I can't believe Andrew is still sifting through the technical issues in how to plot an accurate graph depicting the decline of the Democrats vote over the last 15 years.

At some point, Andrew is going to have to put the graph away in a drawer somewhere, and ask himself whether he will stay with the Democrats' sinking ship, or try to fashion a new politics to fill the space they once occupied. Andrew has had several years now to make a decision on this, and yet still seems to want to cling to the trappings of being a Senator until the death.

Perhaps there is more honour in getting out to create a new political force. Most ex-Democrats would think so (and there is an army of them out there, people who briefly supported the Dems before moving on, once they discovered that the capacity to create a mainstream alternative to Lib/Lab paternalism was not there).

Vern Hughes
vern@peoplepower.org.au