The latest fortnightly Essential Research survey includes the pollster’s monthly leadership ratings, which find Scott Morrison up three on approval to 66% and down two on approval to 25%, Anthony Albanese down four on approval to 40% and up four on disapproval to 39%, and Morrison holding a 53-24 lead as preferred prime minister, out from 50-25. There was also a six point increase in the government’s good rating on COVID-19 response to 67%, with the poor rating steady on 15%.
As it did a fortnight ago, the poll also asked about the mainland state premiers from the small sub-samples in the relevant states: Gladys Berejiklian was at 75% approval (up seven) and 17% disapproval (down four); Daniel Andrews at 65% approval (up four) and 28% disapproval (down five); Annastacia Palazczuk at 65% approval (steady) and 27% disapproval (up three); Mark McGowan at 87% (up nine) approval and 7% disapproval (down five); and Steven Marshall, who was not featured in last fortnight’s polling, at 60% approval and 21% disapproval. State government handling of COVID-19 was rated as good by 82% of respondents in Western Australia, 76% in South Australia, 75% in New South Wales, 71% in Queensland and 59% in Victoria.
Respondents were asked how much attention they had been paying to recent news stories, with 73% saying they had closely followed the easing of COVID-19 restrictions in Victoria, 68% the US presidential election, 36% the allegations of sexual misconduct raised by the ABC’s Four Corners, and 29% Joel Fitzgibbon’s resignation from the shadow cabinet. It also finds an easing in concern over COVID-19, with 27% rating themselves very concerned (down three), 44% quite concerned (down two), 23% not that concerned (up three) and 6% not at all concerned (up two). The peak of concern was in early August, when 50% were very concerned, 40% quite concerned, 7% not that concerned and 3% not at all concerned.
The poll was conducted Wednesday to Monday from a sample of 1010.
Late Riser @ #1300 Saturday, November 21st, 2020 – 8:53 pm
And the Governor gets the final say. As I learned today wrt Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer can dismiss a slate of Electors if she so desires and appoint her own slate. This I have no doubt she would do if the Republicans and Trump in Michigan tried any shenanigans.
Belated, thank you Mavis for that link.
FFS. Overlap and kicks.
Shakes head.
Either way, we still have abit to go before USA Removes trump from office, willingly or not.
A draw, though Oz had most of the possession. Oh well. I blame those pesky Argentinians, still on a roll after beating the Kiwis.
Been There @ #1297 Saturday, November 21st, 2020 – 8:23 pm
You got it. I cannot understand how any serious left-leaning person could be anything else at the moment.
The Tories are making howler after howler, but Labor is just letting everything go completely unchallenged. They seem to be afraid to take issue, lest they rock the boat too far and it tips them out. In fact, they seem not to expect to – or even want to – win the next election at all.
As for Albo – I’m sure he’s a genuinely lovely bloke, but let’s face it – he is lazy, distracted, disinterested, ineffectual, uncharismatic, ideologically barren, and a complete waste of time and money as leader. He is a time-serving inner-city MP that has been elevated far beyond his level of competence.
He has to go. We all know it. But some people just don’t seem to want to accept that yet, because once you start looking for alternatives, there’s … well, not a whole lot of substance, really …
Four More Years! 🙁
Just logged into Facebook and was assaulted by the combined ugly mugs of the nsw premier and treasurer. Here’s the kicker. They wanted me to sign up to the liberal party.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Clearly Facebooks algorithms are not all they’re cracked up to be.
And judging by the comments it was out by a lot. Except for conservative voters claiming g and d are greenies.
And I reported the ad as misleading and spam
C@tmomma
The Blacklist one of the best escapist series you want to see.
It kept me up way past my bedtime many a time.
The beauty of binging.
You just cannot stop at the end of most episodes.
Without Covid, I’m pretty sure Trump would have won. That’s a sobering thought.
VP is the worst job on Capitol Hill. Totally irrelevant with a semi decent President. Until it comes to running themselves.
The ratio decidendi in Chiafalo v. Washington:
[‘The court affirmed the Washington Supreme Court’s decision in a unanimous ruling, holding that a state may enforce an elector’s pledge to support their party’s nominee and the state voters’ choice for President of the United States.’]
