I’m not sure why it is a sin to be well funded and coordinate

A bit like saying, I’m not sure why it is a sin for crime to be well funded and coordinated.

I have met a couple of anti-vaccinators in the party, but the fact is they’re a tiny minority. Cranks can get control of small branches, but I there’s no support on these issues from the party’s MPs. Rather different from the Republicans or Liberals on AGW.

The pro-Gillard argument seems to be a weird mix of Kevin’s a psychopath and aprés moi le déluge. What makes that really, really strange is that this genius of implementation manages to score a whole lot of own goals while pursuing a deeply conservative agenda and she is facing electoral oblivion. I do not think Rudd had much to do with the reshuffle, the Australia Day disaster or knifing Wilkie but I may of course be underestimating his deviousness.

The reality is that Gillard will either massively improve her electoral standing or she will not lead the ALP at the next election. The leadership contest is not being driven by poloticking, which politicians tend to do, but by the abysmal electoral prospects.

The fairly public knifing (re-knifing?) of Rudd is not going to do anything much to persuade the electorate that Gillard is actually a warm and friendly person who is just misunderstood. Despite the chants of ‘resolution ! resolution!’ the caucus ballot will resolve nothing unless the polls start shifting.

Rudd’s Big Australia stance alone makes him totally unsuitable. This ideology would destroy every gain the Australian environmental movement has ever made and then some. It is the single worst influential idea in Australia today. Furthermore, I think Rudd is a duplicitous psychopath. He’s undermined the government at every opportunity with leaks and innuendo, risking the last election for the sake of his own ego. He was a pretty average prime minister, and is a truly awful man. Gillard on the other hand has been consistently able to achieve the big policy goals that Rudd never could. Perhaps she lacks imagination, but she gets results.

On the politics side, it’s totally naive to believe the current polling preference for Rudd would persist after a leadership change. The taint of “New South Wales disease” would hang over federal Labor even more than it does now.

As someone who might be considered a natural Labor voter, their factional squabbles and dodgey pre-selection habits have stopped me voting for them for the last three or for federal elections.
How they manage to shoot themselves in the same foot over and over is beyond belief…

The coalition (for the most part) seem to have been experiencing the same reality bypass as their US counterparts for a similar period. Maybe they just have the same lobbyists?

I’d vote for the levitating yogis over any of them, but the Greens and whatever independents are going locally are the “least worst” alternative… I’m kind of hoping the next federal election is similar to the last and we get a plurality of views rather than a landslide to either of the big two.

Moreover, most of the worst Labor MPs are listed in the newspapers as Rudd supporters, so for the moment at least I’ll be hoping for Gillard. Either way, I hope the outcome is convincing enough that we can move on from this rubbish.