Matisyahu's Blog

One more day to go – working at the moment (Saturday) then one more day (Sunday) before the weekend. Although it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea I love working Wednesday to Sunday and having Monday/Tuesday off for my weekend because having two week days off gives me the ability to chase up errands that need to be done, shopping at a leisurely pace etc.

I always find it interesting when Republicans come out of the woodworks declaring how a second Trump term would be horrible but when asked “ok, but will you still vote for him and support him if he is the Republican nominee” they collapse like a cheap lawn chair and fall in line. P J O’Rourke at least had the backbone, when asked whether he would vote for Trump, stated that he would vote for Hillary because at least she was wrong within the acceptable parameters of being wrong.

If Bill Barr came out and said, “I can’t bring myself to vote for a Democrat but I’ll…” followed by a) leave it blank b) vote third party, then I might have some respect but alas it appears that Republicans don’t actually believe in anything other than power for power sake. Sure, we on the left or nominally left want power but power to achieve a set of goals that improves the lives for all people – even the so-called neoliberals at least try to strike a win-win where as Republicans in the US only ever seem to want power for power sake, for their own personal enrichment as demonstrated by the rank hypocrisy demonstrated by the so-called ‘freedom caucus’.

Regarding how politics is going in New Zealand, the difference between the United States and New Zealand is the fact that swinging voters make up a huge part of the electorate so there is a lot more effort by the different parties to win people over because there the percentage of persuadable voters is a lot higher than in the United States. At the moment the Labour, Maori and Greens could form government but not too long ago National-Act could form government so the poles are all over the show with many (I include myself as part of that cohort) who only make a firm decision closer to the election once the announcements are made, analysis in the media is done and one has looked at the policies directly.

For me, I’m leaning party vote Greens and constituency vote I’ll for my Labour Party candidate. Are they perfect? there is no such thing as a perfect party or a perfect politician – politicians are human and parties are made up of humans. Humans are a fallible and are thrown into an imperfect world so we have to deal with reality as it exists which means accepting the fact that those who put into power are going to make mistakes, that drama occurs within the party as different factions have divergent viewpoints regarding topics that one (or more) faction believe are of the utmost importance while other factions may disagree. End of the day, a political party has to operating as a single unit which results in friction that some times boils over in a public spectacle that the media lap up aka ‘what bleeds leads’.