In short, Trump’s “faceless” men/women are problematic for him. But I’m sure his chief legal counsel Rudolf would be aware of this case(?).
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2020/11/21/the-failures-behind-the-destruction-the-juukan-gorge-caves/160587720010730
“ Without Covid, I’m pretty sure Trump would have won. That’s a sobering thought.
VP is the worst job on Capitol Hill. Totally irrelevant with a semi decent President. Until it comes to running themselves.”
Trump managed to turn the white uneducated outrage factor up to eleventy in the wake of (mainly) democrat governors shutting down states, the BLM protests following Floyd’s death (which itself played out in the midst of the covid shutdown) and economic dislocation where the dumb fucks of America were once again triangulated against foreigners, others and ‘big city elites’. All of that meant he was able to get out 74 million voters. I doubt that would have happened if 2020 wasn’t the year of turmoil that it was.
On the other hand, trump was well and truly in the nose with moderate democrats and independents before covid. I think now that Biden was the right guy at the right time to run as a unifying figure of normality and dignity. Biden had a big lead in the polls before covid, during covid and in the run home. Pollsters accurately predicted his voter turnout, whilst underestimating Trump’s vote.
Putting all that together, it’s actually possible that without Covid19 and assuming the economy was still doing as well in November as it was in January, trump may not have been able to motivate quite as many folk to come out and vote as he actually did over the last few weeks of the campaign. Whereas Biden’s vote was probably pretty rock solid all the way through this year. Undoubtably he was aided by democrats new found love of mail in voting, but all things considered there is a case to say that without covid, BLM and the general 2020 turmoil, Biden may well have won the popular vote by around 77 to 65 million votes and he may likely have picked up a few more states that were left on the board.
“If the incumbent POTUS wasn’t doing such a terrible job, he would’ve been re-elected” isn’t actually the hot take some online seem to think it is.
From https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/western-power-pays-business-to-soak-up-solar-spikes-as-perth-renewables-take-up-grows-20201120-p56gj6.html
That certainly changes the economics around storage. I would imagine, though, that if there was a surplus of storage available then the situation would reverse.
bc
We’re going to be hearing a lot more about controllable loads.
One of my pet projects is landfill mining and reprocessing. Taking material that would otherwise be impossible to recycle and reverting it back to its basic elements. Just add electricity. The beauty is that it can be done at a rate to match the availability of electricity.
“As for Albo – I’m sure he’s a genuinely lovely bloke, but let’s face it – he is lazy, distracted, disinterested, ineffectual, uncharismatic, ideologically barren, and a complete waste of time and money as leader. He is a time-serving inner-city MP that has been elevated far beyond his level of competence.”
I knew Albanese as a young man and was the complete antithesis of those qualities – exceptionally sharp, engaging and ideological. He was still very sharp up in the Rudd era.
But now he just doesn’t seem the same. Don’t what the solution is short of a daily injection of some stimulant with real resonance. In fact, his natural position now would be an avuncular left deputy leader, supporting a younger right faction leader.
Personally, I really like Clare O’Neill. She seems both very clever and a good communicator. Chalmers is a bit of a milquetoast.
lol Albo this albo that…… lol lol!
Diogenes:
This would be true if the US had compulsory voting, but they don’t. Instead elections are determined by turnout (and this is the first election where there was high R turnout just beaten by even higher D turnout
It’s fairly clear that surge in Trump turnout correlates with Covid misbehaviour – that is opposition to masks and social distancing in a state correlates with increase in new voters turning out for Trump, for the first time ever. The causal link is hard to establish, but would be strongly suspected.
