thedailyblog--2020-02-05--Chaos in the Caucuses – Iowa Democrats’ Corn App A Real Bad Dud

There is a quotation ascribed to Stalin – “ I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote , or how ; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes , and how.
” Now , I am rarely the sort of person to accuse the Democratic Party of being “ Stalinist ” [ even their ‘ relative ’ left-wing candidates I would hardly work up the enthusiasm to laud “ Socialist ” ] … but after what we have just seen in the Iowa Caucuses yesterday , the most famous son of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ best .
Like many burned-out politi-hacks , I had been paying somewhat idle attention to the inflow of results coming out of the Corn-Hole over the course of Tuesday afternoon [ local NZ time ] , and had made a joking remark to an associate when unexpected delays began to set in quite early on that this must mean the Democrats had seen the same early results everybody else had on live news … featuring an insurgent Sanders well out in front , and a Biden seemingly lost somewhere out in the field @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempting to work out how to ‘ massage ’ the results to produce an ‘ appropriate ’ outcome .
It was noted that this would also presumably explain part of the reason they were being so seriously … not “ Stalinist ” , but , tight-lipped , secretive , stringently censorious about ‘ leaks ’ or early disclosure of results , as these ’ d undermine any later ability to just release “ right ” numbers – in exactly the same manner that the provision of exit-polling figures which don ’ t match @ @ @ @ @ @ @ latter has been tampered with .
I was joking … mostly … but it appears that reality liked my sense of humour .
A little later that afternoon , news broke that the reason for the delay in results coming out was due to difficulties with the app built to feed these back to the party .
The initial statements were that officials had had difficulty logging in to make use of it .
I again made a “ joke ” , suggesting it might be because some of these local chairs had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to what had been alleged about the e-voting machines used in the US Presidential Election in 2004 – i.e .
that they ’ d ‘ mysteriously ’ record votes for the “ right ” candidate , regardless of what you actually put in .
Several hours passed .
Paint dried .
Pete Buttigieg somehow declared victory ( on 0 % of the vote ) .
Some results crawled in .
Which seemed to put supposed-to-be-front-runner Biden somehow behind otherwise-also-ran Klobuchar .
Eyebrows slightly raised .
And then , it happened .
Word came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ potentially been “ hacked ” … and , swiftly following in its wake , the allegation that it had been produced by people formerly affiliated with the Clinton campaign in 2016 .
I nearly fell out of my chair .
Surely we weren ’ t going to see the Democratic Party again allege that establishment Democrats weren ’ t doing well because of Russian hacking … of Iowa ?
Well , as it happened , not quite – yet , anyway .
There ’ s still time for this to all somehow lead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personally masterminding the corn-heist of the year .
The official statement was simply the rather terse statement that the results had been held back for “ quality control ” checking .
I should have learned my lesson by now , but I again “ joked ” about this perhaps being because any result showing Sanders massively ahead of one of the Democrat Establishment approved choices would be deemed to be an error , hence “ quality control ” checking to produce a “ correct version ” , somehow , at the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iowan Democratic Party chairs started telling media that the unspecified ‘ issues ’ we ’ d heard about earlier on in the evening , were to do with the app refusing to send proper numbers on down the chain to the Party HQ ; and , when they ’ d resorted to the old-fashioned means and mechanisms of calling up HQ to manually report their results , they were being hung up on .
Or facing spiraling delays .
Or both .
We ’ re still not quite sure what actually went wrong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were just saying that there were technical issues with accessing the app and actually getting it to send information ; others , from higher up and more central , began speaking about “ Inconsistencies ” in the results that had come in via the app versus paper and photographic mechanisms of accounting ( while seemingly denying a crash or accessibility issues ) ; and others from outside the party began collating together material to support some … darker views altogether .
Now , I am something of a paranoid man from time to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the understandable ‘ next level ’ of also applying the sustained knife of critical scrutiny to my own thoughts of shadowy political conspiracies .
I think it ’ s important to acknowledge here that new tech does fail , and often quite spectacularly , upon its earlier outings ( even though I ’ m not aware of any similar nor comparable issues with the Microsoft-developed app used in Iowa in 2016 ) ; and that overconfident early-adopters with considerable stakes in its success may not adequately plan forward for this , and persist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backups right ready to go on standby for when things do fall over like the proverbial brown paper bag in the thunderstorm .
This is particularly the case , given that the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars which have gone into the purchasing , development , and rollout of the new-tech solution … will often have left the organization ’ s coffers rather sparsely furnished to actually maintain the usually more staffing-intensive previous-infrastructure ( or some semi-skeleton crewed simulacrum thereof ) that the new app was supposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acknowledging that it ’ s possible for this sort of technological ( and then backup system ) failure to occur , does not mean leaving unacknowledged nor underacknowledged the rather massive optics effects which this can have .
And I don ’ t simply mean the fact that an appreciable proportion of American voters , for the next five minutes at any rate , presumably now don ’ t think the Democratic Party is capable of organizing itself out of that aforementioned thunder-struck proverbial paper bag .
Especially when Trump ( who appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic Caucus/Primary so far ) was able to put out a release showing he ’ d just breezed to victory – with the implicit underlying contrast of “ Chaos ” on the one hand , and “ Order ” , on the other .
Leaving aside the more ‘ conspiratorial ’ looking stuff for the moment ( we ’ ll return to that later ) , the fact is that what ’ s happened in Iowa this week ( or , rather , not happened , and been diffused , occluded , eclipsed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ previous years , claiming victory ( and , in light of Buttigieg ” s gun-jumping antics , I should perhaps instead say confirming victory ) in Iowa has been a great way to provide energy for a candidacy going forward .
It can even do the unthinkable , and help trigger an “ upset ” – propelling an ‘ outsider ’ or ‘ insurgent ’ candidacy to start racing past a more middle-of-the-road “ sensible ” and “ predicted to win ” ‘ establishment ’ option .
As happened back in 2008 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ever heard of called Obama somehow managed to ‘ hope and change ’ his way past the ‘ born for the role and spent more than half a century preparing ’ Hillary Clinton .
Now , if you ’ re an increasingly nervous Democratic Establishment , who have already made abundantly clear that they kinda-sorta-actually blame Sanders for preventing President Hillary ( almost more than they blame President Trump ) , by doing too well during the 2016 Primary season … the last thing you want to occur in 2020 , is Sanders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ , and being populares-anointed The Frontrunner as the result of a good , solid win in Iowa .
[ As a point of interest , he came painfully close to winning the state during the 2016 season – being 0.25 % behind Clinton for votes , in part because he lost six coin tosses used in cases of tie … because in America , it appears , they literally let money decide elections ] So while I ’ m not saying that the Democrats deliberately presided over an absolute fiasco in Iowa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as soon as they saw that Sanders was poised to win … I am saying that it ’ s pretty helpful for those Democrats who are opposed to Sanders , that instead of being able to claim a clear and unambiguous win that ’ d bolster his momentum going forward – he ’ s now left with the big news story , almost whatever the outcome there amidst the cornfields ultimately turns out to be , being about the flawed and possibly unreliable Results themselves .
Not his place within them .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ a rock-filled wire-mesh cage placed on shorelines as a countermeasure to erosion ] disrupts the force of the onrushing wave by dissipating it off up into the small stones , rather than letting it pound forth at the cliff face behind directly … so , too , will the sweeping spray of Sanders find itself diffused amidst all the swirling detritus that ’ s been distributed via this sudden storm .
