Layton rockets past Dion on Facebook!

LOL... looks like all the Liberal fretting yesterday couldn't stop the Smiling Jack Express train... Jack Layton officially shot past Dion last night for having the highest number of supporters on Facebook, and just kept right on chugging.  The current numbers for Jack are 11,677, versus 11,496 for Stephane Dion... a difference of 180. (not bad when you consider that he was down by 54 as of 5:00pm last night... that's 230 additional supporters in less than a day!)

While many folks have a "Who cares?" attitude about this, a lot more people, including the folks who run these pages, know better.  Though Facebook is hardly a reliable poll, it says something interesting about where the hearts and minds of today's youth are.  In the past, the Liberal Party could count on the youth of Canada as being solidly in their camp in terms of support.  Today's young people though, are a whole lot more politically savvy than most people give them credit for.  They're also becoming more selective when it comes to throwing their support to any individual or party.  As such, there's been a HUGE resurgence in the last few years of support for both the NDP and the Conservative Party amongst young people.  In years past, it was getting rare to see a conservative leaning campus club in many of our Universities.  Today, most major schools have one, and many are strong and growing.

In fact, one commenter on this blog yesterday, thinking that they were mocking me, only served to prove my point.  He (she?) pointed out that I hadn't mentioned the fact that Mr. Harper is third in the Facebook supporters race, with only 10,195 supporters.  Well, thanks for proving my point!  The fact that Mr. Harper even has 10,195 young people who are willing to fly the Conservative banner on Facebook attests to the very fact that conservatism is alive and well amongst the youth of this country!  (though obviously, there's still lots of work left to be done)

Anyway, the fact that Layton has managed to pass Dion, right on the eve of a by-election, is yet another embarrassing blow to the formerly almighty Liberal machine.  It exposes the fact that the support amongst youth that they once could count on is no longer solid... and perhaps serves as a reminder that Mr. Dion is not the "leader" that Liberals hoped he would become.

Congrats again to Mr. Jack Layton on his astonishing resurgence, at a time when many people we beginning to speculate on the NDP becoming politically irrelevant.  Though it's just on Facebook right now, it could well be an indicator of things yet to come.