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| Did Trevor Mallard skip out of Wiggles touring duties to rig a poll result? |
This should not be happening. If the many commenters and bloggers on The Standard and elsewhere are to be believed, Shearer's leadership dooms Labour to many more years in opposition.
So what's going on? Is it a rogue poll? Or has someone in Labour somehow rigged the results? But who would do such a thing, and how?
My pick would be Trevor Mallard. Don't ask me how he did it, but he gets the blame for pretty much everything else and he's thick-skinned, so let's just blame Trevor for this result. He won't mind.
The alternative to the rogue/rigged-poll theory is that a bunch of so-called experts completely misread the mood of the public. The theory goes that they were so focused on poring over David Shearer's speeches in order to find critical flaws in his political world-view, that they failed to see that most people just don't give a shit about ideological purity. Shearer's oratory may at times be less than prosaic, and he may not exude the ruthless efficiency that Helen Clark did as leader, but a bunch of people probably see him as a "good guy" and support him because he'd be a good bloke to have a beer with.
No, that's clearly a ridiculous theory. The poll was rigged. Damn you to hell, Trevor! You're not even my favourite Wiggle.
* Talking of which, my already inflated ego requires you to acknowledge my Twitter fame.
"Ideological purity"? "Rutless efficiency?" Straw men - or at least, over-thinking.
ReplyDeleteForget theory. Let's go with practice.
The "mood of the public" is that they neither know nor care who the opposition politicians are, until the election campaign every three years. (The exceptions are those who scratch an itch, like Peters in 1996 or Orewa Brash). Feel free to test this by walking down the street and saying "David Shearer" to random passers-by. Prepare for blank looks.
It's not about misreading the mood of the public NOW. It's about anticipating the mood of the public, when they finally pay attention.
In a word, judgment. Your judgment is (presumably) that David Shearer will be just fine, when faced with the entirely different challenges of being an election campaign (like, answering questions and saying stuff that makes sense).
His critics' judgment is that he'll be a disaster. They're right.
But it's all irrelevant anyway, we just have to wait until Grant is ready to take over. There is no chance whatsoever that Labour will let Shearer lead them into 2014.
On that optimistic note ... Happy New Year!
If you walked down the street yelling "David Shearer" at random people they would most likely just think you have some form of Tourette's.
ReplyDelete