Couple of lazy Sunday thoughts on how the Nats seem to think they're going to waltz to re-election. The emerging strategy has three prongs. All are, ahem… bold. 🧵

Most politicians try to disguise their contempt for voters on the campaign trail. Luxon’s making it his closing argument.

During Victoria’s 06 drought, I was hired to set up a lobby group for artificial-turf installers. Literally astroturf for AstroTurf. So I think that qualifies me to clear up confusion: of course the Parents Alliance is astroturf. I’d say “textbook”, but they'd try to censor it.

This soul crushing profile may have helped Luxon in '23 when his boring corporate ascent could still be mistaken for evidence he’d make a decent PM. But the relentless focus on his getting ahead lands poorly when the rest of us have fallen behind. thepost.co.nz/politics/36109…

The Nats’ strenuous daily efforts to make taxes, rather than costs, the defining issue of this election carry a whiff of desperation almost potent enough to overpower the stench of futility.

These are terrible people who think the rest of us are too.

Look, I get why they do it, part of me even respects it, but @1NewsNZ seriously underplayed what its own debate and two audience-testing exercises (Vote Compass & undecided panel) showed: Hipkins won hands down. Reporting an emphatic result as emphatic isn’t taking sides.

The only way I can make sense of National's dreadful, almost other-worldly, campaign is that conventional political judgement has been swept aside by an aggresive unwillingness on the part of its leadership cohort to entertian unpleasant thoughts or hear unpleasant truths.

With its promise to make it easier to visit your kids in Australia, National keeps reaching new heights in tone-deafness. Truly staggering.

Still processing how badly the Nats bombed yesterday. For one of many, many things, they had no policy to announce so repackaged ten existing promises as a “pledge card', pretending the packaging was the announcement. Rather than concealing the absence. It advertised it.

"Electorates are very difficult to poll well” is one of those canards that gains authority through repetition. In my experience, a good sized electorate sample gives good numbers if weighted well. If weighting is the problem, the fact it's an electorate poll is immaterial.

Driving to Napier today, saw quite few of those signs featuring the Luxon/Willis power couple -- but still not nearly enough. I'd happily volunteer to hekp plaster the countryside with them.

Can't tell whether pervasive calls for "boldness" on Labour's part represent gormless but well meaning incitements to malpractice or a sincere preference for the righteous defeat.

“Small target”, in that implies passivity & defensiveness, misleads I reckon. Labour’s strategy better seen in terms of territory: minimise the ground that favours National without surrendering that which favours Labour. Issue-based polling suggests they’ve mostly achieved this.

Chris Penk will own up to this shortly.

Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here (1935) as a warning about American fascism. Its demagogue’s signature promise? $5,000 for every White American. Trump now promising $5,000 cheques if Republicans win. MAGA really seems to see the book as a how-to guide.

Don't love it as a matter of public policy, but the Greens' KiwiMart idea is undeniably a brilliant premise for a hilarious new workplace comedy.

Like me, I'm sure you've been waiting to learn what the business lobby’s pre-election prescription for economic growth would be and -- make sure you're sitting down for this -- turns out it's lower company tax, more tax breaks, less regulation & easier firing. Visionary stuff.

1/ Haven't been able to take my eyes off the latest Ipsos issues survey from a week or so back. Frankly, it reads more like an incumbent's death warrant than any topline party-preference number you'll see. There are also striking parallels with what’s happening in the US.