It’s fascinating to see how people react to a poll which shows Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are not a miracle of modern political science.
The assumption in conventional wisdom land is that the Prime Minister is such a political rock star that Joe and Jill Six Pack just feel fortunate every day that he is our leader.
There are too many reasons for this assumption to list here, and none of them matter because they are all based on charisma.
And charisma can go from all-powerful to irrelevant in minutes depending on issues and events.
Justin Trudeau’s popularity is all about Justin. He’s the non-politician, highly-likable guy who relates to ordinary people even though he comes from a background that is anything but ordinary.
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His biggest fans treat him like he was born on the planet Krypton and sent here to save us from all kinds of disasters and real and imagined.
But we’re coming up on the 2nd anniversary of Superman Justin’s election.
And the cartoon is becoming too tedious to watch even for some media people who were among the first to be impressed by his glow.
Some who were fans began to see a flaw when he charged across the House of Commons to the NDP section where he confronted one of his hecklers.
In the process he managed to elbow a female MP in the chest. The incident became known as ‘Elbowgate’.
The PM apologized for his actions, but left many of his admirers wondering if there was a screw loose.
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The “real” Superman would never have done this.
In the first year of office, there was the pesky issue of political election reform. Trudeau had spent an entire campaign courting NDP voters telling them he was the most progressive person in Canada.
And if elected he would put a sword through an elections system which favours the big brand parties.
It’s called “first-past-the-post” and it allows them to win a riding simply by winning more votes than anyone else.
Since there are always more than two candidates running in a riding, the winner rarely gets anywhere near 50 per cent of the vote.
So when all the votes are totaled, a party that gets 40 per cent of the popular vote could end up with as much as 60 per cent of the seats.
That’s how it worked two Octobers ago for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
It wasn’t the first time this kind of political math was performed in the country.
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It’s a national tradition that even non-Supermen have performed.
It’s not magic. It’s just the the way it works in Britain and Canada and any other country with a multiparty system that operates first-past-the-post.
Justin Trudeau said the election would be the last one to use the system.
It was the key promise that NDP voters fell in love with. And it didn’t take Superman long to break their hearts.
Breaking promises is not good for Superman’s image.
Neither is an expensive secret vacay to a billionaire’s island in the Caribbean, or private fundraising dinners with billionaires or attacking Ma and Pa small businesses, including farms.
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The list goes on. But the only point that needs to be made is the honeymoon is over.
This isn’t Superman or even Clark Kent.
This is a privileged human being pretending to be the savior of the middle class. And while he takes a great photo and clearly loves doing it over and over again, he is politically vulnerable.
Will he win the next election? I don’t know.
I just know he’s as vulnerable as any politician who has shown himself to be vain, arrogant and entitled.
Only a fake superman would routinely break promises made to the voters.
Those who claim Trudeau cannot be beaten in October 2019 are the same ones who helped foster the myth of the Superman Justin.