Ryan Bridge: Labour could learn from the Dem's failures

Donald J. Trump has been inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. 

Behind the pomp and ceremony are lessons for politicians on the left here and around the world. 

Labelling your opponent a racist, a nazi, an extremist, a homophobe, a sexist, anti-trans, a threat to democracy, a tyrant, and sexist won’t win you an election. 

Biden, and then Harris, threw the kitchen sink of threats about Trump at the public and none of it stuck. 

The Obama's, the Pelosi's and the Clinton's of American politics did their best to paint Trump as a dystopian dictator, hell-bent on crucifying immigrants and minorities. 

And what happened? They lost. He won. 

A clean sweep of the battlegrounds. 

The House. The Senate. The electoral college. The popular vote. 

And around half of Latino voters, the highest ever for a Republican, even higher than George W. Bush in 2004. 

Record numbers of minorities voted for Trump. 

His election was of course run against a backdrop of a tough economy and inflation hitting punters hard. Plus, Joe Biden was, well, literally stumbling to the finish line, struggling to walk and talk. 

But the fact remains voters picked the guy who’d been labelled all these awful things because they trusted him to turn the economy around, and some also to stop the free speech moderators and pronoun police. 

So, what’s the lesson here? For Hipkins it doesn’t matter how many times you call Seymour and/or Luxon a racist - it won’t get you back for the greasy benches. 

Labour and its allies are gearing up for a fresh onslaught of attacks on race as the Treaty Bill goes to select committee. 

But here’s the thing - most Kiwis aren’t listening. Look at the polls. 

The Ipsos issues monitor from late last year showed that. Inflation, health, economy, crime, housing, poverty etc were the big issues. Race relations? 15th on 6%. 

Those in the left would do better —and we’d all benefit from this— if they’d stop the name-calling and start coming up with serious, credible, alternative economic plans to get this country firing again. 

Labour was supposed to be a party for the workers. They’ve let provincial New Zealand down badly with economic mismanagement and energy policies that may have suited a speech at UNGA in New York, but certainly not the good people of Ruapehu. 

And that’s the lesson Trump is giving the left today. The recipe used over the past decade of window dressing, performative politics, identity politics, virtue signalling, and demonising your opponents no longer works on the people who matter most. 

The voters. 

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