Without COVID:
– Trumpublican turnout would have been lower, perhaps much lower
– Traditional D turnout would have been somewhat lower
– Conversion from traditional to R to R for Biden would have been lower, but a substantial proportion (e.g. college educated female traditional R) would still have converted (as in 2018) many of the COVID convert would instead just have not voted (so Trump takes a turnout hit)
– R-leaning independents are more difficult to assess – I suspect that without COVID (as in 2018?) some Indys move to D and others don’t vote – probably reducing Trump’s large 2018 advantage with Indys. With Trump’s COVID incompetence Indy non voters move to D, increasing D turnout but not decreasing R turnout
– D-leaning independents solidify for Biden (but not any other D candidate) in any event, they didn’t need COVID to motivate turnout (Inds vote logically rather than tribally and being D-leaning their logic is based on Trump’s prior incompetence over the four years, and seen in 2018)
No way to be sure what the net effect is, except that turnout would certainly have been lower without COVID (given that allowing mail in and early voting was in many states a response to COVID, and these modes insulated turnout from COVID more or less completely and early voting may also have reduced the effectiveness of black voter suppression)
I’m straining for a kind way to describe the proposition that “Trump would have won without COVID”. Not so much because it’s untrue, as that it’s simply the wrong way of looking at it. What other national leader has been done for by COVID? Obviously not Jacinda Ardern, and I further suggest that most European leaders wouldn’t have too much trouble being re-elected now either. What destroyed Trump was not COVID, but the fact that it showed up how miserably unfit for the job he is, in terms obvious even to the average voter. He was lucky that it took so long for such a crisis to come along, not unlucky that it happened at all.
Good morning Dawn Patrollers
Nick McKenzie, Chris Masters and Anthony Galloway explain how a determined judge, Paul Brereton, cracked the SAS code of silence. A very interesting exposition.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-a-determined-judge-cracked-the-sas-code-of-silence-20201110-p56dep.html
Jennifer Duke tells us that Morrison says he is distressed and disturbed by the damning report into war crimes allegedly committed by Australia’s special forces but warned against a “media trial” ahead of the justice system dealing with the findings.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/disturbing-and-distressing-morrison-warns-against-trial-by-media-on-alleged-war-crimes-20201121-p56gol.html
When the Morrison government was hauled into court to face a class action over its “robo-debt” scheme, Government Services Minister Stuart Robert branded it a political stunt. This says plenty about Robert. Nick Bonyhady takes through it all went so horribly wrong.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/from-no-case-to-1-2b-settlement-how-robo-debt-scheme-went-so-wrong-20201119-p56g2k.html
If you have a mortgage that has a “3” in front you should take immediate action, even if it’s only to call your lender to ask for an interest-rate reduction, urges Jess Irvine.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/should-your-home-loan-interest-rate-have-a-1-in-front-maybe-20201120-p56gih.html
I took the Reserve Bank boss’ advice – and saved thousands off my mortgage says Greg Jericho.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2020/nov/21/i-took-the-reserve-bank-boss-advice-and-saved-thousands-off-my-mortgage
Now children are playing with wearable devices in the classroom and bypassing teachers to message parents, in a growing issue for NSW schools, writes Caitlin Fitzsimmons.
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/smartwatch-ban-schools-crack-down-on-students-with-wearable-tech-in-class-20201121-p56gn4.html
Victoria’s mask policy is expected to be relaxed as soon as next week, with experts anticipating that face coverings will be among the restrictions eased by Daniel Andrews today.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/mask-rule-could-make-way-as-victoria-gets-closer-to-eliminating-covid-19-20201121-p56gop.html
Australia’s top doctors have declared a SA’s Lyell McEwin medic a hero, crediting her thoroughness with halting a deadly outbreak.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/coronavirus/meet-the-junior-lyell-mcewen-ed-doctor-whose-vigilance-stopped-a-potential-second-covid-wave/news-story/6645607718cd44673b7eba7f2b56ad0d
Bloomberg shows how Trump’s attention is directed at the moment.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-tweets-about-voter-fraud-during-g-20-opening-meeting-20201122-p56gqa.html
Melissa Fyfe looks at what happens to sex workers – and their clients – during a pandemic.
https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/libidos-in-lockdown-sex-work-in-the-time-of-covid-19-20201007-p562xt.html
The Australian media industry is doomed to continue churning out controversial and often racist opinion pieces, for diminishing returns, unless newsrooms and their owners become more diverse, experts say.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/22/australian-media-more-than-half-of-opinion-pieces-found-to-have-negative-depictions-of-race
According to the WHO, Gilead’s drug Remdesivir should not be used for patients hospitalised with COVID-19, regardless of how ill they are, as there is no evidence the drug improves survival or reduces the need for ventilation.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/not-of-use-for-much-hospitals-told-not-to-give-remdesivir-to-covid-19-patients-20201121-p56goj.html
Invoking a fantasy Winston Churchill won’t help as Brexit becomes grim reality opines Nick Cohen.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/21/nvoking-a-fantasy-inston-hurchill-wont-help-as-rexit-becomes-grim-reality
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is set to soon receive an International Emmy award for his once-daily televised briefings on the coronavirus pandemic that killed tens of thousands of New Yorkers this northern spring. Now THAT will give Trump something to tweet about!
