I think that this is a very good point. Martin stands a very good chance of having the lowest number of votes for the Liberal Party ever. Worse than the crushing folk gave the Trudeau era in 1984 with 28.02% of the popular vote, worse than either the 1878 depression inspired crush of Alexander Mackenzie by Sir John A. or Dief's majority of 1958 and its 49.6% of the Quebec vote. Should they be remembered in this way? Yup.

I think the most interesting thing about the punishment to come is its dual nature: scandal and vacuous leadership. It is not necessary to bend facts and believe the conspiracies and find that Martin was in the inner circle on the sponsorship scandal. He alone added his own gloss of power without much purpose on top of a party the ethics of many leaders of which got sucked dry somewhere in the late 90s. So is defeat deserved? Undoubtedly.

But nothing with them has changed since 2004 - we knew it all or at least the cards were on the table. What has changed? For me, the main thing is we had a good eighteen months of minority government which drew things out into the light, showed who could work with who and who was not. We had Ed of the NDP back in the House ripping mad and vastly superior in debating skills than anyone else. Likely we also had a bit of backroom peace settle so that former leaders of the Mulroney era were brought back into the CPC fold. We have actually seen former Finance Minister of the negative bottom line, Mr. "44 billion annual deficit" Michael Wilson on a podium behind Stephen Harper in the last few weeks. Unthinkable in 2004 and before. Compared to these two parties and how they took the time to strengthen, the Liberals find themselves in the middle of a civil war of the present Team Rudderless versus the last set Team Unethical. Fratricidal civil war? Purposelessness? Fly paper for scandals? Despite knowing a quite a few good people working for their cause, I can only come to the simple conclusion that they are done.

Update: Just in case you wondered and if wikipedia can be trusted, have a look at this pre-Confederation elections page and note how important the latter 1850s were for the naming of parties. It would appear that the clarity of the Grits has faded somewhat in 150 years.