Jesus Chris

The fact that Layton achieved a national breakthrough in life while coming from exactly the wrong place for electoral credibility is just as remarkable as the outpouring of national emotion after his death. It’s worth remembering that his success this spring came – perhaps not despite, but at least while being – exactly the kind of person who is not supposed to win elections in 2011.

Never mind the fact that the guy was from Toronto, that great receptacle of negative emotions. The guy was from downtown Toronto. The guy was a socialist from downtown Toronto. The guy was a socialist who lived in a brick house in downtown Toronto with his socialist wife and spent his time pursuing a day-to-day socialist agenda of eating Chinese food and installing solar panels and worrying about the homeless. He rode a bike, for crying out loud. A bike! He wanted other people to ride bikes. He put little places to park bikes on the sidewalks and run bike lanes down the roads. He was a fussy downtowner who fussed about downtown.