Gordon Campbell On The Greens’ Darleen Tana Dilemma, And The Weirdness Of J.D. Vance

List MPs are on shakier ground than electorate MPs if they resign (or get expelled) from the party under whose banner they entered Parliament. An electorate MP can lay some claim to having a personal mandate from voters, in addition to their party affiliation. Arguably, that personal endorsement might justify an electorate MP staying on as an ‘independent’ until the next time they’re required to face the voters – provided, of course, that their constituents weren’t the prime victims of the behaviour in question.

In other words, it can be complicated. It's never been resolved neatly, even though the problem arises on a pretty regular basis. (John A. Lee, Alannah Kopu, Jim Anderton, Peter McCardle, Gordon Copeland etc etc) This time around, Darleen Tana was elected as a list MP, like all other members of the current Green caucus besides Chloe Swarbrick in Auckland Central, Julie-Ann Genter in Rongotai and Tamatha Paul in Wellington Central. Overall, the Greens vote at the 2023 election entitled them to 15 MPs. Now that Tana has resigned from the Greens and is sitting in the House as an independent, the Greens have only 14 MPs.

Repeatedly, Tana has been called on to resign from Parliament altogether in the wake of her supposed fore-knowledge of the alleged mistreatment of migrant labour at her husband’s now defunct business. Currently, the Green Party leadership is engaged in a process of consultation with party members as to whether the Greens should invoke the so-called “waka jumping” legislation.

Already, there have been party resignations over an alleged double standard with respect to the treatment of Tana this year (and Elizabeth Kerekere last year) compared to the less draconian response by the party leadership to the behavioural lapses involving Julie-Ann Genter. At a special AGM set for September 1st, the Greens leadership will take directions from its membership as to whether Tana should be subjected to the waka jumping legislation that the Greens had previously criticised, and that it had only grudgingly accepted in 2018 as part of the price of the coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First.

Situational morality

The Greens aren’t big on situational ethics. History would suggest that party members prefer to apply a bright line moral test on most political issues. Unfortunately, the merits/demerits of the waka jumping legislation can depend entirely on the circumstances of each case. For starters, the legislation certainly could be used against a principled rebel by a vindictive and authoritarian party leadership. (Some parties are better than others at allowing a hundred different opinion flowers to bloom.)

In some cases, the rebel can argue – as Jim Anderton did in the 1980s when finally leaving Labour to form New Labour - that he hadn’t deserted the Labour principles on which he had been elected. Instead, it had been the Labour Party of Roger Douglas and David Lange that had deserted him and his constituents. Tana too, has argued that she has been mistreated by the Greens and denied natural justice - claims that the Greens strongly deny.

The justification habitually offered in support of the waka jumping legislation is that in some circumstances, the MP in question has engaged in behaviours that are so seriously inconsistent with party/parliamentary standards as to warrant expulsion i.e. the permanent removal of access to the perks and salary of being an MP.

Ultimately, the Greens membership will have to consider whether Tana deserves to be put in that category. In the meantime, her presence as an MP does prevent the Greens from having the full number of MPs they won at the last election, and the full office budget that would go with having that complement of 15 members. If Tana remains in the House, the Greens will also be denied their full allocation of Question Time opportunities over the next two years, as they do their best to hold the government to account.

No other Western parliamentary democracy – not the UK, and not Australia either - has found a satisfactory mechanism for dealing with the defections and/or expulsions that take place between elections on a regular basis. On September 1st, the Greens members will have to decide whether (a) Tana has been fairly treated (b)whether her expulsion from Parliament altogether is a proportionate punishment and (c) whether a waka jumping mechanism initially opposed in order to defend principled rebellion can be justified in the contrary cases, where the issue involves culpable lapses by individual MPs from normal party and parliamentary standards.

It is an inherently messy business. It involves delivering a verdict not on a moral absolute,but about where the behaviour – and the punishment - should fall along a spectrum, while taking into account the precedents involving others. Opinion will differ on how culpable Tana is, and whether her behaviour has been so beyond the pale as to merit expulsion from Parliament.

All of the related decisions are more difficult when they arise within a political party that proudly bases its brand identity on “ values” and on being more scrupulous than other parties when it comes to issues of power, gender, race and class. In the end, tolerating Tana’s presence in the House may be the price that the Greens have to pay to avoid the discomfort of looking more like New Zealand First.

No country for old white men

Joe Biden may have exited the race, but old white men could still decide the result of the US election. While Kamala Harris is reportedly inspiring the liberals of all ages of ethnicities, the Democratic Party has a habit of winning more votes nationwide but still losing the election in the Electoral College.

Al Gore for example, won the popular vote in 2000 and Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by millions of votes in 2016, but both lost in the Electoral College. Gore lost because the Supreme Court (by a bare 5-4 majority) stopped the recount in Florida and threw the election to George W. Bush, thereby making possible the invasion of Iraq three years later, and the subsequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Currently, the polls are showing that while his popularity was fading, Joe Biden may still be more popular among the old, white non-college educated workers and retirees of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin than Kamala Harris currently is.

