Very slight movement to Labor after a quiet week on the opinion poll front.
The only new poll this week was the usual weekly result from Essential Research, which causes the BludgerTrack poll aggregate to move slightly in favour of Labor. This includes a single gain on the seat aggregate, in this case from Victoria. Nothing new this week on leadership ratings.
Author: William Bowe
William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.
View all posts by William Bowe
Catmomma –
Maybe. Or maybe by focusing on Trump, once he is gone the American public will sigh and say “thank goodness that’s over, what’s on telly?” and the system remains ready for Trump mk2 in 10 years time.
(And as I’ve said before on PB when ‘reform of the system’ comes down to tinkering with the Electoral College … IMO that ain’t any real debate about what is wrong, that’s window dressing).
But yes it is, of course, up to Americans to fix their own system. However since Trump is a general discussion topic on here (and how could he not be) it is equally germane to try to provide some balance to that discussion and point out what I see as a mistake to focus solely on the man in question and not take a broader view of the ‘context’ of Trump.
Trump impacts us all; so too does the American political system, even if we have no say in it.
Vic:
The Esquire article is a very useful insight into his character. For someone with such insightful discourse on American politics, and the ability to cut to the chase quickly and with great humour, he appears to actually be incredibly ordinary in real life outside his love of animals.
And I loved reliving Larry Wilmore’s smack down of that ghastly Milo person!
Zoomster –
If that’s aimed at me (not sure how it could be aimed at anyone else in this discussion) then all I can say is that is a total mischaracterization of what I’ve been saying.
Jackol
Apologies. I realised that and went to delete the post. Unfortunately, I’d just been playing online Scrabble, and the button to change your move is where the submit button is on this site!
Z – heh np no biggie. That pesky Scrabble!
Fess
yep. He like the rest of us, is an ordinary and flawed character.
Jackol
Are those Zoomster’s Scrabble letters ? 🙂
I realise it looks like a rather pathetic excuse but I left the other one in my trouser pocket.
Zoomster
It better be damned good letter as Zhehnpno look a nightmare to use 🙂
Now, there’s a good idea!
PB and Scrabble combined! We’d never leave the joint! 😀
Phone
Jonathon Pie !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, can’t link, but if you find it, wow !!!!
C@Tmomma
Unfortunately we would end up with a stack of Qs 🙂
Outside Left
Is this the J Pie you were referring to ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsGVghRBdKI
Poroti, oooooooooooou yeah!
Poroti,
Unfortunately we would end up with a stack of Qs
I know all the best Q words! 😉
Outside Left
Lurve the Blairite take down.
poroti @ #190 Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 5:08 pm
Certainly, but what is the fix, and how may it be achieved?
Time for me to weigh in on the Trump imbroglio.
Trump will escape impeachment, and any conviction while he remains POTUS. The people around him will fall due to their ties with Russian spies/money/gangsters, but Trump will have “plausible deniability”. He will be convicted in the court of public opinion, however he won’t be convicted in a court of law because of a lack of “proof beyond all reasonable doubt”.
He will serve his full term, but become a lame duck after 2018 when the Repubs get eviscerated in the mid-terms.
When he’s turfed out of office in 2020, then, and only then, will he get hammered by all sorts of criminal charges, such as money laundering for Russian mobsters.
To ensure this happens, the Dems need to put forward a viable candidate for POTUS. No more Clintons. No more neo-liberals.
ELIZABETH WARREN FOR POTUS 2020!!!!!
Had she been the Dems nominee in 2016, she’d have her @rse on the chair behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office right now.
My two cents for all it’s worth, of course.
Poroti, the ferocity of his takedown of the blairites was awesome. Could he not have a ball with our tory collection!
The people who are obsessing about the Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia are NOT doing that in parallel with thoughtful work on the structural problems of economic policy and democratic process. If the Trump campaign had been sabotaging a peace process and prolonging a war for electoral reasons, that would be an extremely important and substantive matter. What the Nixon campaign did in 1968 was in that category. But what Trump associates may have done is held conversations and entered into consultancy or speaking fee arrangements that weren’t consistent with the US Government’s ineffectual, mostly symbolic sanctions against Russia. The substance of the allegations is weak sauce compared with the economic policy and governance failures that led to Trump winning the election.