Another way you could look at it , I suppose , would be observing the rapidly intensifying Bern , and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spurt of foam , drastically reducing its inflow of oxygen , even if only temporarily .
Gives you time to rally other resources to do a more comprehensive job later on down the line , and tries to prevent it going into any further contests any bigger and Bern-ier than it already is .
If nothing else , it gives you more time to work out how to spin the actual results coming out of Iowa , while everybody waits for the official count to be released ( something which Sanders semi-pre-empted when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-declared victory , by putting out partial-polling of about 40 % of the state ’ s caucusing , which instead showed him in first place – and , to be fair , Buttigieg in a rather surprising second ) .
And while it ’ s one thing to observe that however it might have occurred , the debacle in Des Moines has been rather useful for those who find themselves arrayed against Sanders ( again ) … it ’ s quite another to assert that what ’ s happened with the app was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bug , but a feature ” .
That is to say , that the chaos of the Caucuses was something decidedly both less – and more – than “ accidental ” .
To be fair and sure , I am once again not stating that this is the case .
Only that , given an array of the other data-points we have since become aware of , I can see how an array of people out there have already leapt to this conclusion .
Now partially , this is because it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” for Sanders supporters .
They either remember 2016 themselves , viscerally , personally … or they ’ ve heard about it – often in venomous and disparaging tones from Democrat establishment supporters who frequently portray the whole thing as a beat-up by a sore-loser ( who ‘ should ’ , by rights , have been an ‘ also-ran ’ , or more likely a not-even-ran-at-all-coz-not- Democrat ) which eventually culminated in the combination of Sour Grapes and “ Russian Hacking ” costing the world its Madam President .
But it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much more recent petty [ and I do in some cases mean that in the sense other than ‘ small ’ ] political happenings .
For one thing , there ’ s the curious fact that Pete Buttigieg ’ s campaign has turned out to possess remarkably close ties to ACRONYM , the company which owns the app at the center of all of these circles in the corn .
This goes beyond the tens of thousands of dollars Buttigieg ’ s campaign put into said company last year , to encompass what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Buttigieg campaign and ACRONYM ’ s leadership .
By which I mean the CEO of ACRONYM , one Tara McGowan ( who ’ d earlier expressed enthusiastic excitement about the Buttigieg candidacy right from the get-go in early 2019 , and has continued to retweet a lot of # TeamPete recently ) seems to be married to Buttigieg ’ s strategist , Michael Halle ( who also describes himself , I note , as a “ proud alum ” of the Hillary Clinton campaign -a distinction which he shares with a number of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as they themselves tell you ) .
ACRONYM ’ s official position on all of this is that there should be no problem , because while they do ( part ) own the company that produced the app , there ’ s nothing to see here because “ we [ ACRONYM ] have not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party ” , as they are “ not a technology company ” .
In fact , going off their official statement , they appear to be as surprised as anybody to hear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as in , seriously , the company ’ s called “ SHADOW ” ] has anything to do with the Iowa contest – “ We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow ’ s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter , and we , like everyone else , are eagerly awaiting more information ” … which is a bit of a contrast from the release they put out a little more than a year ago ( coincidentally , five days before Buttigieg announced his exploratory committee for the Democratic nomination for President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ launching Shadow , a company focused on building the technology infrastructure needed to enable Democrats to run better , more efficient campaigns.
” Or , for those of you playing at home – it is technically true that ACRONYM ( who “ are not a technology company ” ) “ have not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party ” … because the company they set up and own which has as its explicit purpose as stated by ACRONYM themselves “ building the technology infrastructure needed to enable Democrats to run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has done so for them .
Presumably with their parent company ’ s awareness , given ACRONYM ’ s acquisition of the ‘ Groundbase ’ asset that ‘ Shadow ’ was in their own words set up to “ operate ” for just such a purpose .
Also , while we are on the subject of all of this , it frankly astounds me that somebody would set up not just one , but two linked corporate entities designed to operate in the murky world immediately adjacent to the cloak-and-dagger fueled Corridors of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and “ Shadow ” .
Nothing suspicious-looking , or wannabe-Bond-villain about that , at all .
Although you could , potentially , be forgiven for thinking otherwise given the actual description Shadow offers for its own raison d ’ etre – “ When a light is shining , Shadows are a constant companion .
We see ourselves as building a long-term , side-by-side “ Shadow ” of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.
” Hell , with a pitch like that , you could just about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Deep Party ” ( like the “ Deep State ” … only , er , “ Fun ” .
Or something. )
.
Whether or not any actual , provable impropriety has occurred , you put all of this together – the eager young ( ish ) Clinton-campaign stalwarts doing the developing and operations , the senior Buttigieg strategist married CEO , the suspiciously specific denials that are worded in just the right way that they ’ re not technically untrue , the significant financial contribution of the Buttigieg campaign to ‘ Shadow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purpose of “ software rights and subscriptions ” ] ( although to be fair , the Biden campaign had also put in a much smaller amount for messaging services , late last year ) , as well as the fact that Buttigieg himself was straight-out-the-gate taking advantage of the situation caused by the app to pre-emptively announce his own victory while nobody could contest it … … well , it doesn ’ t look like the most “ transparent ” political transpiration , in either sense of the term ( Terry Pratchett once @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transparency ” has two meanings – like a window , as in you can see right through it … or like the air , as in you can ’ t see it at all ) .
Instead , the whole thing ’ s kinda occluded .
Almost as if there were some sort of “ Shadow ” looming large across our visionary skein .
That “ Shadow ” , of course , isn ’ t just one sub-standard tech-outfit ( no matter how earnest it ’ s been about providing “ a permanent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technology.
” ) ; nor , for that matter , is it the absolute greaseberg of hairy ‘ rough optics ’ connections tying said app and its developers/owners back to Buttigieg , or even to Hillary Clinton herself ; all laid out on company or personal websites and twitter profiles for any and all to see .
( And speaking of Clinton , despite her own endeavours to continue to interpose herself into the 2020 Primary race with snide remarks about the purported improbability of Sanders actually managing to work productively with anyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some ways only a symptomatic shade at this point of the ( pen ) umbral umbrage of which I am speaking ) What it is , is a pervasive and sweeping sense of malaise .
That “ we ’ ve been down this road before ” , as applies potentially dubious [ or , if you like , “ Dubya-ous ” ] electoral processes , and internal party struggles to let a more genuine voice be heard .
Partially , that means we spend all our time with events like these with one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the terrain of these previous hopes-frustrations-and- defeats , the topography of yesteryear , upon the trajectories of the still ( to-be ) born political present .
But it also , and more worryingly , entails a steady dwindling of hope at prospects for the future – a gradual drawing down of not just ‘ activist ’ , but ‘ mass ’ enthusiasm for the concept that Change [ possibly accompanied by Hope ] is even possible .
A previous contender for the Democratic Presidential Nomination – Dennis Kucinich – attempted to galvanize and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You ’ re looking at a guy who believes he can beat a rigged game.
” And it is certainly true that , should you happen to flip even a two-headed coin enough times , it shall eventually land upon its side ( and therefore ‘ neither ’ substantively indistinguishable ‘ head ’ – a third option ; the subjunctive , the ‘ mood of the possible ’ ) .
