What’s next

Not much to report, except that a star is born in Tasmania (maybe), and Northern Territory’s election is looming ever closer.

A new thread is wanted, but for all that’s happening in the world right now, there is not a lot of Australian electoral news for me to hang one on right now – there are no polls this week, and there is nothing to report on the preselection front. However:

• Following former newsreader Jo Palmer’s apparent success in gaining the Launceston region state upper house seat of Rosevears (corresponding with the western end of Bass) for the Liberals at Saturday’s elections, The Mercury reports “political watchers in Canberra are now tracking Ms Palmer’s campaign with interest, with some considering how they could lure their likely new star MP to Canberra”. Both of the elections on Saturday appear to have resulted in seats passing from independents to the major parties, with Palmer taking a vacant seat and Labor’s Bastian Seidel unseating Robert Armstrong in Huon at the southern edge of Hobart (part of the federal and state lower house division of Franklin). This would leave the chamber with five Labor members, three Liberals and seven independents – the first time in its history that the chamber has not had an independent majority.

• I have had too little to say about the Northern Territory election, which will be held in three Saturdays’ time. This will come to an end when I publish my comprehensive guide to the election, which I will hopefully do later today.

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.

2,664 comments on “What’s next”

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  1. ajm
    Yep, I suspect Benghazi for the average American would be all about the fact an American died rather than the utter shite of what they were doing. Heck it was no secret re the arms to Syria , even the MSM were reporting it at the time.

  2. Greensborough Growler:

    Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:10 pm

    [‘My goodness, where’s nath when Meher needs him?’]

    Most likely where dear Cat & dear BB needs you, old chap.

  3. I think another misconception people are having is that Biden needs to select an “exciting” or “interesting” running mate. The dude is leading comfortably. He doesn’t need to do that. Only people who are behind have to make choices like that.

  4. Confessions @ #2599 Sunday, August 9th, 2020 – 7:13 pm

    Rick Wilson confirmed in an interview the other day that, while eminently qualified for the VP role, Team Trump would go hell for leather on Benghazi if she were Biden’s running mate.

    Whoever Biden nominates can’t be a distraction. Rice would be a distraction.

    You always have to filter Rick Wilson. He wants a strong enough Democrat ticket to win this year but doesn’t want a strong Democrat candidate set up for 2024. I think Susan Rice has the background to become such a candidate.

    I think Benghazi is pretty well played out apart from with the unmovable base.

    Still, I’m not an American so may have got it completely wrong. But just in case: remember you heard it here first!

  6. You always have to filter Rick Wilson. He wants a strong enough Democrat ticket to win this year but doesn’t want a strong Democrat candidate set up for 2024.

    He’s said multiple times in interviews that the Republican party is dead and should be burned down with something replacing it from the ashes. He doesn’t think this will happen soon, and from memory has said that Don Jnr or Jason Miller and their ilk will likely be the Republican candidate in 2024.

    He and other never Trumpers are realistic that the party they joined is gone.

  7. Rational Leftist says:
    Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:19 pm
    I think another misconception people are having is that Biden needs to select an “exciting” or “interesting” running mate. The dude is leading comfortably. He doesn’t need to do that. Only people who are behind have to make choices like that.

    Trump is the incumbent. He won with a minority last time. He should be regarded as the front-runner this time. He can win. Biden, should he win, would be only the third candidate in a century to defeat an incumbent. FDR did it. Reagan did it. Clinton did it. Biden is not as good as any of those three antecedents.

  8. Greensborough Growler:

    Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:22 pm

    [I reckon if you had a sock puppet, you’d call it “Tickle the Till”.]

    I’m nearly as honest as the day is long? Can you ascribe accordingly as a mortgage broker? I’ve seen some shonks in my time – no imputation?

  9. Biden is not as good as either of those two antecedents.

    But the antecedent incumbents (Carter and Bush Snr) were way better than Trump.

  11. Jimmy Carter was a failure as President. Nice bloke. But a failure. Bush Senior was as dull as it’s possible to be…but nowhere near as bad a President as a Trump.

    Trump is fighting back. He should not be under-rated.

  12. Steve777:

    Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:41 pm

    [‘We shall ascribe no imputations here!’]

    Please stop being so interesting?

  13. Incumbents are generically favourites to win in any country’s electorate, not because of some inexplicable magic spell or something but because most voters aren’t politics nerds who live and breath elections, and instead see voting as an inconvenient risk minimising exercise. A good or even adequate incumbent will always win re-election. A bad one will struggle but, if they can make their opponent look like a riskier prospect, they can still win.

  14. Anyway, your comment had nothing to do with mine – which was an explanation of why Biden doesn’t need to throw out a “Hail Mary” pass with an exciting or interesting VP pick, and had nothing to do with whether or not I think Biden will win.

  17. I’m confused by what this guy in the photo shared by Confessions is communicating. Is he wearing the swastika mask to express pro-Nazi sentiment, or is he protesting against having to wear a mask out by suggesting it’s like living in Nazi Germany?

    Either way, whatever he is communicating is doubtlessly stupid and dangerous.

  19. I do not under rate Trump, I detest absolutely detest who is, what he stands for and what he does.

    He plays to peoples fears (a lot like Howard did) and thrives on division.

    Whichever VP Biden picks will be attacked over something.

    Sometimes the actual policy platform should matter (I do not like Biden but his Policy platform to state the obvious is better than Trump)

    The real evil in all of this is the Republicans who allow Trump to exist

  21. Sometimes the actual policy platform should matter (I do not like Biden but his Policy platform to state the obvious is better than Trump)

    It should but it doesn’t. The election is a referendum on Trump, plain and simple.

