Chloe’s clear moral denunciation of this Government’s policy agenda cruelty, her confidence in schooling the Press Gallery alongside her righteousness in denouncing Labour’s incrementalism all mark Chloe as the Jacinda we wished we’d had.
Why would anyone under 45 voting Labour continue to vote Labour after that amazing once in a generation speech?
Chloe is what the Right AND Labour have always feared, a Bernie Sanders Left Wing Populism.
The political project of the Right is to starve the State of resources so taxation can’t be distributed in the first place.
That leads to anger at the poor public service, that leads to ‘privatisation’ as the solution, which degrades the service even further and so on.
The agenda of Labour is to manage the economy slightly less cruelly than the Right and incrementally make changes that never challenges neoliberalism.
The Right’s privatisation agenda alongside Labour’s incremental managerialism can only win if the true Left doesn’t have an articulate leader who can challenge the free market economic orthodoxy by promising voters the public services they all actually want.
The only way to beat Trump’s Negative Populism is by Positive Populism.
Truly free education. Truly free health. Truly free public transport.
All funded by taxing the richest amongst us more.
Positive populism via universalism is the way the Left actually wins voters over and Chloe understands that.
Chloe is threatening to take money from rich people and power away from a faction of the Left who prefer to control the losing team than lose control of the winning team.
Watch how that faction of the Left and the entire Right Wing of New Zealand tear her to shreds in blind panic as her popularity rises.
The Greens could gain a larger percentage of the vote in the next election than the Labour Party if the Labour Party don’t do something enormous in policy response.
Tomorrow I’ll ask, The question isn’t ‘can’ Chloe be co leader, the question is ‘should’ she?
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
If you can’t contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media.
Bernie was a sheepherder. He greatly inspired the Left and then shepherded them back to nowhere, aka the Dem party.
Lets hope Chloe is different.
Wrong…Bernie took a calculated risk standing for President due to the US first past the post electoral system, third parties and independent Presidential candidates are inevitably also rans or spoilers outside of the two main umbrellas. Plus they have more impediments to democracy than the business dominated DNC–namely the Electoral College, The filibuster, district gerrymandering and voter suppression laws. e.g. mandated fewer polling stations in some areas mean longer queues…so giving water to those lining up has been declared illegal in some States!
Bernie was and is a dedicated democratic socialist.
Chlōe’s suitability is supported it seems in this article anyway, so is it just a matter of “when should she…” or is there another tactic to consider?
No, I’m right. I wish I were wrong given that I was such a huge fan of the guy, like many Lefties, like many Lefties. But after capturing a huge following, giving hope to many – gawd it all seems like yesterday, the many speeches in front of tens of thousands of people with Nina Turner, Cornell West and others setting the scene – the man, the rebel, the person who would easily defeat Trump (if elected to represent) the people’s champion capitulated to the Dem establishment, without a fight. He didn’t stand up for what he believed in, he didn’t stand up for the millions he’d inspired, he just whimpered into nothingness.
As Chris Hedges pointed out early, early into his failed/shepherding run, Bernie is not about to lose all the benefits he has earned throughout his political career, which would have happened had he taken on the Dems rather than acquiesce to them as he did.
Bernie’s political identity does not matter, neither did the rotten Democratic electoral system, ditto their equally rotten mainstream media also. None of this mattered because Bernie did not fight when it mattered. He did not fight!
As such, he is what he is, a sheepherder, and that’s putting it nicely.
Dunno what campaign you followed…Bernie was shafted by the staged withdrawals of other candidates like Mayor Pete, Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren, while previous 5th placed Biden made his run on the back of several sellout senators in the South.
Bernie was not the problem the Democratic National Committee and allegiance to big corporate donors is.
Bernie is a problem, because he’s more concerned about his own behind instead of everything he stands for, thus he is simply leading his following up the garden path.
In 2016, despite the rotten Dem party and media, hie still could have extracted concessions from the Clinton campaign, for his endorsement, given the unrivaled support base he had behind him. He failed to do so. In 2020, he just did not fight for all the issues that had galvanized another huge support base behind him. No fight, no fight….he let his dear friend, Joe Biden walk all over him. Sell out, pure and simple. At least this time, many of us weren’t surprised.
He and people like him, are a problem, but yeah, the totally rotten US political system and equally complaint mainstream media, is the main problem, still.
” the people’s champion capitulated to the Dem establishment, without a fight.” And you know that for sure? Have you got an informant within the DNC, or are you just going by the “news” coming out of the US?
I’ve heard rumours from more then a few sources that intimated Bernie had threats to his family, and blanket defamation of his character, and motivation if he persisted..
Of course, you will remember that he did actually have better numbers, and more momentum than the Clinton bitch.. Every poll taken during that period had him beating Trump by a decent margin..
With the position he was in, do you honestly believe he would have backed down unless he was put under some serious pressure?
I’m sure you understand that this sort of stuff is never going to be allowed to be leaked to the public, don’t you?
Next time you decide to stand up to the military/industrial complex that owns both parties all by yourself, let me know how that goes, ok?…
‘
Yes, I know – for sure. Unlike NZ politics, I followed US politics like a hawk, given that they largely determine policy, everywhere else in the (Western) world, at least.
