Trump boomerang sinks Australia's right wing

[Zorro]

Aussies rejected “Make Australia Great Again” politics and reelected a progressive prime minister.

The boomerang was the brilliant invention of Australia’s Indigenous people. An angular, carefully crafted piece of wood, it has come to be used for actions or words that backfire on their originator.

It is thus appropriate that on Saturday, voters Down Under offered a potent lesson about the boomerang effect to Donald Trump and his MAGA faithful. The president hoped his dominance of the world stage would inspire an international swing toward the nationalist far right. Instead, Australians — angry and mystified by Trump’s tariffs — gifted their center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party trailed in the polls only a few months ago, a landslide victory few predicted.

Labor’s triumph came less than a week after Canada’s voters, in an election even more clearly defined by Trump, rescued the center-left Liberal Party from the polling wilderness and ratified Mark Carney as their prime minister.

Two elections, of course, don’t make a global trend. A lot more was going on in Australia than an anti-Trump backlash. Albanese ran a disciplined campaign focused on health care, housing and other domestic issues. His conservative rival, Peter Dutton, made some mistakes and lost his own seat in the Labor tide. Wayne Swan, president of the Labor Party and former deputy prime minister, told me that Albanese won because “the economic imperative overrode the cultural imperative.”

https://wapo.st/4jB9RsB

[sop]

1. Maybe Trump's Pope Pic will boomerang in the Vatican as well.

"Hopefully, this will have the same effect his 51st state did with Canada, and they choose the most anti-Trump pope they can." (Bluesky comment)

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. This makes me smile

Link to tweet

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Madow Blog-It's not just Canada: An anti-Trump backlash helps fuel Labor Party win in Australia

Opposition to Trump helped propel a center-left party to victory in Canada. Days later, an eerily similar set of circumstances unfolded in Australia.
https://bsky.app/profile/isog.bsky.social/post/3logsqqg53s2t

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/s-not-just-canada-anti-trump-backlash-helps-fuel-labor-party-win-austr-rcna204874

Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was seen as overtly aligned with Trump, and not only did his party suffer as Liberals held on to power, Poilievre also managed to lose his own seat in Parliament, a seat he had held for over 20 years.

Less than a week later, an eerily similar set of circumstances unfolded nearly 9,000 miles away. Politico reported:

Incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured a come-from-behind win for his center-left Labor Party in Australia’s election Saturday while his right-wing challenger lost his seat. The Labor landslide came after Albanese’s government spent months trailing the opposition in polling, but gained support rapidly in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

As was the case in the Canadian elections, the center-left Labor Party was faring poorly in national polls up until quite recently. As was the case in the Canadian elections, Labor started gaining ground as part of an anti-Trump backlash. As was the case in the Canadian elections, the candidate most closely associated with the American Republican — Peter Dutton, the hard-right candidate who “embraced MAGA-style politics” — not only fell short of his goal of becoming prime minister, he also appears to have lost his own seat.

The New York Times reported that there’s a “Trump factor ... shaping global politics,” but it’s not a trend the White House will like.

In major votes in Canada and Australia over the past two weeks, centrists saw their fortunes revived, while parties that had borrowed from the MAGA playbook lost out. President Trump has been back in power for only three months, but already his policies, including imposing tariffs and upending alliances, have rippled into domestic political battles around the world. While it is too soon to say that anti-Trump forces are on the rise globally, it is clear that voters have Mr. Trump somewhere on their mind as they make decisions.

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. noted in his latest column, “The president hoped his dominance of the world stage would inspire an international swing toward the nationalist far right. Instead, Australians — angry and mystified by Trump’s tariffs — gifted their center-left prime minister, Anthony Albanese, whose Labor Party trailed in the polls only a few months ago, a landslide victory few predicted.”

When this happens twice in five days, it’s a safe bet other leaders in democracies around the world took note