Trumped

2016 will be remembered by history as a year of inflection and singularity - and not in a good way.

Why did the polls get it wrong on the US election?  That was probably the margin of Trump supporters who, when polled, didn't feel obliged to tell the truth.  Like their candidate.

Trump has many more outrageous and incorrect things to say, and he'll do it.  Much like Ronald Reagan, but with no semblance of class.  And people won't mis-remember Trump like they do Reagan.

Will he build a wall and make Mexicans pay for it?  No.  He might add a smidgen to what's already there, just to tick off that item.

Will he clear the swamp?  Of course not.

Will he put Clinton in jail?  He'll probably try.  He has a clear history of pursuing grudges.  But I very much doubt he'll be able to make good on that promise, for all his efforts.

What's left?  Global recession, unstable times, a nastier U.S. political landscape, a much worse time for America's working poor, let alone those without a job.  One thing he'll be able to do (with a non-hostile Congress) is roll back Affordable Healthcare.  An unstable polity in the hands of Clinton would be calmed; one under Trump will not.  He's anti-science, anti-truth, anti-climate-change... and a good way to make money will be to sell asbestos to Americas (Trump tweet 2012: "If we didn't remove incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it with junk that doesn't work, the World Trade Center would never have burned down")

Be resilient in very turbulent times.

Turnbull performs as expected

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating offered current Prime Minister Kevin Rudd some advice about the then-new opposition leader: He's brilliant, he's fearless... and he's got bad judgment.

(Reported by Peter Hartcher in Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald.)


Keatings words could easily be Turnbull's epitaph. If you're going for the PM's jugular, it pays to have more evidence than a single email - as Turnbull found out, it could be forged.

The fact that Turnbull pushed it so hard - and with such personal arrogance in one or two conversations - is fully reflected in the three opinion polls released today, which show a plummet in support for Turnbull and the Liberals. Of course, he'll survive this... and could well lead the Liberals to defeat at the next election - for precisely the reasons I expected when Turnbull was on his way up.

Of polls, presidents, and kangaroos

An informal readers poll in the Sydney Morning Herald gave some interesting results for kangaroos and presidents.


The sample size given was 1256. Of those, just over three quarters felt that kangaroos "should be killed to provide meat for human consumption".

Of the quarter that didn't agree, doubtless some of them thought kangaroos were just too cute and furry. But the environmental debate is all but won by the carnivores.

Assuming there is a certain amount of inevitability about meat consumption, it would make more sense to harvest kangaroo than cow. They're lean, and built for the Australian environment - and so have far less effect on the Australian environment - and the global one, for that matter. Most overseas-originating arguments against it seem somewhat specious*.


And how do you think President Obama's going? About one in seven thought he was brilliant - somewhat less than I might have expected. Most just thing he's good. Some don't know, some go for the average... but less than two percent think he's performing poorly. That's surprisingly low, especially as one could expect there to be a reasonable number of partisans from the right in that sampling. And Obama has already been faced with a high number of no-win situations in a short amount of time.

I still contend that he imparts wisdom more consistently than any other players around him, but I would think that the mass judgment counts wins more than anything else. And it's hard to say that what clear wins he has had.

With any luck, the general public is collectively trying to use a bit of wisdom. Now that would be about as much of an ask as calling for a wise leader...


*Update 29-May-09: There have been some instances of bad industrial ethics/practices in the kangaroo industry (including brutality and lack of hygiene), but these are certainly not intrinsic to the issue of kangaroos vs cows.

Drawing accurate conclusions from polls

The latest NewsPoll puts the government at 45% vs 55% for the ALP. This gives comfort to the Liberals on three counts:

• It’s 5% up on the last few polls;


• The result is equivalent to the figure Keating clawed back to win the “unwinnable” election of 1993;


• The commentators on the Murdoch Australian are all back to cheering the Liberals

Yet it should be making them nervous for five more salient reasons:

• It’s anomalous compared to other poll results;


• It comes after a damaging week of internal sparring among the Liberals;


• Keating had a punching dummy: the Liberals’ GST policy;


• It gives the Liberals grounds to remain indecisive on a leadership spill.

Reason number five is the fact that the same opinion poll asked how people how wedded they were to their voting intentions. Adding together the “absolutely” and the “only slight chance of change” gives the Liberals 39% and the ALP 49%. Not an election-winner, this close to.


The same day that brought ostensibly good news brought a couple more clangers. First, a large employer, Spotlight, is rolling back its industrial relations policy from the Liberals' model to a collective system, as being less distracting and more efficient for the business.

Then the Murdoch press reports the Reserve Bank's flagging of an impending interest rate rise. Not what anyone wanted to hear, but not unexpected.

Next day was no better. The headline issue, that under the Liberals, university funding had slipped to the lower rungs of the OECD, is traditionally not a vote-changer. The second item was hidden in a poll on the website for Murdoch's the Australian: 24% gave all or most credit for Australia's economic strength to the Liberals (specifically, Costello as treasurer), while 59% gave little or no credit. The bias in this poll: overall, respondents would be tech-savvy educated conservatives. Which is not where the election will be won and lost, but it gives some insight into the lack of traction the Liberals are getting on that issue.