Gordon Campbell On The Plague Of The Seymourites

What a charlatan David Seymour is. Like one of those American Televangelists he so closely resembles, the enemy of bureaucracy is now building his own temple of bureaucracy...and it shall be known as the Ministry of Regulation and many regulations previously passed to benefit the consumer, protect the environment, and help the disadvantaged shall be struck down by it, and rent asunder.

In the doing thereof, the Seymourites shall profit greatly (all called on to perform these godly tasks will earn on average $150,000 a year) and they will multiply and fill the Parliamentary complex until they shall number four score and ten, or so spake the prophet David in a vision. Great shall be their power, and narrow shall be their range, in that their wrath shall be directed solely at anything that impedes the prospering of business, which henceforth shall be held to be the one, true purpose of government.

Seriously, David Seymour really should be registering his “Ministry” of Regulation as a religion. It is a faith-driven exercise that has nothing to do with logic or with big picture/long term benefits. He says of his Ministry that it will deliver “value for money” Really? So before going any further, let's see the cost/benefit analysis and revenue projections he’s done to back up that claim. It is very hard to see why the people lining up at the Ministry trough should be so well paid. How difficult can it really be to take the wish lists given to ACT by its business lobbyists and donors, and turn them into law?

Ultimately, Seymour says,his Ministry will end up employing 90 people. Really? For the past three decades New Zealand has been regularly assessed to be one of the least regulated developed countries in the world. Yet Seymour is claiming there will be enough red tape and regulations to justify hiring 90 people to work year in year out, in scrapping them.

It sounds more like white collar scrub cutting. Meaning: this is a work scheme for ACT members and like-minded zealots. The rest of us will be paying for it, in all sorts of ways.

Footnote: One small cautionary point. Apparently, it took $ 7.176 million in loans and donations in the years 2021-2023 to elect the eleven ACT MPs, at a rate of roughly $648,000 per MP. These are the most expensive-to-elect MPs in the current Parliament. So why should anyone be entrusting the leader of these gold-plated MPs with a job that’s supposedly about delivering efficiencies in government ? Clearly, ACT can’t even manage to use its donations as effectively as everyone else manages to do.

Footnote Two: Does the Ministry of Regulations have a sunset clause, and if not, why not?

The Venn diagram of Kamala Harris & Jacinda Ardern

On the eve of the convention in Chicago, the veteran Democratic Party strategist Ruy Teixeira posted an essay that included an explicit comparison between the honeymoon phase that Kamala Harris is currently enjoying, to the “Jacindamania” phase in the career of Jacinna Ardern.

To him, the comparison is a cautionary tale:

Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand in 2017 replaced Labour leader Andrew Little who appeared to be headed to a landslide defeat (sound familiar?). Her candidacy caught fire and very soon her party was in the lead. But the conservative party, the National Party, counter-attacked, aiming withering fire at Ardern’s considerable vulnerabilities. By the time the election arrived the National Party actually out-polled Labour and Ardern by 7 points. (She was still able to form a government, but only by forming a coalition with New Zealand’s right-populist and green parties.)

Teixeira’s point being that so far, Kamala Harris hasn’t been exposed to a focused and competent attack on her own weaknesses. Donald Trump's inability to stay on message, plus his willingness to publicly attack moderate Republicans (see below) plus the negative early perceptions of J.D. Vance have all given Harris a dream run.

However, Teixeira provides an example of an attack ad on Harris that may be a sign of things to come. The ad is currently being run in Pennsylvania as part of the Senate campaign by Republican contender Dave McCormick, who is currently lagging in the polls behind the popular incumbent Bob Casey.

Point being: McCormick clearly feels a new route to victory in Pennsylvania lies not in local issues, but in tying Casey to Kamala Harris, given that she may prove to be a more vulnerable target than Joe Biden was in Pennsylvania, in the light of the stands she has taken in the past against for example, fracking. You can find the McCormick attack on X, at this link. It uses Harris’ own words against her.

In the three key Rust Belt states, Harris’ current lead on the rolling poll averages is only 1.1 points, and as Teixeira points out, Biden’s lead in the same states at a similar stage in 2020 was 7.7 points, and Hillary Clinton’s lead was 6.8 points, yet she lost. In both 2020 and 2016, Trump’s polling was lower than his actual support proved to be. All of which underlines that while the Harris resurgence is genuine and welcome, her victory is still a very long way from being assured.

Holding the Line

No doubt, the Democrats will be working on message lines to limit any attack damage among independent/moderate conservatives. To date though, the Harris political project has been very much about aspirational forward momentum. We have not yet seen her defending her past statements and actions, let alone facing serious questioning as to how her approach to Gaza and to the arming and funding of Israel will differ if at all, from that of Biden. That’s the thing about political honeymoons. They don’t last forever.

Other Battegrounds

Much of the media coverage of Trump v Harris has been about how she has improved Democratic chances as measured by polling (a) nationwide and (b) in the swing states that comprise the Rust Belt (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) likely to be decisive in the Electoral College.

In addition, Harris has been polling so well of late that a new route to the White House may be opening up in the Sun Belt states loosely defined as including Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia. Ultimately, she may not end up winning North Carolina or Georgia, but currently, she is forcing Trump to spend time and money there.

On his forward ad bookings, Trump is putting a vast amount of his resources into Georgia. Yet so far, and exactly as he did in 2020 Trump’s self-destructive personal attacks on Brian Kemp, the moderate Republican governor of Georgia, seem to be alienating independents and conservative voters, thereby endangering Trump’s entire campaign for the White House. Trump has to win Georgia, much as Harris (in all likelihood) will have to win Pennsylvania. Which explains this:

The Trump campaign’s share of TV spending planned in Georgia doubled from 21% in August to 43% in September and 46% in October, according to calculations for Axios by the ad-tracking firm AdImpact…

Finally, The Senate

If Harris is elected, will she be able to govern? Look at the numbers. With the help of four independents, the 47 Democrats in the Senate currently give the party a slim 51-49 majority. Yet by bad luck, of the 34 Senate seats up for grabs in November, 20 are held by Democrats, 11 by Republicans, and three by independents. Several of those Democratic “defends” are in states that Trump has carried fairly comfortably in the past.

Montana’s Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown in particular, have been facing uphill battles to hold on. While Biden was the presidential candidate, Tester’s campaign did its best to distance itself from the party leader. Sherrod Brown is one of the Democratic Party’s leading figures, and would be a major loss. Tester’s polling can be found here. Brown’s polling, which has taken a more optimistic turn of late, can be found here. 

Tester and Brown will have to decide whether the Harris ascension is a plus or a minus for their chances of survival, and then campaign accordingly. There are even worse case scenarios, but the current predictions are for a 52-48 Republican majority in the Senate, which would (a) make it difficult for a President Harris to pass legislation and (b) force her into making extensive use of the presidential veto to prevent even worse outcomes from occurring- such as say, a Republican sponsored federal ban on abortion rights. It is still a very long way to November.

Mothers Daughters, etc

Two tracks about child /parent links. First, here’s Blondshell aka Sabrina Teitelbaum, with a song in which a now grown-up daughter speaks to her (largely) absent mother.

And then...here’s the late, omni-talented composer/celllist/ electronic music innovator Arthur Russell, this time from his brief folk rock phase, as he sought to explain himself, in the gentlest of conversational tones, to his Dad.

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