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/andrew-cuomo-to-receive-international-emmy-for-virus-briefings-20201121-p56got.html
Jonathan Freedland picks out some of the highlights from Barack Obama’s book.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/21/barack-obama-donald-trump-and-i-tell-very-different-stories-about-america
Cait Kelly explains why key Republicans are speaking out against Donald Trump.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/11/22/trump-republicans-election-loss/
Richard Wolffe counts the ways Donald Trump has tried to subvert this election. He describes them as some of the most slimy steps down the slippery slope towards The End of America As We Know It.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/21/all-the-ways-trump-tried-subvert-election
As the world watches a divided America try to sort out who’s in charge, some conspiracy theorists insist that it is all part of a grand plan. John Turnbull takes a critical look at QAnon.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/trump-centric-conspiracy-theory-qanon-lives-on,14541
The USA, despite its foundational rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence, has a very bad image in most of the world, particularly the Muslim world, explains Bilal Cleland.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/how-the-us-election-affected-the-american-muslim-community,14543
Matthew Knott writes about the tragic farce of Trump’s ignominious White House exit.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/a-tragic-farce-trump-s-ignominious-white-house-exit-20201121-p56gn9.html
Jacqui Maley gives us a good insight into series 4 of The Crown.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/call-yourself-a-republican-then-why-are-you-bingeing-the-crown-20201120-p56gi0.html
Cartoon Corner
David Pope
Matt Golding
Peter Broelman
Glen Le Lievre
Richard Gilberto
From the US
The problem I have with the “Trump would have won, if not for COVID” sentiment, besides my aforementioned observation that it’s not really profound to observe that the incumbent lost because they weren’t good at their job, is that it is framed (intentionally or not) as something that has happened to him. As if he did his best but just couldn’t catch a break.
Aside from the counterpoint to it, which William already succinctly made, it is a part of a greater problem: Trump is only given agency when he has successes. Which is an almost perfect reflection of how he views things – and what drives him and his followers to refuse to accept the election’s outcome, opting for frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit. He wins in 2016 and he’s a political genius, look how successful he was despite the odds, a game-changer whose vote-whispering acumen will be analysed and discussed for years to come . He loses in 2020, it’s the virus’s fault, he was fighting an uphill, he actually did well all things considered – in fact, if anything, Biden and the Democrats failed by not beating him by more etc.
If Trump gets to own his successes, he has to own his failures as well.
Yabba @ #1265 Saturday, November 21st, 2020 – 5:38 pm
Why choose those states? If Trump won Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin he is reelected. These states have very small margins.
Simon Katich @ #1322 Sunday, November 22nd, 2020 – 7:15 am
Um, because he didn’t win them and because historically those are the Swing States won by small margins? Not to mention that, for a Democrat to win Georgia, Joe Biden has achieved something extraordinary. Especially as he is from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the last person to win it was the charismatic Good Old Southern Boy from Arkansas.
Not even the transformational politician of his generation, Barack Obama, could win Georgia.
So it’s a bit rich to be doing whataboutism when it comes to Joe Biden.
Interesting post. I didnt and still dont believe in the shy Trump voter wot did it theory. However I was worried that Trumps populism and divisiveness would squeeze more votes out of certain demographics than he did in 2016. I just didnt think it would be that many.
In so many ways it was a crazy and somewhat sobering election.
The problem I have with the “Trump would have won, if not for COVID” sentiment, besides my aforementioned observation that it’s not really profound to observe that the incumbent lost because they weren’t good at their job, is that it is framed (intentionally or not) as something that has happened to him. As if he did his best but just couldn’t catch a break.
The voters that I watched being interviewed at the polls who voted for Trump actually said that it was the economy before Covid-19 that engendered their support for him and their belief that, after America had ’rounded the turn’, he would ‘make the economy and America great again’.
