At the recent Victorian election, premier Daniel Andrews led the Labor Party to a victory, retaining majority government1. After it became clear, from assorted opinion polls, that it was unlikely the Liberal Party would win the election, and when that indeed came to pass, assorted cookers asserted that the election was fraudulent2. I suggested that the Liberal Part were likely to do the same as the cookers, given that prior to the election, they had already attacked the Victorian Electoral Commission, characterising their activities as “interference in the state election”3.
In his electorate of Mulgrave, Andrews obtained 51.2% of the primary vote at last count, with the appropriately named cooker, Ian Cook, obtaining 18.7% of the primary vote, while Liberal Michael Piastrino obtained only 16.8% of the primary vote. After distribution of preferences Andrews won the seat with 60.2% of the two-party preferred vote, while Piastrino had 39.8%4. A fairly convincing win.
As predicted, Piastrino has come out and stated, in a meme of course, that “the only people who believe Dan won.[sic] Are those wearing masks while alone in their car with the windows up. Selected not elected”5.
Clearly, with his slur on those wearing masks, Piastrino is attempting to appeal to the cookers among his supporters, and this, in addition to the takeover of the Liberal Party by religious nutters, will be one of the factors which leads the Liberal Party to electoral oblivion. While he may simply have sent this meme and not constructed it himself, its poor construction indicates it was written by a cooker, who are renowned for their lack of facility with English. So, Piastrino is using the Trump assertion that the seat of Mulgrave was stolen from him. I’d suggest that a large proportion of the voters of Mulgrave understood that Piastrino was a dill, and simply didn’t vote for him.
I suspect that the Liberal Party know they are in terminal decline, and will do absolutely anything to prevent this slide continuing. This brings to mind the famous quote from US political commentator, David Frum, who said: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
This is where the Liberals are headed; being the party for cookers and religious nutters, and resentful of the power voters have in rejecting their policies.
Sources
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/vic/2022/results?filter=all&sort=az
- https://blotreport.com/2022/11/27/as-expected/
- https://blotreport.com/2022/11/22/the-murdoch-method-in-australia/
- https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/results/2022-state-election-results/results-by-district/mulgrave-district-results
- https://twitter.com/Leo_Puglisi6/status/1598580757605122048
