MONTREAL—The Liberal leadership campaign does not feature much of a horse race but it did offer the party a fundamental choice as to the way forward. That debate will not necessarily end with the selection of a new leader next month.

There has never been much suspense about the outcome of the Liberal campaign. To all intents and purposes, the Trudeau team has spent the past six months turning a prohibitive lead into an insurmountable one.

To pretend that the closing weeks of the campaign will feature a duel to the finish between Justin Trudeau and one of his rivals would be to distort reality.

In embracing Trudeau, the party will be opting for the apparent path of least resistance to the pinnacle of power.

The course he is charting would see the Liberals try to retrace their steps from a mediocre present to a future as bright as their past.

The next two years will tell whether it is a road to nowhere. All things being equal, that could be the next logical step down the slippery slope the party has been on for the past decade.

Much as they want to, the Liberals cannot easily turn the clock back to a time when the NDP had not yet spread its wings in Atlantic Canada and Quebec and the Conservatives were not as entrenched in the fastest-growing regions of the country as the Liberals once were.

Nor can the party magically make up for the glaring absence of federal Liberal boots on the ground in so many provinces. Or can it?

In the same way that cellular technology made phone service widely available in countries lacking hard-line infrastructure, Trudeau’s successful social media campaign suggests that there could be a shortcut to replenishing the party’s base. But there is no guarantee.

The recruitment of 150,000 new Liberal sympathizers is a record-breaking achievement in Canadian politics but its lasting impact on the party can easily be overstated.

These recruits are first and foremost Trudeau fans. They are more drawn to his person than to his party. Keeping them engaged between now and an election that is more than two years away will be a major challenge.

The line between a politician that is portrayed as a big part of the solution to one that is seen as part of the problem is a fine one and it can be crossed in a matter of months.

Former prime minister Kim Campbell can testify to that reality.

That brings one to the path that will not be taken next month.

Within the partisan confines of a leadership campaign, Joyce Murray’s argument that a split progressive electorate is a winning condition for the Conservatives did not get much traction, or at least not enough to change the pre-ordained outcome of the leadership vote.

In the big picture, on the other hand, there is compelling evidence to support her thesis that the sum of what the Liberals, the NDP and the Green party have in common is significantly larger than that of their policy differences.

Trudeau’s social media success is actually a bit of a case in point.

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Does anyone doubt that if he had run for the NDP or the Greens, either of them would now be home to tens of thousands of new sympathizers this week?

Like the New Democrats last year, the Liberals will reject of the notion of rapprochement with their progressive rivals next month. But the seed of the idea has been planted in both parties.

Should Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair do no more than cancel each other out over the coming year, it may yet germinate into their only plan B.

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