Let's begin with that race in Melbourne which despite the best efforts of its backers no longer stops the nation.

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According to an Essential poll published on The Guardian website, only 9 per cent of Australians have a high interest in the race, 23 per cent are moderately interested, 29 per cent have a low interest and 39 per cent have no interest at all.

No matter how many times the TV networks try to reignite interest with silly hats, glimpses of the filthy rich quaffing Champagne in the Birdcage and bogans in spiv suits passing out on Flemington's Front Lawn, the evidence gets clearer every year. We've lost interest in the Melbourne Cup. It's a dead horse.

But it wasn't the only one enduring a whipping yesterday. The Reserve Bank took the riding crop to borrowers in its own forlorn race that's meant to stop inflation. Borrowers could be forgiven for feeling like dead horses after being flogged repeatedly with a very blunt instrument.

The interest rate hike wasn't the only safe bet to be had on race day.

Also entirely predictable was the conservative media putting the spurs into the prime minister for attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government gathering in Antigua and Barbuda. Off to the Caribbean, the headlines have screamed for days now, on a jolly with the King in a sunny, palm-fringed paradise while we all struggle to pay the bills.

Another dead horse. Of course, the PM should be there. After all, he is Australia's head of government and we are part of the Commonwealth. It's not as if he's hiding out in Hawaii in the middle of a bushfire apocalypse. Would there have been a similar outcry if CHOGM had been held in a bleak venue like Glasgow? Very much doubt it.

But it was further north, in Washington DC, where the most spectacular bout of expired equine flagellation took place. No horse seemed more dead than Donald Trump on the last day of campaigning for the US midterms.

Everything about Trump's final pitch to voters was wrong. Choosing the site of one of his most notorious failures, the Reflecting Pool, as a venue was bizarre. It reminded everyone of his expensive, botched reno which turned the monument into a cesspit.

Droning on for too long about all the "improvements" he was making to the US capital was beyond tone deaf. When so many Americans can no longer afford to fill their petrol tanks, thanks to his war in Iran, Trump's focus on his own obsessions left everyone scratching their heads.

We'll know the results of the midterms soon enough. Even if the polls predicting the loss of the House of Representatives and even the Senate get it wildly wrong, biology alone dictates Trumpism is destined for the........

© Canberra Times