Matisyahu's Blog

I’m enjoying my lunch break and catching up on some politics on YouTube – Donald Trump has become so toxic that there are now Republicans are saying to Trump “woah, woah, hang on, maybe you should sit this one out…” when it comes to Trump trying to involve them in senate and congressional races. The most recent example of that would be Trump throwing his support behind John Sununu from the New Hampshire federal senate election – Trump is deluded enough to convince himself that his endorsement is something people want but given how his popularity has nose dived the endorsement is closer to being a kiss of death.

With all that being said, I wouldn’t get too optimistic in terms of the bigger picture given that I can remember back when George W Bush’s run for the second term there was a lot of unhappiness with George W Bush and optimism that maybe John Kerry would make him a one term president but the reality is that it never turned out to be the case. There is a lot of optimism regarding Texas and the idea that maybe someone can over turn 30 years of Republican dominance – would I love that to happen? sure but is it realistic? probably not given that Ted Cruz has been unpopular for years and yet he keeps being voted back in – unpopular doesn’t necessarily translates to “so therefore I’m going to vote for the Democratic candidate”.

This is the one reason why I am sceptical about the idea of Labour winning this year because it is very rare that you have a one term government – you’d have to make a major balls-up of the economy. Election day is still another 9 months away and a lot can occur in 9 months and if the ‘green shoots’ of recovery are not only showing but voters experiencing things improve then you may find the public willing to give them another team. The big question is what will happen regarding the minor parties – what is NZ First and ACT going to do to differentiate themselves from each other given that we’re 5-6 years on from COVID and the unhappiness they took advantage of in the election in 2023 no longer has the same pulling power that it once had.