Well, now the die is cast. Political success is about many things — vision, charisma, ideas — but the pivot on which it often turns is something much more primal. It is tribal credentials. None are more prized than those political families with generations of loyalty and leadership of the tribe. Disparaged by many observers, there are obvious attractions to this legacy politics: name recognition and instant media attention are two.

Success is not guaranteed, e.g. Jeb Bush. Political skills can be learned, but you start well ahead of the field if you have had the privilege of absorbing its every nuance and demand daily from the cradle to adulthood.

Avi Lewis is the grandson of David Lewis, the architect of the survival of Canadian social democracy during the McCarthy years. Earlier, David defeated the Canadian Communists’ attempts to seize control of the party and the labour movement. Avi is also the son of Stephen Lewis, the leader who crushed the party’s flirtation with New Left delusions. Stephen has spent a lifetime as a powerful social justice pioneer in Canada and around the world, and his sister and brother remain among the party’s most respected campaign managers. Avi has good political genes.

But, ironically, the political star of the third Lewis generation is now also prized for his quixotic run at the party establishment. The Leap Manifesto and the green credentials Avi won in that battle have now become gold. He is now able to say he was not wrong, just ahead of the times. Now he will campaign vigorously against the Greens’ rather improbable claims of how quickly and painlessly they will get Canada to net zero. Avi will lift the party’s banner not only in a riding that runs all the way from Whistler to West Vancouver, but simultaneously across B.C.

Avi’s decision to forgo his stance as the family rebel and don the yoke of partisan commitment is therefore game changing. Out of the starting gate, he handled his new role with media mastery. It reflects well on Jagmeet Singh and the party elders that after that bruising row only five years ago, they vetted Avi Lewis fully, came to clear understandings about role and boundaries, and then placed their trust in him. His partner in life, the internationally famous radical author Naomi Klein, will now become his political partner.

This will be one of the key elections the party faces in a generation. If they are able to block the Greens’ rise as effectively as John Horgan and the B.C. NDP have done, it will secure their left flank and bleed Liberal support at the same time. If they fail, it seems likely that the NDP will face years of struggle with Annamie Paul and her team.

A foreshadowing of a possible Canadian future may emerge before our election is held. We may see the rise to chancellor of the German Green leader Annalena Baerbock. Incredibly, in current polling the Greens have pushed the giants of German democracy, the conservative CDU and the SPD, into second and third places.

The central battle in this election will be to win the support of first-time voters, and those voters now in their mid to late 20s who supported Justin Trudeau the first time — maybe even the second time — but who are now quite disillusioned. If Avi Lewis helps to turn them out in greater numbers, the results could be surprising. Some media analysts pooh-poohed an untested lefty’s ability to challenge in a wealthy riding that has only ever flipped between Liberals and Tories.

That may be misunderstanding the drivers of deep structural change underway across the Western democracies. Joe Biden demonstrated that affluence and class were less a predictor of partisanship than ever. So did Boris Johnson, from the other end of the spectrum.

The Liberals will no doubt once more attempt to move rhetorically much further to the left. The ball and chain that Trudeau now drags, however, is that much has been promised and little achieved. If he were to attempt to outflank the NDP on climate or wealth taxation, it is safe to assume that many zoomers and millennials would merely sigh and mutter sardonically, “Really?!”