Posts by Russell Brown
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Wow. Cubrilovic is on a roll. He's found a patent that makes Facebook look like liars.
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Just to mess with heads, PA stays in Nielsen’s Top 10 of sites by % of $100,000+ households, Kiwiblog is gone.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Bart Janssen,
That wasn’t my intent. For me it seems everything Labour says seems to express an idea that they should lead and not collaborate with other representatives in parliament. Curran just said it more crudely, but Goff and others have made the same point. Goff in particular when he refused to share the stage with “minor parties” … wake up dude you are a minor party!
To be fair the Greens have never achieved more than 7% of the vote -- Labour is currently polling four times that and it's considered a disaster -- and never translated pre-election polling into votes. After taking Coromandel in 1999, they let it go and have never looked like establishing an electorate base again. They've performed dismally in two by-elections this term and missed the deadline in a third (Labour won two and increased its vote in the third).
So I'm a little wary of the Greens as a fount of electoral wisdom.
But yes, even in a position where they're clearly now competing for votes, Labour should damn well be able to explain how it would work with its natural allies.
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Meanwhile, this pops up when you visit the National website.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Sacha,
I’d agree they have – on their own website.
And on Facebook and YouTube and all candidate sites, and in speeches and launches. I presume it’ll turn up in the TV campaign and on billboards in the month before the election. They have downloadable posters now, and they're encouraging supporters to use the #ownourfuture hashtag. What else were you thinking of?
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HOARDING REPORT, MT ALBERT
LABOUR = the standard hoarding with Shearer's portrait, electorate name, Labour logo. Labour has more out there and is the only party with hoardings on private sites (that I could see) -- but interestingly that doesn't include the usual site at the corner of Gt North and Moa Roads.
NATIONAL = Always two at a time. One with just Key and the other Key twinned with Melissa Lee. Both read "Party vote National".
GREENS = Only found one, cnr St Lukes and Sandringham. Read "Party Vote Green", with no candidate name or photo or even the name of the electorate.
ACT = MIA.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Sacha,
I’d rather see Labour put their energy into more like the Own Our Future campaign and show that they can work together as a team and with allies.
Well, labour.org.nz has been defaulting to www.ownourfuture.co.nz for a while now, and that message dominates the home page there. I think they've put quite a lot into that pitch, to be honest.
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Righto. Going for a bike ride to see who's got hoardings where in Mt Albert. Will report.
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Sacha,
Political campaigns shape discourses and win engagement. Even a disinterested or hostile media does not let the current bunch off the hook for their failure to connect meaningfully, to work well with allies, and to demonstrate basic organisational discipline that gives voters confidence.
What percentage of potential Labour voters even heard of Curran's blurt, or cared about it? Who else besides people who comment on lefty-liberal blogs is still thinking about it now?
The last time I argued about this on the Dim Post, I actually went and looked through the Red Alert archives for the previous four months for evidence of the received narrative -- whiny, entitled MPs blame the media instead of focusing on how to sell themselves to the media they've got.
There was quite honestly virtually nothing there to support it. The MP bloggers were resolutely gung-ho and on-message. Seriously, Sacha, what else do you think they ought to have been saying?
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Hard News: The Politics of Absence, in reply to Stephen Judd,
A: The media are crap and that’s why Labour can’t get traction.
B: If Labour weren’t crap, crap media wouldn’t be a problem.
A: What specifically could Labour do that wouldn’t be crap and would overcome the crapness of NZ news media?
B: That’s not my problem.Brilliant.