But what we have seen this past day and a half , it reminds me – as events amidst American politics so often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser : “ The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves , only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.
” And I shall explain what I mean by invoking that here .
You see , the great big Existential Threat ™ to the Democratic Party ( other than , it might be convincingly argued , the Democratic Party – “ we have met the enemy , and he is us ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republican Party ; nor , despite occasional breathless assertions to the contrary , is it “ Russian Hacking ” , or something else of similar external-conspiratorial nature – real or rhetorical and otherwise .
Rather , for the Democratic Party Establishment , the genuine threat which keeps them up at night , is that they are , in a sense , ‘ obsolete ’ , outmoded , no longer with “ it ” ( if , in fact , many of them ever really were ) – and are soon to be replaced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , shock horror , actually believe in things , and seem to have not-immediately-biddable-away personal values and ethics and principles .
More bizarrely , some of them aren ’ t young ‘ children ’ s crusade ’ enlistees , but older people and military veterans who should know better , dangnabbit !
Various ‘ Establishment ’ Dems know this , and they are frightened of it .
As well they should be .
For they are also painfully , patently ( a ) ware ( y ) , that they have been steadily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to them .
And it is now a somewhat open question as to whether their own breed shall die out of natural causes whilst still enjoying the baubles of office and simulacra-relevancy … .
or by being turfed out via determined interior-to-party psephological pushes upon an escalating quotient of fronts .
So as to what we may , potentially , be ‘ missing ’ in the insta-reaction to the “ Shadow ” of democracy over up there in Iowa … in amidst all the interpretation-knife-fighting about whether Bernie was robbed , whether Buttigieg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ semi-hacked an election , possibly with Clintonite assistance ( or just been guilty of some bad optics so unbelievably dire that people would struggle to take you seriously if you pitched it all as a genuine conspiracy for film ) , whether the Democrats are taking advantage of the ‘ breather ’ provided by the contratemps to work out how to spin supposed front-runner Biden just about off the map entirely , or any of the rest of it … What we are missing , is how it – all of it – @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more rarely , the ‘ young-at-heart ’ – for whom disappointment on a nation-sweeping , country-stealing , war-starting scale is rarely anything truly new ) people , activists , and voters , who ’ d otherwise be joining up and fueling the ongoing not-that-radical transformation of the Democratic Party , and American politics in general , how it makes them feel when they find themselves confronted with what looks so anguished-sigh inducingly like yet another instance of what one of my associates described as the Democrats “ Gettin Riggy With It ” .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ probably , disenchanted , disenfranchised , disillusioned , and monumentally disinterested all up .
If you can ’ t fight City ( /Tammany ) Hall , then perhaps the only ‘ winning move ’ is not to play .
And what does that mean in practice ?
Probably one of two things .
Either less people getting interested and involved in unpredictable and less controllable ‘ groundwell ’ ‘ populist ’ political crusades like that of Sanders in 2016 – or , people not necessarily becoming less interested and involved in general and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempts to work ‘ inside the tent ’ of the Democrats , to setting up their own ‘ third party ’ vehicle or vehicles .
The record for longevity and electoral success for which , in modern American politics , is not exactly great ; meaning that if some third party manages to draw off a swathe of sorts the Democratic Establishment probably didn ’ t want inside their own demesnes anyway , and then leads to some of these troublesome representatives failing to attain re-election , while also tying up others who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ … it ’ s a net win .
And , for an added venomous sweetener , if the thing that actually acts as the active catalyst for all of this is some newfangled tech-app-thing , of exactly the kind and the sort that Millennials had been bragging about bringing into the political arena and using to turn the whole place upside down and make it all suddenly “ progressive ” with … well , that ’ s some kind of contrapasso bonus par excellence .
Now , it ’ s certainly possible that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into all of this than many of the people actually making decisions for the Democratic Party have ; and leaving far too much room for cogent , calculating , clear-minded intent in what might actually just be some of the worst optics since the U.S.S .
Maine ( accidentally ) blew itself to smithereens at exactly the moment that the Americans were looking for an aggressive Spanish military action with which to justify the starting of an imperialist near-global war .
But that almost doesn ’ t matter .
The likely prospective outcome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that different if these types of shenanigans just seem to keep happening all the way from now to the Convention later this year .
Which they almost certainly will , for a variety of reasons including but not limited to at least half the candidates still left with a ( semi- ) serious shot in the running .
There ’ s a lot of uncertainty out there in politiworld ( where everything ’ s made up and the points don ’ t matter ) at the moment , about some semi-serious things … @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who actually won the Iowa Democratic Primary .
One thing there ’ s not so much uncertainty about , though : Faith in the Democratic Party didn ’ t kill Itself .

There is a quotation ascribed to Stalin – “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”
Now, I am rarely the sort of person to accuse the Democratic Party of being “Stalinist” [even their ‘relative’ left-wing candidates I would hardly work up the enthusiasm to laud “Socialist”] … but after what we have just seen in the Iowa Caucuses yesterday, the most famous son of the Caucasus seems to have put it best.
Like many burned-out politi-hacks, I had been paying somewhat idle attention to the inflow of results coming out of the Corn-Hole over the course of Tuesday afternoon [local NZ time], and had made a joking remark to an associate when unexpected delays began to set in quite early on that this must mean the Democrats had seen the same early results everybody else had on live news … featuring an insurgent Sanders well out in front, and a Biden seemingly lost somewhere out in the field of Corn Pops, and were frantically attempting to work out how to ‘massage’ the results to produce an ‘appropriate’ outcome.
It was noted that this would also presumably explain part of the reason they were being so seriously … not “Stalinist”, but, tight-lipped, secretive, stringently censorious about ‘leaks’ or early disclosure of results, as these’d undermine any later ability to just release “right” numbers – in exactly the same manner that the provision of exit-polling figures which don’t match up with e-voting ballots may suggest the latter has been tampered with.
I was joking … mostly … but it appears that reality liked my sense of humour.
A little later that afternoon, news broke that the reason for the delay in results coming out was due to difficulties with the app built to feed these back to the party. The initial statements were that officials had had difficulty logging in to make use of it.
I again made a “joke”, suggesting it might be because some of these local chairs had realized that the app was rather similar to what had been alleged about the e-voting machines used in the US Presidential Election in 2004 – i.e. that they’d ‘mysteriously’ record votes for the “right” candidate, regardless of what you actually put in.
Several hours passed. Paint dried. Pete Buttigieg somehow declared victory (on 0% of the vote). Some results crawled in. Which seemed to put supposed-to-be-front-runner Biden somehow behind otherwise-also-ran Klobuchar. Eyebrows slightly raised.
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And then, it happened.
Word came out of Iowa that the app had potentially been “hacked” … and, swiftly following in its wake, the allegation that it had been produced by people formerly affiliated with the Clinton campaign in 2016.
I nearly fell out of my chair. Surely we weren’t going to see the Democratic Party again allege that establishment Democrats weren’t doing well because of Russian hacking … of Iowa?
Well, as it happened, not quite – yet, anyway. There’s still time for this to all somehow lead back to Putin armed with an iPhone personally masterminding the corn-heist of the year.
The official statement was simply the rather terse statement that the results had been held back for “quality control” checking. I should have learned my lesson by now, but I again “joked” about this perhaps being because any result showing Sanders massively ahead of one of the Democrat Establishment approved choices would be deemed to be an error, hence “quality control” checking to produce a “correct version”, somehow, at the end of the night.
