We are free to blame Labour if we want to, so we do. They should have played a more offensive campaign; they should have reinforced their own economic credibility and attempted to diminish that of the Liberals; they shouldn't have pulled the Tasmanian forests stunt, or the private school funding stunt, etc. etc., and perhaps they would have stood a chance, or have done better.
Well, that's what we tell ourselves.
It's time to face up to the truth, and figure out what it means. There is a certain tendency among Labour supporters (and those others who have commented on the election result) to pick at Labour's strategy, policy, and leadership; we blame Labour for losing the election with nary a point of the finger at the real culprit - the common voter; the ignorant mass; the "great unwashed". We act as if it was Labour's job, it's solemn duty to win the election, which it failed to do.
That is our real mistake. The whole point of democracy is choice. The people choose their leaders via the process called election. If one side wins and another loses, it merely means that the vote favoured one party and not the other. It does not mean that one party did the wrong thing and another did the right thing. Well, that's the theory.
At the end of the day, the citizens of Australia voted for the wrong team. They voted for the party whose policies are not in the interest of the average Australian. That much seems obvious, but it doesn't help to be elitist about these things. Nothing will turn the average joe away quicker than a bunch of elitist snobs who can only say "you voted wrong, and you're an idiot."
At the end of the day, it seems the only thing to do is to hold your own opinion - the right one - and lend a sympathetic ear to those poor bedevilled Liberal voters, when they need it. And stop trying to blame Labour for it's "personal" problems such as weak leadership, put those issues completely to the side, and focus on the things that really do matter: the policies. For surely that's the only way to save the Labour party now.
For the awful truth is that the average person just doesn't care enough about politics to make any sort of informed decision when they vote. Times are good, as far as most people are concerned, and all it takes is for the Liberals to spout garbage about "bad economic management" for them to win an election.