy Fry was in the race last time around but I do not think anyone was taking her seriously.
BC and Alberta will shortly have more seats than Quebec in the federal parliament. As a region it is much more important to Canada than it was even one generation ago. The fact that the Federal Liberals are the number three party in the west is a problem for them. The party needs to focus on this region more than anywhere else if it wants any chance to govern again.
The fact that there are no obvious western candidates for the leadership should scare the party.
If it is only two serious candidates in the race, the leadership will be decided before the convention. The delegate numbers will clearly show who will win before the convention starts. I believe that this person will be Michael Ignatieff.
Rae and Ignatieff are both on the old end of the spectrum to be leader. Both of them are over age 60 and Ignatieff will be a pensioner before the next election. They are more than a decade older then Stephen Harper. Should the Liberals win in 2012, by the end of the first term the Prime Minister would be close to 70.
Choosing old guys who will be leader for one election makes little sense to me. Is this not the time for the party to rebuild itself? Is it not time to choose someone as leader that was born in the 1960s and will be able to stay around as leader for a decade?
Personally I think they should be actively looking for a woman born in the 1960s from the west. Ideally someone like Christy Clark or Patty Sahota would be the sort of person that would break the mold.
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