Back in the 2016 run, there was no shortage of Leftie pundits following every nook and cranny of that run, ditto every run since and most of those, and certainly in 2016 and 2020, I took note of. Every thing any of them said (the Dems, mostly), did and was broadcast, the pundits, therefore myself, got to hear, therefore analyze/comment on. Can’t believe the amount of time I spent on those things – following the followers basically.
But that was all before I fully realized just how truly rotten and broken the US political system was – meaning – even if a true blue people’s champion did manage to twinkle toe their way in – fixing the ills of the world, fixing the system would not happen. But the system, let alone the opposition party, crushing him/her would, without doubt, happen.
Thus, US politics, like most political systems are pointless to me because nothing – significant – is ever going to happen for us within them. Ironing out the consequences of big-money-driven polices is all politics is good for now days, perhaps its always been this way.
Only we, the people, pushing from outside of this system, is ever going to change the world into the way many of us want it to be – no war, reducing economic inequality, a political system, government that works for us and not unelected interests, so on and so on.
Back to Bernie, Bernie was smeared by his own side the hardest, typically by a media machine in tune with Dem party interests. Bigger point being, he did not step outside of the system, he did not challenge the system, he didn’t even ask for anything within the system, when he had the rare privileged to do so. No, Bernie, come 2020, was a colossus of the people who meekly acquiesced to the system’s chosen representative. As such, Bernie is merely a part of the system.
As for myself, I’m already standing up to the system. I’ve already felt the brunt of the system. I am already greatly handicapped, by the system. But, we, the people, need to fight before big-money interests totally has its way with us. Soldier on….
It’s nice to see Chloe taking some steps to distance herself from the National-Labour-Green neoliberal consensus that has destroyed New Zealand. I would take it more seriously if she left the blue-greens and joined the Maori Party, or founded another genuinely left party looking to work with them.
That would be totally counterproductive.
Reminds me of TDB enthusiasm for Jacinda Ardern six years ago. Let’s hope that Chloe Swarbrick can do better.
Ms Swarbrick’s message goes way further than Jacinda Ardern’s neo Blairism. It is about uniting all who can be united around campaigning for a Basic Income for all, Wealth Tax, CGT, public housing, solar power installs etc. Community organising, all of us participating rather than passively voting and then leaving it up to highly paid MPs who are subject to vested interests and capitalist hegemony.
Spot on
Go Chloe
She’ll pick up some votes from Labour in the form of the typical student radicals, but her rabid approach will put off many traditional unionist-Labour voters who are really quite conservative in nature.
It leaves Labour in a quandary: Do they move even further left to protect their vulnerable left flank and in doing so become electorally irrelevant, or do they copy the Blair government and become red Tories?
Put the popcorn on!
Without being elected leader of her party she’s almost certainly ensured the next change of government whoever runs it, will see a wealth tax, UBI and legal weed in the first term.
The Greens will only gain a reasonable lift in polling when they drop the divisive wokery identity politics.
Well I agree they need to get rid of the likes of Davidson, but then the term woke gets thrown at everything now. You think not killing loads of Palestinian women and children is ‘woke’ rubbish. Not acting like a complete and utter wanker towards other people gets labelled woke nowadays.
Woke is everything from silly harmless virtue signalling all the way to toxic trans death cults.
It is so prevalent in society it is literally everywhere.
The Palestinian connection is valid and belongs in the oppressed/oppressor department.
How many of the protesters have shown their complete ignorance and knowledge of this situation beyond wearing fashionable protest apparel and chanting meaningless slogans is the epitome of woke.
I haven’t been a fan of Marama’s leadership overall with how little she achieved under Labour but I think she came into her own during the campeign last year, I’d be keen to see someone like Teanau, Julie Anne or Abel become co-leader but I wouldn’t mind her sticking around either.
Totally agree “Woke” has become a catch all term for anything the right doesn’t like, I remember when Fox News called the Xbox woke for adding a power saving mode lmao.
Way I see it economic justice and social justice are the same struggle and one doesn’t need to come at the cost of the other, what reason does a working class trans person have to join our cause if we won’t protect them from the fear being stirred up against them by Winston?
Backlash of woke has come from across the political spectrum, particularly from the working class left as seen in the last election.
Its not a right swing to the right, its a swing to the centre.
Good luck to her. She will certainly lift the Greens, maybe to 20%, comparable to Labor in that event. But you can’t form a government in NZ unless you win a decent percentage of the middle.
Will they vote for a radical agenda, one that would have many of them become poorer as a result of confiscatory wealth taxes.?
I think her challenge will be to make the Greens a safe choice for middle New Zealand. Other Green Parties have done that in Europe. But not with Bomber’s radical revolution.
Once Chloe becomes co-leader she should meet with Te Pati Maori to figure out a joint election strategy, Greens agree not to run in the Maori seats and endorse the TPM candidates in exchange for TPM not running for the party vote and endorsing the Green candidates in the electorates they’re targetting like Mt Albert and they come up with a list of 5 to 10 core policies both parties will push for in their first 100 days should be form a government (with or without Labour)
Comments are closed.