Matters got worse. Iowan Democratic Party chairs started telling media that the unspecified ‘issues’ we’d heard about earlier on in the evening, were to do with the app refusing to send proper numbers on down the chain to the Party HQ; and, when they’d resorted to the old-fashioned means and mechanisms of calling up HQ to manually report their results, they were being hung up on. Or facing spiraling delays. Or both.
We’re still not quite sure what actually went wrong with the app. Some Democratic officials were just saying that there were technical issues with accessing the app and actually getting it to send information; others, from higher up and more central, began speaking about “Inconsistencies” in the results that had come in via the app versus paper and photographic mechanisms of accounting (while seemingly denying a crash or accessibility issues); and others from outside the party began collating together material to support some … darker views altogether.
Now, I am something of a paranoid man from time to time; and I take it to the understandable ‘next level’ of also applying the sustained knife of critical scrutiny to my own thoughts of shadowy political conspiracies.
I think it’s important to acknowledge here that new tech does fail, and often quite spectacularly, upon its earlier outings (even though I’m not aware of any similar nor comparable issues with the Microsoft-developed app used in Iowa in 2016); and that overconfident early-adopters with considerable stakes in its success may not adequately plan forward for this, and persist with theoretically outmoded ‘old ways’ backups right ready to go on standby for when things do fall over like the proverbial brown paper bag in the thunderstorm. This is particularly the case, given that the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars which have gone into the purchasing, development, and rollout of the new-tech solution … will often have left the organization’s coffers rather sparsely furnished to actually maintain the usually more staffing-intensive previous-infrastructure (or some semi-skeleton crewed simulacrum thereof) that the new app was supposed to replace as a backup.
However, acknowledging that it’s possible for this sort of technological (and then backup system) failure to occur, does not mean leaving unacknowledged nor underacknowledged the rather massive optics effects which this can have.
And I don’t simply mean the fact that an appreciable proportion of American voters, for the next five minutes at any rate, presumably now don’t think the Democratic Party is capable of organizing itself out of that aforementioned thunder-struck proverbial paper bag. Especially when Trump (who appears to have ‘won’ the Iowa Democratic Caucus/Primary so far) was able to put out a release showing he’d just breezed to victory – with the implicit underlying contrast of “Chaos” on the one hand, and “Order”, on the other.
Leaving aside the more ‘conspiratorial’ looking stuff for the moment (we’ll return to that later), the fact is that what’s happened in Iowa this week (or, rather, not happened, and been diffused, occluded, eclipsed) has significant strategic import. In previous years, claiming victory (and, in light of Buttigieg”s gun-jumping antics, I should perhaps instead say confirming victory) in Iowa has been a great way to provide energy for a candidacy going forward. It can even do the unthinkable, and help trigger an “upset” – propelling an ‘outsider’ or ‘insurgent’ candidacy to start racing past a more middle-of-the-road “sensible” and “predicted to win” ‘establishment’ option. As happened back in 2008, when a young senator nobody’d ever heard of called Obama somehow managed to ‘hope and change’ his way past the ‘born for the role and spent more than half a century preparing’ Hillary Clinton.
Now, if you’re an increasingly nervous Democratic Establishment, who have already made abundantly clear that they kinda-sorta-actually blame Sanders for preventing President Hillary (almost more than they blame President Trump), by doing too well during the 2016 Primary season … the last thing you want to occur in 2020, is Sanders somehow managing to ‘pull an Obama’, and being populares-anointed The Frontrunner as the result of a good, solid win in Iowa. [As a point of interest, he came painfully close to winning the state during the 2016 season – being 0.25% behind Clinton for votes, in part because he lost six coin tosses used in cases of tie … because in America, it appears, they literally let money decide elections]
So while I’m not saying that the Democrats deliberately presided over an absolute fiasco in Iowa, which they triggered and then exacerbated as soon as they saw that Sanders was poised to win … I am saying that it’s pretty helpful for those Democrats who are opposed to Sanders, that instead of being able to claim a clear and unambiguous win that’d bolster his momentum going forward – he’s now left with the big news story, almost whatever the outcome there amidst the cornfields ultimately turns out to be, being about the flawed and possibly unreliable Results themselves. Not his place within them.
In a manner similar to how the gabion [a rock-filled wire-mesh cage placed on shorelines as a countermeasure to erosion] disrupts the force of the onrushing wave by dissipating it off up into the small stones, rather than letting it pound forth at the cliff face behind directly … so, too, will the sweeping spray of Sanders find itself diffused amidst all the swirling detritus that’s been distributed via this sudden storm.
Another way you could look at it, I suppose, would be observing the rapidly intensifying Bern, and then attempting to douse it with a smothering spurt of foam, drastically reducing its inflow of oxygen, even if only temporarily. Gives you time to rally other resources to do a more comprehensive job later on down the line, and tries to prevent it going into any further contests any bigger and Bern-ier than it already is. If nothing else, it gives you more time to work out how to spin the actual results coming out of Iowa, while everybody waits for the official count to be released (something which Sanders semi-pre-empted when his campaign responded to Buttigieg’s self-declared victory, by putting out partial-polling of about 40% of the state’s caucusing, which instead showed him in first place – and, to be fair, Buttigieg in a rather surprising second).
And while it’s one thing to observe that however it might have occurred, the debacle in Des Moines has been rather useful for those who find themselves arrayed against Sanders (again) … it’s quite another to assert that what’s happened with the app was, to quote the jargon “not a bug, but a feature”. That is to say, that the chaos of the Caucuses was something decidedly both less – and more – than “accidental”.
To be fair and sure, I am once again not stating that this is the case. Only that, given an array of the other data-points we have since become aware of, I can see how an array of people out there have already leapt to this conclusion.
Now partially, this is because it’s “deja vu all over again” for Sanders supporters. They either remember 2016 themselves, viscerally, personally … or they’ve heard about it – often in venomous and disparaging tones from Democrat establishment supporters who frequently portray the whole thing as a beat-up by a sore-loser (who ‘should’, by rights, have been an ‘also-ran’, or more likely a not-even-ran-at-all-coz-not- Democrat) which eventually culminated in the combination of Sour Grapes and “Russian Hacking” costing the world its Madam President.
But it’s also largely because of a lot of much more recent petty [and I do in some cases mean that in the sense other than ‘small’] political happenings. For one thing, there’s the curious fact that Pete Buttigieg’s campaign has turned out to possess remarkably close ties to ACRONYM, the company which owns the app at the center of all of these circles in the corn. This goes beyond the tens of thousands of dollars Buttigieg’s campaign put into said company last year, to encompass what appears to be direct relationships between the Buttigieg campaign and ACRONYM’s leadership. By which I mean the CEO of ACRONYM, one Tara McGowan (who’d earlier expressed enthusiastic excitement about the Buttigieg candidacy right from the get-go in early 2019, and has continued to retweet a lot of #TeamPete recently) seems to be married to Buttigieg’s strategist, Michael Halle (who also describes himself, I note, as a “proud alum” of the Hillary Clinton campaign -a distinction which he shares with a number of the app developer’s engineers, as they themselves tell you). ACRONYM’s official position on all of this is that there should be no problem, because while they do(part)own the company that produced the app, there’s nothing to see here because “we [ACRONYM] have not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party”, as they are “not a technology company”.
