Trump Was An Albatross In A Local Election In Iowa Last Tuesday— And In Australia Today

Trump's MAGA Cooties Down Under

Another conservative world leader, Australia’s Peter Dutton, perceived by voters to be too much like Trump, oversaw a serious swing away from his party that cost his party the election, cost him his own Brisbane seat and gave the Labor Party a relatively large and unexpected increased majority in the House.

The Wall Street Journal reported it like this: “Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was returned to power in an election Saturday, the latest left-leaning leader to achieve a comeback victory as President Trump roils global markets and upends international affairs… The election is the latest snapshot of how voters are reacting to a shifting world order as President Trump targets countries with tariffs, pivots towards Russia and uses harsh rhetoric about Washington’s traditional allies. Polls show voters in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. view Washington more unfavorably since Trump took office. Earlier this week, Canadians gave the left-leaning Liberal Party a fourth term in office, even though the party was trailing badly in the polls at the start of the year.  Canadians embraced the tough-talking approach of Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former central banker, while shying away from the conservative candidate, Pierre  Poilievre, who was viewed as being too similar to Trump. A similar dynamic has played out in Australia. Albanese was down in the polls at the start of the year, though by a narrower margin than Canada’s Liberals. As the election grew closer, the polls flipped and showed Albanese ahead. Much of the campaign centered on how best to address the high cost of living, inflation and affordable housing. But Albanese and his main conservative opponent, Peter Dutton, also sparred frequently over who could best negotiate with Trump.”

The Washington Post also emphasized Labor’s anti-Trump bump: “a remarkable turnaround driven partly by anger over Trump’s disruptive trade war and its impact on the close U.S. military ally… Trump’s tariffs — first 25 percent on Australia’s aluminum and steel, then 10 percent across the board— had driven voters toward the even-keeled incumbent and away from his conservative opponent, Peter Dutton, whose policies and rhetoric have echoed the American president… ‘Around the world, Trump’s unpopularity presents an opportunity to center-left political parties,’ said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, a Sydney think tank.”

But the biggest story from Australia’s election was the collapse by Dutton, the leader of a conservative coalition made up of his Liberal Party and the rural National Party. Early results showed Dutton’s own seat in northern Brisbane was under threat. [He lost his seat.]

The former police officer had waged a Trump-like culture war against diversity programs and “woke” school programing, even promising an Australian version of the U.S. DOGE Service.

But as Trump’s tariffs shook Australians’ faith in the United States and raised fears of a recession, nicknames like “DOGE-y Dutton” and “Temu Trump” began to bite, analysts said.

“One factor we can all acknowledge and recognize is the Trump factor,” Liberal senator James Paterson told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. as results started to come in. “It was devastating in Canada for the Conservatives where the Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost 20 points over the course of a few months. And I think it has been a factor here.”

Reuters called it the Trump effect and CNN global anti-Trump sentiment. There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives and Labor entered the election with 77, a bare majority. This time they’ve won a healthier number of seats while the Liberal-National conservative coalition lost at least 13. No one expected this big a win by Labor. Aside from Dutton himself, the conservatives lost 2 shadow cabinet members, Shadow Foreign Minister David Coleman and Shadow Housing and Social Services Minister Michael Sukka. Judging by incomplete returns, I’d guess that Labor is going to wind up with 91 seats when all the counting is finished.

To Australian voters the word “Trump” was absolutely toxic— as it was to voters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa last Tuesday… and as it will be all over non-Confederate America in next year’s midterms. Last week, Alex Shephard wrote that Señor T’s shocking slide was so pronounced that Trump is demanding criminal prosecutions of pollsters. “Trump’s chances of bouncing back,” he wrote, “are remarkably slim… In the very best scenario— for Trump, at least— ‘Liberation Day’ would be analogous to what the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was for Joe Biden’s popularity. After that debacle, Biden’s popularity rapidly slid and never recovere. Americans may have wanted to leave Afghanistan, but they clearly had expectations that we would not leave the country in the Taliban’s hands and strand many Afghans who had aided the American occupation. The fallout (and the relentlessly negative media coverage) led to the impression that Biden was weak, infirm, and incapable of leading— a perception that would ultimately doom not only his presidency but the Democrats’ hopes of holding onto the White House. ‘Liberation Day’ seems to have woken a lot of Americans up to something they had inexplicably forgotten: Trump is the same profoundly incompetent and stupid person who, just a few years ago, they did not like very much.”

“Trump,” he continued, “may be counting on his trade war somehow working, but much would have to go right for his popularity to recover. For one, that trade war would have to deliver what Trump promises it will: mass prosperity, an end to the income tax, and the return of well-paying manufacturing jobs— which pretty much everyone, aside from Trump and a handful of slavish loyalists, agrees is impossible. He would also have to somehow turn back time and restore the pre-Covid economy that many Americans remembered so fondly when they voted for him a second time. This is also impossible. He would probably also have to end the war in Ukraine— but in a way that doesn’t give Russia everything it wants, which is Trump’s current, and truly artless, negotiating position— and somehow repair America’s absolutely destroyed global reputation. None of that is going to happen, either. It’s more likely that everything is going to get a lot worse. Trump’s approval ratings are historically awful right now, even though he has managed to delay the worst effects of his trade war. But he is still stubbornly clinging to tariffs, which inevitably will cause product shortages and rising costs in the near future— not to mention a potential recession, the odds of which are worryingly high… The bad news for the growing ranks of people who see Trump as an incompetent buffoon at best and a threat to the constitutional order at worst is that we’re only 100 days in. This administration has a very, very long time left in power. It is hard to imagine how the damage Trump has done in the last three months will be undone, and it’s scary to imagine how much more destruction he can wreak in the 1,350-ish days he has left in power. But Americans seem to be waking up to the fact that they have elected a ruinous madman.”