  22. People said that Trump would be the most divisive president and they werent wrong.Imagine another 4 years of this halfwit RWNJ.

  25. bill:

    I went to America once for work, and have always said I’d love to return to travel. But not anymore. The place simply scares the bejeesus out of me with their out of control gun culture, and with coronavirus running rampant, you couldn’t pay me to go there!

  26. I do not have the energy to lay it all out in a logical sequence but there is a whole narrative in the way that the LNP has imposed their ideology on the country so that the economy is in far worse case than it needed to be. All social structures have been made less ineffective, inequality has increased tenfold and therefore the pandemic is a greater disaster.

    If only the blame could be sheeted home to the real culprits.

  27. Confessions
    Matt Taibibi looks at a book from 2004 and by golly what the guy wrote about Repugs and Dems sounds like here.

    Frank ripped the political strategy of Clinton Democrats, who removed economic issues from their platform as they commenced accepting gobs of Wall Street money in a post-Mondale effort to compete with Republicans on fundraising. Gambling that working-class voters would keep voting blue because “Democrats will always be marginally better on economic issues,” New Democrats stopped targeting blue-collar voters and switched rhetorical emphasis to “affluent, white collar professionals who are liberal on social issues.”

    The move seemed smart. This was the go-go eighties, we were all Material Girls (for whom the boy with the cold hard cash was always Mr. Right), and as Frank put it, “What politician in this success-loving country really wants to be the voice of poor people?”

    While Clinton Democrats were perfecting a new image of urban cool, opponents were honing a new approach:

    Republicans, meanwhile, were industriously fabricating their own class-based language of the right, and while they made their populist appeal to blue-collar voters, Democrats were giving those same voters—their traditional base—the big brush-off…

    https://taibbi.substack.com/p/kansas-should-go-f-itself

  28. confessions:
    I reckon it explains the increase in Zombie Movies. When I was younger Zombies weren’t much of a thing. Now, Zombies seem to be everywhere in popular culture. And all Zombies vote for Trump. No other rational explanation.

  31. poroti:

    Today’s Republican party is overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly old and male. The Democrats on the other hand are much more representative of the population.

  32. And back in 2004 The Terminator had just been elected governor. Today the Republican party in California could fit into a phone booth.

  34. The shape of the modern GOP didn’t start with Trump, it started with Goldwater. It just gradually dropped its pragmatism and pretences until Trump came along and started saying the few remaining quiet parts of their beliefs out loudly.

  35. And back in 2004 The Terminator had just been elected governor. Today the Republican party in California could fit into a phone booth.

    And the funny thing is he is way too liberal for them now and is considered a pariah by many current Republicans.

  37. bill @ #2553 Sunday, August 9th, 2020 – 6:17 pm

    confessions:
    I reckon it explains the increase in Zombie Movies. When I was younger Zombies weren’t much of a thing. Now, Zombies seem to be everywhere in popular culture. And all Zombies vote for Trump. No other rational explanation.

    I remember a zombie episode on The Night Stalker.

    Episode number two apparently. 🙂

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolchak:_The_Night_Stalker#Episodes

  39. Confessions:

    ‘It should but it doesn’t. ‘

    That is what I said, the States has become a caricature of itself.

    I lived there for 18 months a long time ago (in the 90’s), mainly in Minnesota / Iowa, it is full of good but impressionable people.

    I hope beyond hope sense will win out but also scared for alternative. If Trump wins another term (or fights his defeat) it will not only affect the states but the world.

  40. ————
    Today’s Republican party is overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly old and male.
    ————
    And the rich ones were all crowded in at the back of his last press conference cheering him on.

    WTAF? He has a cheer squad at his press conferences these days? Turning them into a rally? What next? replete with goons trying to intimidate the media?

  41. And the funny thing is he is way too liberal for them now and is considered a pariah by many current Republicans.

    Too liberal and too intelligent. They are the party of Roy Moore and Kanye West.

  42. That used to terrify me Barney.
    I hated it. I’m one of those people who can’t understand other people who love horror movies. Worlds scary enough.

  43. ” Evidence of such terminal decadence is the choice that so many Americans made in 2016… as they rushed to elect a man whose only credential for the job was his willingness to give voice to their hatreds, validate their anger, and target their enemies, real or imagined.“

    A quote from the article mentioned by Bill @8:04. There’s a huge well of anger and resentment out there. It explains how someone like Donald Trump has so much support. Ditto Pauline Hanson and her ilk. It explains shock jocks like Alan Jones and crapsheets like the Daily Telegraph.

    It’s a well the Liberals dip deep into.

  45. Lizzie:

    Please take that as complementary, but that’s a matter for you. In the early days, you were a shrinking violet; now, however, you’ve blossomed, speaking your piece. That’s the way I see it.

  46. ajm says:
    Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:21 pm
    ….
    You always have to filter Rick Wilson. He wants a strong enough Democrat ticket to win this year but doesn’t want a strong Democrat candidate set up for 2024. I think Susan Rice has the background to become such a candidate.

    Rick Wilson has made his position clear, he wants to win. He wants the best chance and could not care less about the election after.

  47. Mavis

    It’s OK. It’s amazing what a difference a brain operation makes. For a while I lost some of my communication skill and found it hard to form sentences. Cheers.

  48. Mavis, just for you dear; complimentary, not complementary.

    Just one of those pet peeves that I would rarely point out on an anonymous forum, but I thought you would appreciate 🙂

  49. Confessions @ #2624 Sunday, August 9th, 2020 – 8:09 pm

    bill:

    I went to America once for work, and have always said I’d love to return to travel. But not anymore. The place simply scares the bejeesus out of me with their out of control gun culture, and with coronavirus running rampant, you couldn’t pay me to go there!

    My son survived okay.

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