More Political Things

Voters oust Clark as New Zealand turns right

Dammit! Helen Clark's one of the few political leaders I genuinely respect... I was hoping NZ Labour would be get enough votes to be able to cobble together a coalition and maintain power.

Returning to US politics, I've seen a bunch of editorials and analytical pieces discussing where the McCain campaign went wrong... Well hey, got time for the full list? He ran as the Republican candidate during a period when the party's incumbent president is universally despised, the economy's in the toilet, and it's become apparent to even the most die-hard supporters that the Iraq war was a fiasco. He only won the primaries by virtue of being the last man standing, not because of any real support from the conservative base, and then overcompensated by choosing a running mate who caused moderates to flee in terror. He was running against one of the most charismatic candidates in living memory, trying to run a campaign on a shoe-string budget while the Obama campaign's only real issue was working out how they could possibly spend all of their massive campaign war-chest. The guy was doomed right from the beginning, and only managed to dig a deeper hole for himself with his increasingly desperate attempts to question Obama's character. Isn't the real question not "Where did McCain go wrong?" but "How did he still manage, despite all these things, to get 47% of the primary vote?"

In local politics - will the Coalition please drop the idiotic "Rudd leaked Bush conversation" story? I have no idea what they're thinking by pushing it so hard - "Australian PM shows up idiot American" isn't exactly a negative to the average voter.