He’s great at marketing a poor product (hmm, where have I seen that before?), that’s for sure.
To which I might turn your observation about Trump the ‘vote whisperer’ on its head and say that Joe Biden must possess those smarts too to have gotten the electorate to embrace mail in voting predominantly for the first time on the Democrat side and to obtain monumemntal voter turnout (which Trump did too I must admit), in the teeth of a pandemic. No mean feat.
Why? Trump lost by 40K of voters across three states – turn those and he wins. The media did this in 2016 to show how close that election was. And the Democrats used those facts, those stats from 2016 in devising their strategy for 2020. I dont know why peeps are sweating it. I am not saying those facts make the decision to go for Biden the wrong one. If I were to touch on that I would say the opposite.
There are so many lessons to be learnt from accepting that this was a close election. Big turnouts dont always just help the Dems. Trumpism (although I believe it predates him) runs very deep. The EC is a major problem…….
Well one country “did the experiment” as Dr Karl would say. Predictably a ‘Fail’ but at least we have a demonstration of the ‘dudness’ of what at one stage Scrott and BoJo were looking approvingly at.
I wonder if the thundering herd of Newscorpse orcs who were screaming how we should follow Sweden’s approach rather than lockdown will apologise to their readers and admit they were bigly wRONg ? Rhetorical question only 😆
President Donald Trump supporters protesting the outcome of the 2020 election have a new and surprising opponent: the Republican Party.
A viral video of protesters, as well as posts on social media platform Parler, indicate that Trump supporters are looking to boycott the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff elections.
A video, shared on Twitter on Saturday, shows a protester speaking into a mic criticizing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who are both Republicans. The protester calls them “traitors.”
Seemingly reacting to certification from Georgia election officials that President-elect Joe Biden had indeed won the Peach State following an election recount, the protesters disavowed the GOP.
“Any Republican who allows this to happen is complicit, and we will finish you,” the protester, donning a camo sweatshirt with an elephant on it, shouts into the microphone. “For any Republicans not explicitly helping Trump to ‘stop the steal,’ we will make sure you are never elected ever again.”
Top stuff from a store in Texas.
That “vote-whisperer” line was not an observation of mine. I was discussing how he continuously gets framed. When he is successful, he gets framed as clever. When he fails, he gets framed as unlucky.
My take has consistently been (dating back to 2017, when I’d get howled at for it) that I don’t think he is remotely clever at what he does, got lucky at the right time and has yet to demonstrate he can replicate his success in any situation where things aren’t ridiculously stacked in his favour. He is just an overconfident narcissist in a society that hyper-masculinises that kind of behaviour, and treats it as a virtue.
Without wishing to reopen past personality wars, Labor does not seem to put any stress on the ability to communicate, to engage the punters, in the people they choose as leaders.
I do not think Gillard, Shorten and now Albo are engaging speakers.
Compare them with Whitlam, Keating and even Hawke!
SK some nit picking – Trump winning Arizona 11, Georgia 16 and Wisconsin 10 would result in 269 EC votes a tie in which case the Dem controlled House would no doubt side with Biden
Rakali @ #1331 Sunday, November 22nd, 2020 – 7:11 am
I thought Gilliard and Rudd were OK. At least, they were better than their opponents.
Terminator @ #1332 Sunday, November 22nd, 2020 – 7:14 am
I have been told that the house would vote by state. So each state represented in the House gets 1 vote. Somehow that makes sense. And that means Trump would win.
Yes aplogies SK I checked after I posted but could not edit it.
“However, not every member of the House casts a vote. Instead each state gets one vote. So the delegates of each state vote to determine the candidate that will get their state’s one vote. In this scenario, Republicans actually have the advantage, because they will likely have the majority in more states than Democrats.”
Some nit-picking back at you: the House majority doesn’t elect a President in that situation, what happens is each state’s delegation gets one vote, and votes how the majority of that delegation chooses (if it’s tied, then the delegation abstains) and, if any candidate (out of the top 3 presidential candidates in terms of electoral college votes) gets the vote of 26 or more delegations, they’re elected. If nobody can get 26 delegations, it becomes a deadlock until somebody crosses the floor or until the current presidential term ends and, being no president elected, the office is immediately declared vacant and the newly sworn-in Vice President immediately becomes President.) I haven’t checked the latest numbers, but I believe the GOP will control at least 26 delegations, so the House would re-elect Trump (assuming partisan lines are followed.)
