TWO years after Julia Gillard died as Prime Minister, Labor still can't get rid of the body. Maybe Kevin Rudd will yet replace Gillard before the election and save some of the 35 seats her discredited Government now risks losing.
But either way, Labor will face not just the usual post mortem of the defeated: what did it do wrong? There is an even more serious question. Why did Labor MPs stick for years with a leader so obviously unelectable: incompetent, untrustworthy and despised by many voters?
I am not wise after the event. As I wrote in March 2011: "Julia Gillard is finished. It seems she's lied too brazenly and nothing in her erratic performance suggests she can recover ...
"Truth is, her record in office is of unbroken failure."
It still is. Even Gillard's one last boast - a massive disability scheme - is just a promise, untested, needing billions more dollars we do not have.
Yet through month after month of disasters, Labor MPs stuck with Gillard, who claimed she had a plan for victory. It rested on three preposterous pillars, all now shattered only 100 days before the election.
First, Gillard thought voters could be bribed into forgiving her for lying to them about the carbon tax.
As she assured her party in 2011, voters would soon see the tax as not so bad: "(When) cows keep giving milk, chickens still lay eggs, our opponents know their campaign of fear will be exposed as a sham."
She never realised it was actually her lie that voters could never forgive.
Gillard also counted on the economy magically booming to produce a surplus this year to fund her lavish promises. Instead, she gave us a $19.4 billion deficit.
Lastly, Gillard thought she could make voters think Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was a woman-hating thug. Instead, Newspoll not only has the Opposition streeting Labor, 58 per cent to 42, but Abbott beating Gillard as preferred prime minister, 43 per cent to 35.
What turned off voters was precisely Gillard's screeching abuse and politics of division, pitting women against men, poor against rich, workers against miners.
Just to describe Gillard's strategy - to expect forgiveness for lying, to squander billions in the faint hope of a boom and to abuse Abbott while dividing Australians - is to be astonished Labor MPs thought it could work.
So here are the key sins a broken Labor must confront - sins that had it sticking with Gillard long after it should have sacked her.
It believed its own bull
Labor's head went soft. It fell for New Left fancies. It fell for the global warming faith and imagined the world shared it. It imagined boat people were genuine refugees who wouldn't take advantage of its "compassion".
It believed in Gillard.
It believed the Canberra press gallery
Most journalists lean Left, especially in Canberra, and cheered on Labor in its worst mistakes. Yes, we needed a carbon tax. Yes, Abbott was a buffoon. Yes, the Howard government's border laws were "inhumane". Yes, Gillard had reached a "turning point", as Channel 9's Laurie Oakes announced in March, July, August and November of 2011.
Labor lived in an echo chamber.
It believed in spin
Even yesterday, Labor MPs were claiming it wasn't the Government's performance that stank, but the reviews. It just needed better spin.
On Tuesday, Labor backbencher Laurie Ferguson even claimed Gillard could still win the election if she could now "speak in common language" to explain the huge influx of boat people was "a very complex problem and neither the Government nor the Opposition can easily solve it".
Talk about deluded. Here is a prominent Labor MP arguing the problem isn't that Gillard left the door wide open, but that she hasn't used "common language" to say she can't close it.
It is ruled by selfish faction bosses
The polls are adamant - only Kevin Rudd has the personal popularity to help Labor now. Indeed, he is this week touring two marginal seats in Geelong at the request of their desperate members.
Yet many Labor faction bosses, not least Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, would seemingly rather Labor be destroyed under Gillard than recover under Rudd, a man they hate and cannot control.
Nor would they let former Labor leader Simon Crean, not popular but competent, take over last year.
The Australian Workers Union, whose votes keep Gillard in office, seems likewise to prefer a dud Labor leader it controls to a popular one it doesn't.
I have not listed all the causes of Labor's fall: sheer incompetence, the lack of a single minister with a business background, the politics of division, a caucus stuffed with ex-unionists and party hacks, the outsized influence of young advisers strong on ideology and weak on experience.
My question is more limited yet more urgent.
Why did Labor stick so long with a loser
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/why-did-labor-stick-with-prime-minister-julia-gillard-as-its-leader/story-fni0ffxg-1226658051533