That’s why, as Werewolf noted 10 days ago, the popular Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is on a short list of three vice-presidential candidates being vetted by the Harris team, with a final decision due by Thursday week, NZ time. Western Pennsylvania in particular has a lot of old white male voters, and Shapiro may help convince them to vote for a Democratic ticket headed by a black woman who is being painted as a wild eyed “ultra-liberal brining crime, chaos, mayhem and death” in her wake. (The other names on the Harris VP shortlist are said to be Arizona governor Mike Kelly and Minnesota governor Tim Waltz, both of them also for Electoral College reasons.)

J.D. Vance, pod person?

Only two weeks ago. J. D. Vance was rolling off the Republican production line as a younger, slicker, smoother exponent of the Trump gospel, and as the Orange One’s potential heir. Two weeks later, Vance is looking more like a Sarah Palin-scale electoral liability. A Catholic convert, Vance seems fixated on procreation as the only valid measure of human worth. Clearly, no one has told Vance yet about the Pope, and the celibate elites that run the Vatican.

A couple of days ago, a fascinating trove of private email correspondence (from about 2012 to 2021) between J.D.Vance and

a transgender friend from Yale Law School called Sofia Nelson has surfaced in the New York Times. It offers further evidence of the screeching U-turn in political values that Vance has taken. Clearly, the proximity to power has the ability to seriously warp your political DNA. For example:

In October 2014, in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Nelson raised the idea of requiring that police officers wear body cameras.“I hate the police,” Mr. Vance said in his response. “Given the number of negative experiences I’ve had in the past few years, I can’t imagine what a Black guy goes through.”

Now, “I hate the Police” is a sentiment that’s not often linked to the modern Republican Party. Nor is it an isolated example of Vance’s insights ((back then) into the links between race-baiting rhetoric and political violence:

...After a shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, the two were again discussing race. Mr. Vance said he didn’t understand why people “can’t see the connection between this person murdering innocent people and the fact that the Confederate flag — by democratic will — still flies” at the South Carolina Statehouse. “I’m not sure how to wrap my head around it.”

After Vance has moved to the Bay Area after the success of his book Hillbilly Elegy, he wished his friend all the best in his pursuit of identity politics:

Living in the Bay Area at the time....he wished Nelson “Happy Pride,” adding, “I’m thinking of braving the crowds in S.F. just to people watch.” After attending the Pride Day parade, he wrote, “It felt more like a frat party than I expected. But still nice to see a lot of happy people.”

It is now pretty well known that during this period, Vance strongly disapproved of Donald Trump’s rabble-rousing populism. Famously, Vance once likened his current boss to an “American Hitler.” At the time, the clear insights that Vance had into the dangers posed to vulnerable ethnic communities by right wing populism makes his later conversion to the same populist worldview seem even more bizarre and opportunistic:

“I’m obviously outraged at Trump’s rhetoric, and I worry most of all about how welcome Muslim citizens feel in their own country,” he wrote. “And there have always been demagogues willing to exploit the people who believe crazy shit. What seems different to me is that the Republican Party offers nothing that’s as attractive as the demagogue...The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer. I really believe that,” he wrote.

....Not only had Mr. Vance been critical of Mr. Trump for racism, but he also said, “I’ve been very critical of other Repubs for the L.G.B.T.Q. issue, especially Rick Perry,” referring to the former Texas governor...In another email a month later, he called Mr. Trump a “disaster,” using a vulgarity, and added, “He’s just a bad man.”

Overall, Vance professed himself to be depressed about the direction that Trump and the Republican Party were taking the country:

“I’m deeply pessimistic right now,” he wrote. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the civil rights movement and legislation in the 1960s, and I wonder if our society is healthy enough to accomplish anything of that scale (or even close to it).”

Now, Vance himself is preaching the same messages of hatred, racism and intolerance that he used to be repelled by, and deeply abhorred. Of course, Trump followers will be delighted at his change of heart and mind. From St Paul onwards, true believers have always loved it when former sinners convert to the one true faith. Even so, can someone capable of flip-flopping so completely in the space of only a few short years, really be trusted? Luckily for Vance, very few of the MAGA crowd read the New York Times.

Footnote: As David Corn proves with this clip, J.D. Vance’s recent “childless cat lady” jibes have a long pedigree. As far back as 2021, Vance was claiming that so much media coverage was “angry” and “miserable” because so many “unhappy” journalists don’t have children. Odd that Vance has never run across the angry and miserable people – hello Elon Musk - who do have children.

Footnote Two: It's not news that Kamala Harris will be facing any number of double standards, while Dionald Trump is not held to anything remotely like the same standards. This comment on X by Andy Rubin makes that point neatly:

Imagine the media treatment of Kamala if she had five children by three different men. Then add in having sex with a porn star.

Footnote Three: In case you missed the first time that a heavy metal band got featured front and centre of an Olympics opening ceremony… its well worth scrolling down this link to find the entire clip of the French metal band Gojira doing their take on a genuine 18th century revolutionary song, complete with any number of headless Marie Antoinettes. (BTW, The full Gojira clip is actually the second of the videos in that link above.)

As for the opening ceremony itself… IMO, even the random misfires and endlessly tedious boat parade only added to the whole “throw everything at the wall” spirit of the thing, such as to be almost redemptive of the whole tawdry, uber-nationalism-posing-as global-universalism nature of the world’s biggest fusion of sporting spectacle and corporate greed.

© Scoop Media