Apropos of nothing but if no Vice Presidential candidate can get 270 votes, then it goes to the Senate (and is between the top 2 VP electoral vote recipients.) The Republicans will have the majority at that point, then Pence would be re-elected.
WB: “I’m straining for a kind way to describe the proposition that “Trump would have won without COVID”. Not so much because it’s untrue, as that it’s simply the wrong way of looking at it. What other national leader has been done for by COVID? Obviously not Jacinda Ardern, and I further suggest that most European leaders wouldn’t have too much trouble being re-elected now either. What destroyed Trump was not COVID, but the fact that it showed up how miserably unfit for the job he is, in terms obvious even to the average voter. He was lucky that it took so long for such a crisis to come along, not unlucky that it happened at all.”
William, my take on it all is similar to yours, although I see it as a combination of incompetence and skewed values.
Older voters represent a high proportion of the rusted-on base of any right-wing political party. On average they are far more socially conservative than the rest of the population, but tend not to be as attracted to the free market economics agenda (“neo-liberalism” if you like). They tend to be opposed to big government in principle but are totally in favour of it in terms of it providing money and services to them personally. Hence, surveys have shown that the primary audience for Fox News – the most pro-free market and anti-big government media outlet in the Western world – is made up of people who depend upon government payments for their income.
In 2016, Trump played to this group extremely well, as he also of course did to the so-called “middle class” of the heartlands whose standard of living was allegedly in steep decline. In 2020, I suspect he lost a crucial segment of the older population through his callous and dismissive attitude towards COVID-19. In Trump’s mind, the most important indicators of how a nation is doing are the current levels of the Dow Jones and Nasdaq indexes, because, looking at the world from his very New York-focused perspective, the circulation of money on Wall Street is the engine that drives the US economy and, to some extent, the world economy.
When the markets crashed earlier this year, he saw lockdowns as the main cause of the problem, and his focus became trying to remove the lockdowns as quickly as possible. This led him into the absurd situation in which he was constantly publicly squabbling with his leading health bureaucrat. He even caught COVID-19 and flippantly dismissed it as nothing much more than a cold.
IMO, this failure to take COVID-19 seriously is why Trump lost enough of the older vote in some of the swing states to see him lose the Presidency. And his ridiculous and insouciant response to COVID-19 helped to transform Biden from an ageing, uninspiring hack into a reassuringly competent and caring alternative to the callous Trump. Trump’s response to COVID-19 revealed to a crucial segment of the electorate that 1) he cared more about the value of shares in New York than he did the well-being of people across the heartland of the US; and 2) that he was more interested at tilting at the windmills of the State-imposed lockdowns that he was in providing people in need with effective health responses or government payments to help them through their personal crises.
So, yes, COVID-19 revealed Trump’s skewed values and basic ineffectiveness, and thereby triggered his demise. 2020 provided a highly fertile electoral environment for the right: footage of far left radicals on the streets smashing windows and looting shops tends to make most ordinary people feel a little more right-wing: and, if it is true that Trump achieved some sort of swing towards him among inner city African-Americans and Hispanics, then that’s the likely explanation for it. He also appears to have held on to the votes of most of the so-called “middle class”. We don’t have any definitive analysis yet, but I’m expecting that it was a relatively small swing among the older generations that ultimately did him in.
Trump isn’t the only incompetent President of recent decades. I reckon Clinton, GW Bush and Obama all had significant failings: the total impact of their combined 24 years in office doesn’t add up to an enormous amount in terms of achievements. In particular, all three made terrible judgments in relation to foreign and military policy in the Middle East. GW Bush was extremely lucky that the driveling stupidity of the Iraq invasion hadn’t become fully apparent in 2004. And the teflon-coated Obama managed suavely to sail above the terrible mess he made of the Middle East when the so-called “Arab Spring” evolved into what one US politician evocatively described as a “jihadfest”. Under Trump (or, perhaps we should say, under Pompeo), the US has IMO achieved a few minor foreign policy gains in the Middle East. (I won’t go into them now, because I will probably start an argument with the Israel-haters on PB.)
