“How do you think we’re doing?” the veteran Liberal party campaign organizer asked as we sat a few days ago in a quiet backroom at a non-political conference.

He was asking about Justin Trudeau, who on April 14 will mark his second anniversary as Liberal leader and is barely six months away from a federal election that right now has no clear front-runner.

Over the past two years, opinion polls have almost always shown the Liberals leading the Conservatives and NDP, sometimes by significant margins. At the same time, Liberal memberships and fundraising have increased dramatically.

Clearly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is obsessed with Trudeau, who still draws huge, enthusiastic crowds almost everywhere he goes. Like it or not, he has “star power,” an attribute that will never be associated with Harper.

But I hesitated before answering that I think Trudeau still is faring well in Toronto because urban progressives dislike Harper so much, but that he wasn’t doing so well in the Conservative heartland that sweeps across most of southern Ontario where Harper’s “war on terror” is popular.

My hesitation, though, was due to my understanding that many long-time Liberals, those people who stuck with the party through the Martin-Dion-Ignatieff years, are growing increasingly uneasy with Trudeau.

Their unease stems from a sense that despite Trudeau having been their leader for two years, they still don’t really know who he is, what he believes in, where he stands on major issues — and where his true passions lie.

It’s a damning indictment by people who should be among his most fervent supporters.

At the same time, the Liberals’ lead over the Conservatives evaporated in recent months. The latest EKOS poll released last week puts the Liberals at 28.5 per cent, the Tories at 31.8 per cent, the NDP at 23.2 per cent and the Greens at 8.7 per cent.

“The long-term trend is not positive” for the Liberals, EKOS president Frank Graves says, adding that beyond the issue of terrorism and security, the results of his latest poll also suggest the Liberals “are suffering from a lack of clarity in the party’s plans for the country and its citizens.”

In fact, Trudeau is at a crossroads.

With just six months to go before the Oct. 19 election, he must find a way to shift the political spotlight away from the war on terror, which plays to Harper’s strength, and on to the economy, which is deteriorating quickly with falling oil prices. A Nanos poll released last week found 90 per cent of those surveyed said a party’s plans for the economy is more important in determining which party to vote for than a party’s plans for fighting terrorism.

More importantly, though, he needs to rekindle the widespread popularity he enjoyed within the party itself in his first year as leader.

It’s a critical job because many older Liberals are starting to question his judgment on issues ranging from his stand on the fight against Islamic militants to comments on how he has “a level of admiration” for China and for talking about smoking marijuana in his home since becoming an MP.

They also question his honesty, especially around riding nominations. Trudeau promised “open nominations,” but that’s “an outright lie,” says one Liberal field worker. He cited several examples where Trudeau stepped in with a hand-picked candidate, including Chrystia Freeland in Toronto Centre who hadn’t lived in Toronto or Canada for more than a decade.

There’s also the problem of a dearth of in-depth policies on issues ranging from free trade, rising prison incarceration rates that are now rivalling those in the U.S., and low corporate tax rates that have failed many middle-class workers.

“What does he stand for?” another active Liberal riding organizer says. “I don’t know.”

Trudeau is aware of the criticism within his own party about a lack of detailed policies.

To address that, he recently recruited Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre and a former deputy minister in the Ontario ministry of intergovernmental affairs, to help write his campaign platform. Mendelsohn is on leave from the Mowat Centre, an independent public policy think-tank at the University of Toronto centre.

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Trudeau must move quickly to address these concerns. That’s because the election is six months away and, as politicians know, six months can be an eternity in politics.

It’s plenty of time, however, to make or break a young leader who started with so much promise but now finds himself facing growing doubts about his leadership abilities within his own ranks.

Bob Hepburn’s column appears Sunday. bhepburn@thestar.ca

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