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?
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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.
Not sell-out, but you’re right otherwise. He and Corbyn created the platform for integrity AND shouting for the people.
Good to hear someone intelligent on the subject.
” 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….
Bernie is a paper only socialist.
For years he railed and rallied against the millionaires, then he became a millionaire many times over, with what 3-4 houses now, and now it’s the billionaires he rails and rallys against and no mention of millionaire s.
Does that not explain to you TM that Bernie is giving nothing more than lip service for socialism?, a classic ‘do as I say, not as I do’!
Or are you going to blame the right wing, the republicans for forcing him to be a multi millionaire and for buying 4 houses??
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.
Chloe’s speech highlights how much danger NZ is in if she gets into power.
No, PPII! … “highlights how much danger NZ is in if she does NOT get into power”.
Go read some books and it may help: e.g. The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen (yep, it’s all happened before – 5 times, in fact), and Under a Green Sky by Peter Ward.
If they don’t convince you, backed – as they are – with science, that we have to dramatically change the way we are living and fast, you are bereft of any smidgeon of intellect/intelligence; or any hope of quality of life for our grandchildren (even if, as Pope have any – that you know of).
Yeah sure. We are in such good hands now, not
Please, let me write this. Again.
“…highlights how much danger Labour are in…”
There. Is. No. Labour Party. Labour, as a political entity formed with the best interests of its constituents? That labour Party no longer exists because that Labour Party was murdered by roger douglas and his cadre of swine back in the early 1980s. The Labour stopped breathing when unions were deregulated and wage contracts became de rigueur. Then, when privateers came for our resources, assets and ammenities the last shovel full of dirt was thrown on Labour’s grave by the far right wing who’d crawled up Labour to achieve their dirty fait accompli. In short, and I’m not that short, the National Party murdered their own adoring agricultural audience then went through their pockets as they lay down to become a slave-class as urban workers fell by the wayside to be abused and blamed for the disastrous damage being caused by those same Urban, Parnell-Jungle animal right wing National Party abusers. You’ll know who you are because you’re still doing it.
I repeat. There is no Labour Party. What you see instead is a facade hiding roger douglas and his far right, far white, narcissistic Natzo sociopaths bathing in our blood, sweat, tears and money.
Chloe Swarbrick
” …a Bernie Sanders Left Wing Populism.” No! That’s not it! Stop it with the bloody comparisons to Bernie fucking Sanders. Mentioning Sanders conjures up old, dejection, cold and knitted fucking mittens with an orange psycho sexual deviant sniffing around Bernies trouser cuffs. Fuck Off with that.
Chloe Swarbrick is unique in her thinking and her approach. Congratulate here for that but for Christs sake leave Bernie Sanders the fuck out of it!
Chloe Swarbrick is a timely gift of unique proportions. In my opinion, she has the very best intentions armored by a formidable intelligence and can’t wait to share them.
There is one more thing. A vital and frighteningly important thing; Old wizened farmers please pay attention?
You need Green Party love and they desperately need you. We all do. ( That old wizened farmer’s just thrown his computer out his lounge window and a cow’s now sucking on the key board. Oh look? Cow porn’s just come up! Old wizened farmer? Unplug your computer lest cow# 89653-09 formerly known as Bessie, gets electrocuted. )
yeah right on. This is not America, and Chloe is not Bernie Sanders. Maybe just maybe, she can succeed to pull the Greens all the way to the top. With support from Ti Pati Maori and whatever is ‘left’ of Labour.
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!
In danger of remaining in opposition with each other? When are they going to address the importation of NACT voters?
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.
And that’s all well and good Al1en, as long as they campaign on it all and the voters agree and vote them into government.
The lefts problem (as seen last election what happens) is they introduce policy/law they DID NOT campaign on and do fuck all about the policies they do campaign on, the voters do not like that.
The voters are onto their scam now….will be hard for them to be elected and introduce big policies which were kept under wraps now (3 waters, co-governance, maori health department etc etc)
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.
How about not killing loads of Ukrainian women and children? Or is that woke-sanctioned?
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.
But how do you rate the odds of them doing that, Jack?
Now that Shaws gone, very little. The rest are just uncompromising idealist activists with no understanding of the electorate.
What Chloe could think about. Free things with no-frills thoroughness and universalism – yes. But also – to cope with our skewed psychologies – the idea of being a good citizen
and not a spectator:
# Publish the message that all good people want everyone to have the services we all need. Get an idea in the populist mind of what a good citizen involves – not merely riding a bicycle wherever one wants to, for instance, that is very middle class. Also realising that a uni degree doesn’t teach you everything you need to know about everything. And also that class distinctions have become rooted in NZ and if we don’t want to be rooted, but to rise to good cultural and human levels we need to root negative prejudice out. Replace the idea with – every citizen works and earns (for reward of something) but also develops their own good talents and empathy – which would cut much of the class condescension from top or bottom out – mostly.
# Also that all good people who want to live in a country of principles and goodwill to all must model that themselves. (Emphasising all, even ‘those people’ who consider this an infringement on their liberties.)
# Also getting people to accept that for a nation to remain true to good standards, it requires input from all citizens both in general public ways and in private hands-on effort – no easy riders, no ‘useless’ dropouts, no high-and-mighty.
(All will every week take part, work in or with, something that assists others as part of strong input to result in strong output.)
So everybody in this boat, staying above stormy waters; no-one can simply buy themselves out, even by promising to pay their progressive tax (which would not be as draconian* as that in UK after WW2). This to be explained as a new moral model, philosophically presented, but also economically useful as resulting in less crime, less resort to violence, with more mediation so less justice spending on solving problems of fairness, with an ounce of more generosity thrown in, and better material conditions for a lower price as taxes would be spent practically where needed (water supply etc) enabling better living conditions.
What would be emphasised would be that nobody would receive everything they wanted, that there would still be room for disagreements, some compromise, conciliation, acquiesce etc would be words used more often than fight language.
To build capability provide information, training and opportunity; citizens regularly doing a free and enabled summer school that would be based on learning a new skill, following interests, with a short period of study and lectures on understanding new events, and social anthropology of one’s own and others’ culture. Because we don’t know ourselves, and our good and bad potentials. Also people could take basic tertiary papers that would lead to a place on groups of informed citizens making planning suggestions and even budgeted for decisions on community requirements. And include young adults when over 16 and have done the appropriate study. Good scoring students from within the study group could become a Fellow in the Diploma of Citizen Political Planning and Administration.
We need citizens taking part themselves instead of this high cost structure attracting academic people becoming estranged from themselves as part of humanity. This is speeded up by technology promising everything and delivering barriers with gated entries which can be demanding to get past, eg waiting on phones, demanding long passwords etc. Motto – Do it for yourself or you’ll get done over’ or the old phrase ‘Do as you would be done by’ will become with robot replacement, ‘Do it yourself or lose your own agency and it will be done for you by tech’ (making you as a person redundant in your own life!).
*The origins of the idea of an annual wealth tax for the UK In 1894 the very largest estates attracted a tax of 7.5 per cent. By 1930 that had risen to nearly 40 per cent. After the Second World War it rose to 65 per cent. In 1949 Sir Stafford Cripps the Labour Chancellor raised the top rate to 75 per cent.
lessons for the policy process and tackling wealth inequality
LSE Research Online http://eprints.lse.ac.uk › Why_was_a_wealth_tax_…
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)