In fact, going off their official statement, they appear to be as surprised as anybody to hear that their ‘shadow’ company [as in, seriously, the company’s called “SHADOW”] has anything to do with the Iowa contest – “We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow’s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information” … which is a bit of a contrast from the release they put out a little more than a year ago (coincidentally, five days before Buttigieg announced his exploratory committee for the Democratic nomination for President), wherein ACRONYM stated they were “launching Shadow, a company focused on building the technology infrastructure needed to enable Democrats to run better, more efficient campaigns.”
Or, for those of you playing at home – it is technically true that ACRONYM (who “are not a technology company”) “have not provided any technology to the Iowa Democratic Party” … because the company they set up and own which has as its explicit purpose as stated by ACRONYM themselves “building the technology infrastructure needed to enable Democrats to run better, more efficient campaigns”, has done so for them. Presumably with their parent company’s awareness, given ACRONYM’s acquisition of the ‘Groundbase’ asset that ‘Shadow’ was in their own words set up to “operate” for just such a purpose.
Also, while we are on the subject of all of this, it frankly astounds me that somebody would set up not just one, but two linked corporate entities designed to operate in the murky world immediately adjacent to the cloak-and-dagger fueled Corridors of Power … with names like “ACRONYM” and “Shadow”. Nothing suspicious-looking, or wannabe-Bond-villain about that, at all. Although you could, potentially, be forgiven for thinking otherwise given the actual description Shadow offers for its own raison d’etre – “When a light is shining, Shadows are a constant companion. We see ourselves as building a long-term, side-by-side “Shadow” of tech infrastructure to the Democratic Party and the progressive community at large.”
Hell, with a pitch like that, you could just about call them the tech-end of the “Deep Party” (like the “Deep State” … only, er, “Fun”. Or something.).
Whether or not any actual, provable impropriety has occurred, you put all of this together – the eager young(ish) Clinton-campaign stalwarts doing the developing and operations, the senior Buttigieg strategist married CEO, the suspiciously specific denials that are worded in just the right way that they’re not technically untrue, the significant financial contribution of the Buttigieg campaign to ‘Shadow’ [specifically, the for the purpose of “software rights and subscriptions”] (although to be fair, the Biden campaign had also put in a much smaller amount for messaging services, late last year), as well as the fact that Buttigieg himself was straight-out-the-gate taking advantage of the situation caused by the app to pre-emptively announce his own victory while nobody could contest it …
… well, it doesn’t look like the most “transparent” political transpiration, in either sense of the term (Terry Pratchett once sagely observed that in Politics, “transparency” has two meanings – like a window, as in you can see right through it … or like the air, as in you can’t see it at all). Instead, the whole thing’s kinda occluded. Almost as if there were some sort of “Shadow” looming large across our visionary skein.
That “Shadow”, of course, isn’t just one sub-standard tech-outfit (no matter how earnest it’s been about providing “a permanent advantage for progressive campaigns and causes through technology.”); nor, for that matter, is it the absolute greaseberg of hairy ‘rough optics’ connections tying said app and its developers/owners back to Buttigieg, or even to Hillary Clinton herself; all laid out on company or personal websites and twitter profiles for any and all to see. (And speaking of Clinton, despite her own endeavours to continue to interpose herself into the 2020 Primary race with snide remarks about the purported improbability of Sanders actually managing to work productively with anyone, etc., she’s in some ways only a symptomatic shade at this point of the (pen)umbral umbrage of which I am speaking)
What it is, is a pervasive and sweeping sense of malaise. That “we’ve been down this road before”, as applies potentially dubious [or, if you like, “Dubya-ous”] electoral processes, and internal party struggles to let a more genuine voice be heard. Partially, that means we spend all our time with events like these with one eye over our shoulder – insistently overlaying the terrain of these previous hopes-frustrations-and- defeats, the topography of yesteryear, upon the trajectories of the still(to-be)born political present. But it also, and more worryingly, entails a steady dwindling of hope at prospects for the future – a gradual drawing down of not just ‘activist’, but ‘mass’ enthusiasm for the concept that Change [possibly accompanied by Hope] is even possible.
A previous contender for the Democratic Presidential Nomination – Dennis Kucinich – attempted to galvanize and inspire his supporters by boldly stating “You’re looking at a guy who believes he can beat a rigged game.” And it is certainly true that, should you happen to flip even a two-headed coin enough times, it shall eventually land upon its side (and therefore ‘neither’ substantively indistinguishable ‘head’ – a third option; the subjunctive, the ‘mood of the possible’).
But what we have seen this past day and a half, it reminds me – as events amidst American politics so often do – of the wise words of Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser:
“The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.”
And I shall explain what I mean by invoking that here. You see, the great big Existential Threat ™ to the Democratic Party (other than, it might be convincingly argued, the Democratic Party – “we have met the enemy, and he is us”, indeed), is not the Republican Party; nor, despite occasional breathless assertions to the contrary, is it “Russian Hacking”, or something else of similar external-conspiratorial nature – real or rhetorical and otherwise.
Rather, for the Democratic Party Establishment, the genuine threat which keeps them up at night, is that they are, in a sense, ‘obsolete’, outmoded, no longer with “it” (if, in fact, many of them ever really were) – and are soon to be replaced by these uprising insurgent idealist types who, shock horror, actually believe in things, and seem to have not-immediately-biddable-away personal values and ethics and principles. More bizarrely, some of them aren’t young ‘children’s crusade’ enlistees, but older people and military veterans who should know better, dangnabbit!
Various ‘Establishment’ Dems know this, and they are frightened of it. As well they should be. For they are also painfully, patently (a)ware(y), that they have been steadily losing ground over the past few years to them. And it is now a somewhat open question as to whether their own breed shall die out of natural causes whilst still enjoying the baubles of office and simulacra-relevancy …. or by being turfed out via determined interior-to-party psephological pushes upon an escalating quotient of fronts.
So as to what we may, potentially, be ‘missing’ in the insta-reaction to the “Shadow” of democracy over up there in Iowa … in amidst all the interpretation-knife-fighting about whether Bernie was robbed, whether Buttigieg (or his team) have just semi-hacked an election, possibly with Clintonite assistance (or just been guilty of some bad optics so unbelievably dire that people would struggle to take you seriously if you pitched it all as a genuine conspiracy for film), whether the Democrats are taking advantage of the ‘breather’ provided by the contratemps to work out how to spin supposed front-runner Biden just about off the map entirely, or any of the rest of it …
What we are missing, is how it – all of it – makes the young(ish) (more rarely, the ‘young-at-heart’ – for whom disappointment on a nation-sweeping, country-stealing, war-starting scale is rarely anything truly new) people, activists, and voters, who’d otherwise be joining up and fueling the ongoing not-that-radical transformation of the Democratic Party, and American politics in general, how it makes them feel when they find themselves confronted with what looks so anguished-sigh inducingly like yet another instance of what one of my associates described as the Democrats “Gettin Riggy With It”.
And the answer to that is, probably, disenchanted, disenfranchised, disillusioned, and monumentally disinterested all up.
