My mother, the political barometer

First, a confession...I'm that guy who brings up politics whenever the opportunity arises, especially at family dinners. I'm sorry. In my defense I'm not the over-bearing, "Those @$$holes in the Conservative/Liberal/NDP/Republican/Democratic/etc party are wrong again, and they're destroying the country!!!!" type of person. I've never started a phrase with "Guess what I just heard on the internet?". I don't spend much time talking at all, actually; what I enjoy is listening to what other people think, and why. It's not that I don't have strong opinions, or that I don't feel comfortable supporting what I believe. I'm just humble enough to know that opinions aren't facts, and I have been wrong before. So I ask other people what they think. And one thing I've learned is that my mother is the perfect average voter.

In 2006, she thought the Liberals had been in power too long. In 2008 she didn't understand the Green Shift but "knew" it would cost her money, and besides Harper wasn't the boogeyman people made him out to be. She never liked Ignatieff, or even pronounced his name properly. She doesn't know anything about how parliament works, and she doesn't pay any attention to anything anyone in Ottawa says unless it's going to affect her directly or it's an election. In short, her opinions tend to almost always perfectly match the public at large.

I was at her house this past Mother's day with the whole family, and after talking about Bin Laden's death and laughing at how Obama interrupted The Apprentice to announce it, talk turned to last week's election. She asked me what I thought the Liberals were going to do now (I'm a Liberal party member), and I told her I had no idea, that it was going to take a while before the party figured out what the next steps were. Then she asked me who I wanted the new leader to be. I told her I liked Scott Brison, I didn't like Bob Rae, and that whoever it was it was more important that the party decides what it wants to be before it picks a new leader. Her response? "You need to get Justin Trudeau in as the party leader".

I thought he might still be a little too young, and making him leader after only a few years in the House of Commons might like look we're desperate to return to the glory years with the Trudeau name.

But, then again, I liked Ignatieff. She liked Jack Layton. Just something to consider.