So, IMO, Trump achieved something in foreign policy and, if he had adopted a slightly sensible approach towards COVID-19 and had also actually delivered something to his base in the area of immigration control (where he promised so much and delivered little), he would have had a story to tell the voters that should have delivered him a landslide victory. But he basically wasn’t good enough at politics and public administration: after all, he had walked straight from what was mostly a media career into the top job in global politics. At least Reagan had worked his way from Hollywood into the union movement, then spruiking for Goldwater and others, and penultimately into the governorship of California. Trump had none of this training for the job, and he is clearly a man incapable of learning from knowledgeable people. His handling of the COVID-19 crisis was effectively a fail at Politics 1o1 and made him a deserved loser.
Terminator, no worries. I certainly didnt know that until a couple of months ago.
The system is truly bizarre. Might have made sense hundreds of years ago.
This article is a great take on what is happening atm. This bit is relevant…
https://medium.com/indica/i-lived-through-a-coup-america-is-having-one-now-437934b1dac3
RL yes I have already humbly recanted.
I suppose Pelosi could theoretically pull some shenanigans and refuse to allow a vote to come to the floor of the House. I am not sure what the Speaker’s power is in that scenario and whether that’s possible. I mean, McConnell plays similar games with the Senate but, then again, he isn’t dealing with constitutionally-mandated processes.
Not that it matters. The electors will meet at their respective state capitals (and DC) in a few weeks and more than 270 of them will cast their votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris respectively. And, despite any attempts at theatrics during the congressional count, the vote tally will still be formally accepted and that will be it.
Speaking of nits…. we didnt have them this year. Covid school closure?
“Not that it matters. The electors will meet at their respective state capitals (and DC) in a few weeks and more than 270 of them will cast their votes for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris respectively. And, despite any attempts at theatrics during the congressional count, the vote tally will still be formally accepted and that will be it.”
And then Trump will have a heartfelt interview with a favourite reporter (I reckon Geraldo) and talk about how unfair and corrupt it all was, but the Constitution is the Constitution and he has no choice but to hold his nose and hand the White House over to Biden. But he’ll be back in 2024 and there’ll be no stopping him.
Ah, apologies for not noticing before I posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLQr-HDp_Us
Rational Leftist @ #1343 Sunday, November 22nd, 2020 – 7:31 am
You didnt notice ‘humble’? It stands out like dogs articles on this blog. It was nice. I am going to try it.
SK: “Speaking of nits…. we didnt have them this year. Covid school closure?”
We had them in High School down here in Hobart.
Covid Safe App has been a roaring success in the latest SA outbreak. So far it has traced a sum total of….
zero, zip, none, zilch, nada cases.
meher baba @ #1346 Sunday, November 22nd, 2020 – 7:36 am
Before or after the school closures? My little one has hair ripe for infestation. Long and thick hair. She claims that not washing or brushing for months on end has been the reason she didnt get them this year. I replied with; you didnt wash or brush last year either and got them. She reckons she worked harder at not washing/brushing this year.
SK
Your child has impeccable logic!
Rakali
Shorten made some electrifying speeches as Labor leader. Not reported.
He showed he was an excellent communicator at his town hall meetings. Again, not reported.
From memory, I think every forum he did on TV (the old ‘audience of undecided voters’ thing) he shifted the audience considerably.
Gillard made an electrifying speech which the rest of the world had to make clear was significant whilst local media dismissed it because of the context. If the rest of the world hadn’t made a fuss, it would not have been reported.
The list of ‘Gillard not reported’ speeches includes her apology to the children who were forcibly adopted, and her climate change policy speech during the 2010 election. I’m told the first speech was a show stopper, and had the audience in tears. I can’t comment otherwise, because it was not reported.
I’ve attended several events where Gillard was a speaker. She’s always engaging.
Haven’t heard Albo speak so can’t comment.
Shorten and Gillard were and are excellent communicators. I think, however, they were over managed and at times this dampened them.
A hostile media leads to this – and also to your stand out performances vanishing into the ether.