C@Tmomma
As long as ya have the Us, ‘cept for Qantas 🙂
C@T, Q words? I recently had the misfortune to play scrabble with/against a self proclaimed scrabblemaster. Never again in this life.
Looks like the Coalition can’t agree what, if anything, to do about emission reduction in the wake of the Chief Scientist’s report. Even the flaccid response proposed in the report are too much for the Nationals and the Right of the Liberals.
It is most unlikely that the Coalition will be able to agree on anything remotely acceptable.
There’ll be nothing for Labor to be bipartisan about.
Outside Left
Alas, my mother in law refused to play with me, because my mother had taught me all the sneaky Scrabble words..
“I know all the best Q words!
Hmmm that last didnt work.
Jackol @ #161 Saturday, June 10th, 2017 – 3:42 pm
That seems like essentially a duplicate of the second point. And also fairly nonsensical.
Are you saying that literally nothing Trump does should be investigated or scrutinized because he can’t be prosecuted unless he’s impeached first and a GOP controlled Congress is going to let him get away with murder? That’s what it sounds like.
I for one would rather see the truth come out, because 1) that GOP controlled Congress won’t last forever, 2) it drives Trump’s approval rating down and puts pressure on Congress to act out of self-preservation, 3) it encourages voters to elect non-Trump-aligned candidates, and 4) it delays the rest of Trump’s agenda and also stops him from going full speed ahead with his “being president means I can do whatever the hell I want” philosophy. Ignoring everything he does because he’s not going to be impeached for it today seems quite cynical.
And while you’re correct that removing Trump will do nothing to improve “the system”, his removal is still a massive improvement and worthwhile on its own merits. You don’t leave a gaping hole in your roof because patching it won’t fix your broken window, and you don’t let Trump stay in office just because impeaching him won’t accomplish electoral reform. Both things are separate and worthwhile issues to pursue, concurrently.
A R – if you’re going to leap in to that discussion please look at the whole conversation. I was replying to a specific query from Catmomma about whether Mueller represented a significant force for change on the system, and my response was framed around that.
I was not suggesting that there should be no such investigation (and if you read subsequent posts you would see me state that too).
Chris Bowen – The Case for Action on Inequality —
https://www.chrisbowen.net/transcriptsspeeches/the-case-for-action-on-inequality/
Outside Left
Some more Pie you ‘May’ like.
.
“Theresa May Fucks the NHS !”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PymtGtxGX8
That was my interpretation as well. It seems to me that Jackol and Poroti are doing the ‘meh’ thing when it comes to the serious and legitimate concerns about potential corruption and criminal activity within the Trump Administration out of some kind of perverse counter-culture, anti-mainstream push back.
But whatever, they are entitled to their views.
Confessions – that’s not what I was saying at all. I’m happy to elaborate on and defend what I actually said for anyone who remains interested in engaging, but I’m not going to spend more time responding if people don’t look at the whole context of what I was saying.
Confessions
I am ‘banging on” about the febrile claims based on SFA re Trump because they really do make it possible that their “boy who cried wolf” effect will end up allowing the real shit to slip though.
Nicholas Gruen (@NGruen1)9/6/17, 9:21 pm
Apologies if someone has already mentioned the above post.
Jackol, Poroti:
From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve argued, the comments here about the Trump Administration and its alleged corrupt and criminal behaviours are not “febrile claims based on SFA re Trump”. You obviously disagree. That’s your entitlement. But please do not dress your disagreement up in dismissal of the numerous legitimate concerns people have about how Team Trump is acquitting itself in govt, and this includes the increasingly nefarious links that keep coming up when it comes to the incumbent POTUS.
Steve,
What do you base this on? I hope you’re right.
I hope so too.
And I also hope that if the climate deniers resist even Finkel, that the business lobby stops using blame-both-sides weasel words and starts directly singling out the Nats and the other troublemakers.