If you can’t fight City(/Tammany) Hall, then perhaps the only ‘winning move’ is not to play. And what does that mean in practice? Probably one of two things. Either less people getting interested and involved in unpredictable and less controllable ‘groundwell’ ‘populist’ political crusades like that of Sanders in 2016 – or, people not necessarily becoming less interested and involved in general and in principle, but switching away from attempts to work ‘inside the tent’ of the Democrats, to setting up their own ‘third party’ vehicle or vehicles. The record for longevity and electoral success for which, in modern American politics, is not exactly great; meaning that if some third party manages to draw off a swathe of sorts the Democratic Establishment probably didn’t want inside their own demesnes anyway, and then leads to some of these troublesome representatives failing to attain re-election, while also tying up others who might make trouble internally, somewhere *elsewhere* … it’s a net win.
And, for an added venomous sweetener, if the thing that actually acts as the active catalyst for all of this is some newfangled tech-app-thing, of exactly the kind and the sort that Millennials had been bragging about bringing into the political arena and using to turn the whole place upside down and make it all suddenly “progressive” with … well, that’s some kind of contrapasso bonus par excellence.
Now, it’s certainly possible that I’m putting rather more thought into all of this than many of the people actually making decisions for the Democratic Party have; and leaving far too much room for cogent, calculating, clear-minded intent in what might actually just be some of the worst optics since the U.S.S. Maine (accidentally) blew itself to smithereens at exactly the moment that the Americans were looking for an aggressive Spanish military action with which to justify the starting of an imperialist near-global war.
But that almost doesn’t matter. The likely prospective outcome’s not going to be all that different if these types of shenanigans just seem to keep happening all the way from now to the Convention later this year. Which they almost certainly will, for a variety of reasons including but not limited to at least half the candidates still left with a (semi-)serious shot in the running.
There’s a lot of uncertainty out there in politiworld (where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter) at the moment, about some semi-serious things … including, at time of writing, who actually won the Iowa Democratic Primary.
One thing there’s not so much uncertainty about, though:
Faith in the Democratic Party didn’t kill Itself.


thedailyblog--2020-02-06--Jacinda’s Political Faith Broader Than Any Church.

AS ELECTION-YEAR GAME-PLANS go , it ’ s a good one .
Why bother to reconstruct Labour as a “ broad church ” when the same effect can be achieved by creating a broad political “ faith ” out of three separate parties .
Broad churches were mandated by the first-past-the-post electoral system ; proportional representation allows a broad faith to have “ many mansions ” – and even more voters .
Jacinda Ardern was quick to see the possibilities .
Many people marvelled at how well she and Winston Peters hit it off during the crucial days of negotiation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had Peters intuiting that Labour ’ s new leader just might be willing to sing the same “ Hallelujah Song ” he ’ d been humming quietly since 1993 .
With the benefit of hindsight , however , it is equally plausible to argue that Jacinda saw in Peters and NZ First precisely the sort of social-conservative hand-brake she and her government needed to protect itself from Labour ’ s policy enthusiasts and the chronically “ woke ” Greens .
What emerged was an extraordinarily shrewd division of labour among the three parties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority .
In the past , such a division had to be accomplished within a single political formation .
For every warm and fuzzy Cabinet Minister offering peace , love and mung beans , there had to be a hard-faced conservative bastard preaching hellfire and brimstone .
Preventing these clearly contradictory political tendencies from dividing the party membership into angry and antagonistic factions required a pretty brutal set of leadership skills and a determination to keep intra-party democracy on a very tight leash .
What Peters was offering Jacinda was a conservative faction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ liberal and radical allies .
The Labour and Green parties ’ rank-and-file could come up with as many wild and woolly schemes as they liked : capital gains taxes ; lowering the voting age to sixteen ; a swingeing Carbon Tax ; a radically down-sized dairy herd .
But , while Winston and his team remained on watch , no such measures would ever make it through Cabinet .
The same , of course , applied , in reverse , if ever NZ First ’ s hellfire and brimstone got too smelly .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ heavily moderated , progressive faith did not require a prime minister with the powers of a medieval pope .
Jacinda ’ s regime had no need of subterranean torture chambers to ensure compliance .
A gift for diplomacy and the ability to inspire her fellow human-beings was all the new prime minister required , and she had both of those qualities – in spades !
Call it “ The Incredible Lightness of Being Jacinda ” .
There is , naturally , a weakness in this new arrangement .
And , oh , how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her potential political nemesis , Simon Bridges , didn ’ t spot it .
That weakness arises out of NZ First ’ s capacity to form alliances with the party to its right as well as to its left .
Press Peters and his people too hard , or , even worse , deny them their heart ’ s desire , and they ’ ll start packing-up their suitcases and ordering an Uber .
Robbed of its conservative brake , Jacinda ’ s government would find itself required to say “ No ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would soon overtake the Prime Minister ’ s sunny disposition .
Recrimination and division would weaken Labour and the Green in ways that would be as hard to hide as they were to heal .
The first question Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have asked whenever a senior officer was recommended for promotion was : “ Is he lucky ?
” Can it be doubted that Jacinda would have climbed very high in Napoleon ’ s Grand Armee ?
Has New Zealand ever had such a lucky prime minister ?
And has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ provided his principal political rival with such a valuable gift ?
By unequivocally ruling out NZ First as a possible coalition partner for National , Bridges has bolted Jacinda ’ s conservative handbrake firmly in place .
Some might argue that this can only weaken his position .
Surely , Bridges ’ decision means that calling an Uber is no longer an option for NZ First ?
After all , where ’ s he gon na go ?
The problem with that argument is that the parliamentary arithmetic only changes once every three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ counted , the numbers remain the numbers until the next election .
And right there is where things get tricky .
With her right flank secured , Jacinda can now re-orient her government decisively towards the moderate centre .
If her more radical supporters don ’ t like the idea of Labour building National ’ s roads , well , they can always bugger-off to the Greens .
A move about which Jacinda , recalling her days on Tony Blair ’ s Third Way , can remain “ intensely relaxed ” .
Because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ woke ” voters stay with Labour , or decamp to the Greens .
Their voices continue to swell the progressive choir in either location .
But wait – there ’ s more .
As Labour bulks up its vote by adopting policies dear to the heart of the moderate centre , and the Greens ’ support is enlarged by Labour ’ s disgruntled progressive defectors , the awful prospect arises ( from the perspective of moderate conservatives ) of New Zealand electing its first , genuine Red-Green government .
Better , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an uninhibited left-wing government throwing off the clothing of common sense and getting all jiggy with the capitalist status quo , by making very sure they ’ re accompanied by a conservative NZ First chaperone !
Such is the delicious flexibility of this broad , new , ideologically ecumenical , political faith .
The broad political churches of yesteryear were never able to be so accommodating !
One can only imagine Bridges ’ dismay when he is finally forced to acknowledge that ruling out any kind of deal with NZ First was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he realises that , in this country , both the Right and the Left get to the seat of power only after finding themselves a clear path to the Centre .
Jim Bolger , bless him , understood this – which is why he saved his prime-ministership by reaching out to Winston , on his left .
Helen Clark understood it , too – which is why she was willing to break Rod Donald ’ s left-wing heart by making centrist Winston Peters ’ day .
Jacinda is a natural when it comes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lost no time in learning how to sing Winston ’ s Hallelujah Song .
Simon Bridges , by making sure National remains a narrow political faith , has allowed Jacinda to further broaden her government ’ s ecumenical appeal .

