Well, some might have hoped that yesterday afternoon in Penrith, something would happen. They might have hoped that Bill Shorten — a man so grey you could use him as a swatch to paint battleships with — would do what happens in Aaron Sorkin land: get to the podium, stare into the autocue at the boring process speech he’s about to give, switch it off (cut to horrified aides: what’s he doing? This is a disaster!) and say “You know what? I’ve got a few things I want to say about why we’re all here.” Forty minutes later, ecstatic crowds cheer a speech that has put the question to the nation: who are we? What is our life about? How does the world work, and how can we make a better life for everyone within it?

Didn’t happen. Wasn’t going to. Would it have made a decisive difference in these last two weeks? Maybe, maybe not, we’ll never know. What we got was decent enough as a proposal for a disconnected set of policies connected by a vague misty progressivism, but it’s nothing that added up to a pitch about life itself, about the role of a progressive state in making society better. Labor used to fuse together the macro and the micro — to argue that you had to have a progressive tax system to fund a changed education system, and you had to have a changed education system for individual kids from poorer backgrounds to have better lives.

Now, Labor does the opposite. It goes out of its way to disarticulate the macro and the micro of the good society. Growth and jobs on the one hand, a roaring economy — and on the other, specific programs for teen suicide, as if the latter had no relation to the former, was more akin to a regional flare-up of lupus, or similar. What was on stage on Sunday was no break for the finish line. It was a middle-of-the-pack run, a first gesture towards managing expectations. Shorten’s appearance wasn’t a campaign launch. For all its moments of gusto, it was really the first draft of his concession speech. There are many good Labor people out there, slogging away, pounding the pavement, believing that all things are possible, buoyed by state wins in Victoria and especially Queensland. Their leaders think otherwise — that a first-term victory in conditions where growth and prosperity (in some sectors) persists makes the task almost impossible. That is true enough by measure of actually getting into government. But by raw vote, it’s not unusual recently — both 1998 and 2010 were first-term victories by an opposition, on the numbers, government denied by maldistribution and a hung Parliament respectively.

So if you were going all out, if Shorten and Labor had really thrown the kitchen sink at the Coalition, there might have been a greater chance of … .something. Victory, or an even greater disaster than would otherwise be the case. I suspect many many Labor supporters would wish Shorten and his leadership had taken the chance. This is Keirin politics, the bicycle race so slow that competitors risk sliding down the smooth sides of the velodrome track. There’s a lot of Labor people who wish it would have been a sprint instead. You might lose, but, your lungs bursting, your head swimming, your legs collapsing under you, at least you would know you had a go. Feeling half-dead, you’d know you were alive. Labor feels half-alive, therefore dead. There hasn’t been a single audacious move, not even a good line in this election. Labor’s supporters are going to be standing around the TV on Saturday week, warm riesling in their hands, “Its Time” badges on, wondering if they were in an election at all.

The political caste who run Labor will say that that is something that just has to be done. The electorate is atomised, the swinging voters feral calculators, totting up spending and tax cut promises to see where they’ll end up with either party. What point stirring the voters to frenzy in safe seats? They will troop out anyway. Such rhetoric would frighten off the prosperous working-middle class who have emerged in the last two decades — people who will spend the first part of their adult life on wages, the latter half on super income from the sharemarket. They eye policies in the same way rentiers would once watch the sharemarket ticker.

This case for minimal political projection is sound enough, so long as one is aware of its feedback effect, the degree to which it undermines the capacity to project a readiness for power, a willingness to take on the wholeness of power. Labor’s political caste can quote endless surveys, focus groups, etc, to show the wisdom of their course — a series of disconnected policies that, often significant in themselves, are never projected as a unified program — but the more accurate take on it would be that they are technocratic, careerist, risk-averse people, part of a world that offers uninterrupted power and influence — government, opposition, lobbying, super boards, banking and corporate boards — so long as one doesn’t do anything stupid. Shorten and his cronies also appear to be calculating how to get a result that is just disappointing enough, but not sufficiently disastrous to have him edged out. The needs of a progressive political party — people who are audacious, creative, have no thought to the day after — is exactly contrary to the personal interests of the party’s leaders. Hence this relentless day-on-day disappointment from Labor’s faithful about the lack of fight, the unwillingness to take it up to them.

Well, once again, in narrow tactical terms, they may be right. Quite aside from everything else, this might be a great election to lose. Either a Coalition victory, leaving them to preside over the next recession, or a messy Coalition compromise with independents, is on offer. But if that’s the play, then there is a lot they’re not factoring in — the possibility that they might have underplayed it and handed the Coalition a reverse swing, for example. Less visibly, but more seriously for the long term, they may have persuaded whole sections of supporters and activists to finally peel off from Labor, as alternatives multiply — not merely the Greens, but NXT for more centrist types, and Lambie and other independents for the party’s cultural/nativist right.

Well, still, they may be right, they may be right. I don’t believe that for a second, of course. I think it’s cowardice and mediocrity at the very top. But we’re all hedging our bets these days, in case they’ve pulled off something masterful. If not, well, there’s always the next season.