I came, I saw, I left: the death of the Liberal Party?

While Alberta's monolithic media has been blasting bangs to accompany Jason Kenney's anointment, the whimpers have been left to the common man to provide if they even discover that Alberta's oldest political party, the Liberals, is clinically dead.

Today, on the eve of the deadline in that party's unstoried leadership race, their one and only candidate, St. Albert mayor Nolan Crouse, withdrew his name "for personal reasons." The Calgary Herald provided no front-page coverage; the Edmonton Journal barely a mention.

In passing, let us remember that this party ruled Alberta from 1905 to 1921, first under Alexander Rutherford, then Arthur Sifton, and lastly, Charles Stewart. They walked in the politically wilderness for decades as Alberta became dominated in turn by the United Farmers, Social Credit, and then the PCs. After 70 years of irrelevance, Laurence Decore nearly restored them to power in the 1993 election. They never stood a chance thereafter, but until 2012 the Liberals still regularly received 25% of the provincial vote.

The final collapse of the party has been curiously timed. One would have expected, given the acrimonious take-over of the PCs by the hard right, that the Liberals would have benefited from renewed interest. It is no secret many former PCs have no interest serving Jason Kenney's agenda. I think many more Albertans will probably feel the same in short order as they realize the PCs have utterly vacated the political centre and anything within throwing distance of it to merge with the big-C Wild Rose Party.

So what finally killed the ailing Liberal Party?

It's easy enough to say that the NDP beat the Liberals at being the centre-left. This is obvious. It may also be fair to say that up until two weeks ago, the PCs had been out centre-righting them, too. Fear of a Wild Rose government pushed traditional liberal supporters right, and then in 2015, the other way.

This needn't have been the case, but unlike the NDP, the Liberals coasted for years under the illusion that they were the logical replacement once the province realized how dissatisfied they were with the PCs. This took longer than they thought, and they proved incapable of dealing with the rise of the Wild Rose Party. Ultimately, the solid but ordinary David Swann lost out big time to a much more extraordinary Rachel Notley.

I can only imagine that in the end the numbers killed the Liberal Party. They had been burdened with high debt, limited activity, and terrible polls. While never anywhere near as dependent on corporate donations as the PCs, their banning hurt them too. They undoubtedly expected a bump in membership and donor support following the PC convention. This likely did not materialize. While this is hypothetical, I really supposed it had to be the realization that the party had lost its remaining vitality.

This final embarrassing collapse instead yields a rather significant amount of room for the Alberta Party to grow. Don't be surprised if a number of high profile Albertans start giving their support to this party in the near future. An Alberta Party successfully integrating the residue of the Liberal Party and the left-wing of the PC party could prove to be very powerful, especially in rural northern Alberta and Calgary.

Thanks for reading.

While writing this article, the CBC reported that two people have stepped forward to claim leadership of the Alberta Liberal Party. Such a late competition gives me little reason to believe this event in any ways contradicts the essence of what I've just written - Adam