AS ELECTION-YEAR GAME-PLANS go, it’s a good one. Why bother to reconstruct Labour as a “broad church” when the same effect can be achieved by creating a broad political “faith” out of three separate parties. Broad churches were mandated by the first-past-the-post electoral system; proportional representation allows a broad faith to have “many mansions” – and even more voters.
Jacinda Ardern was quick to see the possibilities. Many people marvelled at how well she and Winston Peters hit it off during the crucial days of negotiation following the 2017 election. One explanation had Peters intuiting that Labour’s new leader just might be willing to sing the same “Hallelujah Song” he’d been humming quietly since 1993. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is equally plausible to argue that Jacinda saw in Peters and NZ First precisely the sort of social-conservative hand-brake she and her government needed to protect itself from Labour’s policy enthusiasts and the chronically “woke” Greens.
What emerged was an extraordinarily shrewd division of labour among the three parties making up the Government’s parliamentary majority. In the past, such a division had to be accomplished within a single political formation. For every warm and fuzzy Cabinet Minister offering peace, love and mung beans, there had to be a hard-faced conservative bastard preaching hellfire and brimstone. Preventing these clearly contradictory political tendencies from dividing the party membership into angry and antagonistic factions required a pretty brutal set of leadership skills and a determination to keep intra-party democracy on a very tight leash.
What Peters was offering Jacinda was a conservative faction positioned safely beyond the reach of her liberal and radical allies. The Labour and Green parties’ rank-and-file could come up with as many wild and woolly schemes as they liked: capital gains taxes; lowering the voting age to sixteen; a swingeing Carbon Tax; a radically down-sized dairy herd. But, while Winston and his team remained on watch, no such measures would ever make it through Cabinet. The same, of course, applied, in reverse, if ever NZ First’s hellfire and brimstone got too smelly.
Best of all, this broad, heavily moderated, progressive faith did not require a prime minister with the powers of a medieval pope. Jacinda’s regime had no need of subterranean torture chambers to ensure compliance. A gift for diplomacy and the ability to inspire her fellow human-beings was all the new prime minister required, and she had both of those qualities – in spades! Call it “The Incredible Lightness of Being Jacinda”.
There is, naturally, a weakness in this new arrangement. And, oh, how Jacinda must have hoped and prayed that her potential political nemesis, Simon Bridges, didn’t spot it. That weakness arises out of NZ First’s capacity to form alliances with the party to its right as well as to its left. Press Peters and his people too hard, or, even worse, deny them their heart’s desire, and they’ll start packing-up their suitcases and ordering an Uber. Robbed of its conservative brake, Jacinda’s government would find itself required to say “No” all on its own. Dark clouds would soon overtake the Prime Minister’s sunny disposition. Recrimination and division would weaken Labour and the Green in ways that would be as hard to hide as they were to heal.
The first question Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have asked whenever a senior officer was recommended for promotion was: “Is he lucky?” Can it be doubted that Jacinda would have climbed very high in Napoleon’s Grand Armee? Has New Zealand ever had such a lucky prime minister? And has a new Zealand Leader of the Opposition ever provided his principal political rival with such a valuable gift?
By unequivocally ruling out NZ First as a possible coalition partner for National, Bridges has bolted Jacinda’s conservative handbrake firmly in place. Some might argue that this can only weaken his position. Surely, Bridges’ decision means that calling an Uber is no longer an option for NZ First? After all, where’s he gonna go? The problem with that argument is that the parliamentary arithmetic only changes once every three years. Once the votes have been counted, the numbers remain the numbers until the next election. And right there is where things get tricky.
TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com
With her right flank secured, Jacinda can now re-orient her government decisively towards the moderate centre. If her more radical supporters don’t like the idea of Labour building National’s roads, well, they can always bugger-off to the Greens. A move about which Jacinda, recalling her days on Tony Blair’s Third Way, can remain “intensely relaxed”. Because it just doesn’t matter whether the “woke” voters stay with Labour, or decamp to the Greens. Their voices continue to swell the progressive choir in either location.
But wait – there’s more. As Labour bulks up its vote by adopting policies dear to the heart of the moderate centre, and the Greens’ support is enlarged by Labour’s disgruntled progressive defectors, the awful prospect arises (from the perspective of moderate conservatives) of New Zealand electing its first, genuine Red-Green government. Better, surely, to head-off the possibility of an uninhibited left-wing government throwing off the clothing of common sense and getting all jiggy with the capitalist status quo, by making very sure they’re accompanied by a conservative NZ First chaperone!
Such is the delicious flexibility of this broad, new, ideologically ecumenical, political faith. The broad political churches of yesteryear were never able to be so accommodating!
One can only imagine Bridges’ dismay when he is finally forced to acknowledge that ruling out any kind of deal with NZ First was a very, very big mistake. When he realises that, in this country, both the Right and the Left get to the seat of power only after finding themselves a clear path to the Centre.
Jim Bolger, bless him, understood this – which is why he saved his prime-ministership by reaching out to Winston, on his left. Helen Clark understood it, too – which is why she was willing to break Rod Donald’s left-wing heart by making centrist Winston Peters’ day. Jacinda is a natural when it comes to inclusion – which is why she lost no time in learning how to sing Winston’s Hallelujah Song.
Simon Bridges, by making sure National remains a narrow political faith, has allowed Jacinda to further broaden her government’s ecumenical appeal.


thedailyblog--2020-02-09--Dave Macpherson: We’re not seeing on-the-ground action on mental health, David….

In the year leading up to the 2017 election , the unlamented former Health Minister Jonathan Coleman , now CEO of a large private hospital operator , was besieged by campaigns highlighting the shocking state of mental health services in New Zealand , and the terrible statistics that was leading to , such as the world ’ s worst youth suicide figures .
The clamour got so loud and so persistent , and the idiot stuck his head in the sand for so long , that even the mainstream media acknowledged the impact concerns about the state of mental health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ various parties , and elevated it to a ‘ key election issue ’ .
The point about this introduction , is not to have another swipe at ‘ Doctor Death ’ ( as Labour Deputy Leader Kelvin Davis described Coleman ) , enjoyable as it might be , but to start spelling out a warning to his Labour successor as Health Minister , David Clark , that a lack of perceived ( and actual ) change in the mental health sector risks a similar perception growing again in the community .
Since my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health sector over the ( lack of ) treatment of our son Nicky , who died in 2015 while in the care of Waikato DHB , we ’ ve worked with quite a number of families around New Zealand who have had , and are very much still having , similar issues with public mental health services .
If anything , things seem to have slipped back into the same old groove of substandard ‘ care ’ , unavailable services , lack of communication with whanau , bullying of family members who speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same old ‘ we know best ’ attitude that has been alive and kicking since Adam was halfback for the Israelites .
David Clark , who is a polite and friendly soul , and his Government have certainly thrown around the chequebook in the last year , with a lot of extra cash being announced in budgets and infrastructure releases – but those working on the ground , and whanau and families needing support , have seen stuff-all changes to the way the system operates when they need help .
The same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name may be Humphrey ) , at the Ministry of Health has had the title of Director of Mental Health for over 8 years , providing the same ‘ leadership ’ and advice to the Minister , and a large number of key personnel remain in their posts around the country .