And I guess it would be too much to hope for the media to start saying the bleeding obvious. That this is not about the failure of Liberal and Labor to agree. Its about the hard core extremists in the Liberals and Nats.
These two headlines currently on the SMH website home page say it all:
Turnbull is snookered on energy – his ‘promise’ of lower energy costs for consumers is exposed as a total sham.
Al Capone got put in the slammer for tax evasion.
One hopes that Trump gets done on something equally dumb.
Outside Left
Saturday, June 10, 2017 at 7:22 pm
C@T, Q words? I recently had the misfortune to play scrabble with/against a self proclaimed scrabblemaster. Never again in this life.
I had a couple of British friends, back in the day when I lived in Perth. They were constantly at my husband and I to come over to theirs for a game of Scrabble. I know a few words from the dictionary, so I thought, yeah, should be fun! They were averagely articulate in everyday conversation, and so, yes, I thought my husband, who read books incessantly, and I, could whup their asses in Scrabble, basically.
How. Wrong. I. Was!
OMFG!
I had, never, up until that night, seen anyone get a 7 letter word on a Triple Word square, which ended up being an 8 letter word, ‘quixotic’, in my life! But they did it. And they kept on doing it! I think the experience fell under the category of ‘ritual humiliation’.
Never. Again.
No matter how many times they asked us to come back for another game.
😮
Theresa May not last:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/lame-duck-may-fights-for-survival-on-two-fronts-20170610-gwoqh5.html
Nice view of Sydney Harbour and Harbour Bridge – good view of Vivid festival lights: http://webcamsydney.com
Ah, so one of the problem’s with Theresa May is her Credlinesque Chief of Staff, Fiona Hill, as this, no-holds-barred, account portrays very clearly:
Second attempt.
On the Trump imbroglio, I don’t think Trump will be impeached and certainly not convicted over the Russian affair.
Some of his associates will probably go down, however Trump will have “plausible deniability”. The court of public opinion will convict him, however a court of law won’t determine proof beyond all reasonable doubt.
He’ll see out his term, but after the Repubs get eviscerated in the 2018 mid-terms, he’ll be a lame duck before getting turfed out of office in 2020.
Once that happens, I believe he’s going to get hammered with all sorts of RICO/money laundering charges and will spend the rest of his sorry life in jail.
The Dems in 2020 need to put a strong, competent alternative to gain a landslide victory. No more Clintons, no more neo-liberals.
ELIZABETH WARREN for POTUS 2020.
Had the Dems put forward Senator Warren in 2016, she’d currently have her @arse on the chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office right now. Trump would be an anomalous joke.
As far as fixing the American system, good luck with that. Americans worship their Constitution and are very reluctant to change it, no matter how anachronistic it is.
Just my 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
Hehe
Police Community (@PolComForum) tweeted at 0:03 am on Sat, Jun 10, 2017:
Dear Theresa, it’s not the number of MPs that counts it’s how you use them. You have to do more with less that’s all
Nice link Steve
Sorry, but RawStory and PoliticsUSA are not proper media organizations. When CNN and the rest of the majors call for Trump’s impeachment/downfall, then we’ll know it’s on for real.
It’s nice to read the scuttlebutt – don’t get me wrong – but until a reputable media organization becomes part of the anti-Trump bandwagon, he’s not going anywhere.
Cud Chewer What do you base this on?
A couple of things:
1. The tension between the Nationals / Liberal Right and the ‘Moderates’ on what we should do about emissions. The former are determined to do nothing, while the latter seem to think that we should at least make a start.
2. The fact that for the Coalition Right, compromise means “do what we say”
3. The reaction of the usual suspects (e.g. Joyce, Abetz, Craig Kelly) to the minimalist recommendations in the Finkel report.
The only thing that the Coalition can agree on is to do nothing, with some token gestures for window dressing, i.e. basically what they’re doing now. There’ll be nothing for Labor to compromise with.
Cheers Steve777 on the Sydney link.
Great viewage!