Electoral politics give people a magical sense of how power works. Winning an election doesn’t give the…

Electoral politics give people a magical sense of how power works. Winning an election doesn’t give the winner power to change things. 80-90% of power is framing issues across multiple elections. That’s what the ‘economy’ is, for example, a long-term reframing. /1 #auspol

When progressives win an election, conservatives have already poisoned the well by reframing all issues as economic issues. By reframing all of society as an economy. Bill Clinton acknowledged this with his ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. /2

When the ALP won power here, it didn’t suddenly become able to reverse our Covid disaster, for example. As @CrabbBrendan said recently, the issue is now toxic, politically. Nobody will touch it, from the major parties. That was deliberately done by 2 preceding years of…/3

…framing public health measures as ‘restrictions’, and removing them as ‘freedom’. I’m not Ned using the ALP’s capitulation here either, just restoring the reality of framing and how it determines politics much more than elections do. /ends

(‘Ned using’ was an auto correct of a mistyped ‘justifying’)