In my patch , the Waikato , the same Clinical Director of Mental Health presides over the DHB ’ s mental health services as was there when my son died in 2015 ; as was there when a horrific death occurred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2012 ; as was still there less than 3 months ago when Rhys Thomassen disappeared while on leave from the DHB , and was later found dead , having warned staff he intended to suicide ; and is still there after the disappearance from the DHB ’ s mental health unit last month of Matthew Pritchard-Case ( he still hasn ’ t been found ) .
No change at the top , and even the security guards they stationed in the mental health facility lobby after our son ’ s death have now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our son ’ s death , one of the staff at Waikato DHB ’ s mental health facility posted a comment on our Facebook page commemorating our son , telling us to ‘ get over it ’ and that if people ‘ really wanted to commit suicide , you can ’ t stop them ’ .
That shocking attitude , although it was stomped on by nervous DHB management , is still around – and still prevalent , we believe .
A similar comment was made in the last month within our hearing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in discussions about Rhys and Matthew ’ s cases .
And it ’ s not just the headline-grabbing horror stories like those above – I ’ ve been contacted twice since Xmas by family members trying to get help for very unwell sons , telling me that the so-called crisis intervention services they ’ ve sought help from have quite literally directed them to contact the Police ; and another recent case where Police did uplift someone who was having a severe psychotic episode , took them to Waikato DHB ’ s mental @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be literally released onto the streets the next morning , with some painkillers , without the family being advised .
Nor is it just in the Waikato , that just happens to be where most of my own experience is .
My partner Jane is frequently supporting families around the entire country .
Two weeks ago the mother of a suicide victim who had been a patient at Wellington ’ s DHB mental health facility , finally received an apology and a payout after over four years of fighting that organisation over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the former CEO of Capital & Coast DHB , one Debbie Chin .
Prior to her 5 years running that DHB , Chin had been the Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Health , and CEO of another Government quango – another ‘ leader ’ who obviously contributed to the dismal culture in the mental health field , and the health sector generally .
The mother in this case faced four years of pressure from the DHB , and its Board , before they backtracked from what amounted to a bullying stance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by our family when Waikato DHB tried to get the Solicitor General to overturn the Coroner ’ s finding ( and to sack the Coroner ) that our son ’ s death was “ preventable ” if only the DHB staff and management had taken our concerns on board .
In both cases , the Ministry of Health and the Director of Mental Health were advising the DHB ’ s on their stance .
The point for Health Minister David Clark to note is that people like us , and like the hundreds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brunt of poor mental health services , and a poor mental health sector culture , are not going to keep quiet just because its election year .
Clark and his fellow Ministers may have signed some cheques , but the wrong people still have their grubby paws on those cheques , and the same disasters and horror stories are still happening , and a consequence of that is that mental health is likely to again be an issue in an election year .

In the year leading up to the 2017 election, the unlamented former Health Minister Jonathan Coleman, now CEO of a large private hospital operator, was besieged by campaigns highlighting the shocking state of mental health services in New Zealand, and the terrible statistics that was leading to, such as the world’s worst youth suicide figures. The clamour got so loud and so persistent, and the idiot stuck his head in the sand for so long, that even the mainstream media acknowledged the impact concerns about the state of mental health were having on public perceptions of the various parties, and elevated it to a ‘key election issue’.
The point about this introduction, is not to have another swipe at ‘Doctor Death’ (as Labour Deputy Leader Kelvin Davis described Coleman), enjoyable as it might be, but to start spelling out a warning to his Labour successor as Health Minister, David Clark, that a lack of perceived (and actual) change in the mental health sector risks a similar perception growing again in the community.
Since my family’s experience with the mental health sector over the (lack of) treatment of our son Nicky, who died in 2015 while in the care of Waikato DHB, we’ve worked with quite a number of families around New Zealand who have had, and are very much still having, similar issues with public mental health services. If anything, things seem to have slipped back into the same old groove of substandard ‘care’, unavailable services, lack of communication with whanau, bullying of family members who speak up for their loved ones – generally the same old ‘we know best’ attitude that has been alive and kicking since Adam was halfback for the Israelites.
David Clark, who is a polite and friendly soul, and his Government have certainly thrown around the chequebook in the last year, with a lot of extra cash being announced in budgets and infrastructure releases – but those working on the ground, and whanau and families needing support, have seen stuff-all changes to the way the system operates when they need help.
The same guy, John Crawshaw (his middle name may be Humphrey), at the Ministry of Health has had the title of Director of Mental Health for over 8 years, providing the same ‘leadership’ and advice to the Minister, and a large number of key personnel remain in their posts around the country.
In my patch, the Waikato, the same Clinical Director of Mental Health presides over the DHB’s mental health services as was there when my son died in 2015; as was there when a horrific death occurred following the disappearance of a patient in 2012; as was still there less than 3 months ago when Rhys Thomassen disappeared while on leave from the DHB, and was later found dead, having warned staff he intended to suicide; and is still there after the disappearance from the DHB’s mental health unit last month of Matthew Pritchard-Case (he still hasn’t been found). No change at the top, and even the security guards they stationed in the mental health facility lobby after our son’s death have now been removed.
A few months after our son’s death, one of the staff at Waikato DHB’s mental health facility posted a comment on our Facebook page commemorating our son, telling us to ‘get over it’ and that if people ‘really wanted to commit suicide, you can’t stop them’. That shocking attitude, although it was stomped on by nervous DHB management, is still around – and still prevalent, we believe. A similar comment was made in the last month within our hearing by a senior mental health nurse leader in discussions about Rhys and Matthew’s cases.
And it’s not just the headline-grabbing horror stories like those above – I’ve been contacted twice since Xmas by family members trying to get help for very unwell sons, telling me that the so-called crisis intervention services they’ve sought help from have quite literally directed them to contact the Police; and another recent case where Police did uplift someone who was having a severe psychotic episode, took them to Waikato DHB’s mental health facility, only for that person to be literally released onto the streets the next morning, with some painkillers, without the family being advised.
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Nor is it just in the Waikato, that just happens to be where most of my own experience is. My partner Jane is frequently supporting families around the entire country. Two weeks ago the mother of a suicide victim who had been a patient at Wellington’s DHB mental health facility, finally received an apology and a payout after over four years of fighting that organisation over a disgusting email attack on her by the former CEO of Capital & Coast DHB, one Debbie Chin. Prior to her 5 years running that DHB, Chin had been the Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Health, and CEO of another Government quango – another ‘leader’ who obviously contributed to the dismal culture in the mental health field, and the health sector generally.
The mother in this case faced four years of pressure from the DHB, and its Board, before they backtracked from what amounted to a bullying stance. That same bullying stance was experienced by our family when Waikato DHB tried to get the Solicitor General to overturn the Coroner’s finding (and to sack the Coroner) that our son’s death was “preventable” if only the DHB staff and management had taken our concerns on board. In both cases, the Ministry of Health and the Director of Mental Health were advising the DHB’s on their stance.
The point for Health Minister David Clark to note is that people like us, and like the hundreds of other New Zealand families bearing the brunt of poor mental health services, and a poor mental health sector culture, are not going to keep quiet just because its election year. Clark and his fellow Ministers may have signed some cheques, but the wrong people still have their grubby paws on those cheques, and the same disasters and horror stories are still happening, and a consequence of that is that mental health is likely to again be an issue in an election year.
Dave Macpherson – TDB mental health blogger & Former Waikato DHB Elected Member