Ok, getting back to this, I think it’s a horrible idea. I am so sick and tired of progressives thinking that because they won in deep blue districts, that the rest of the country is just waiting for a ‘true progressive’ to vote for. I’ve even heard crazy shit about a Bernie candidate being able to win in West Virginia.
I think it’s probably good in some cases (i.e. getting rid of Dan Lipinski, a crappy Democrat in a solid blue district) and not so good in others (various red-to-blue flippers from '18 who ran as moderates in moderate-to-conservative districts). I’d have to see specifically which districts she’s targeting – hopefully she’ll go after the ones like Lipinski’s.
My hate for her grew when she grilled Mark Zuckerberg when he was testifying. She was rude - cutting him off and not letting him answer then mischaracterizing the little he was allowed to say. Yes I know every politician uses testimony time to grandstand and make speeches and be a jerk to someone you disagree with but my god she was over-the-top even for Congress.
Speaking as what passes for a moderate these days, which apparently means not thinking that Sanders is the second coming. I don’t have contempt for AOC, but I do have some fear. I am not afraid that she will succeed. If she gathered a giant grass roots movement that cast down the old ways and bring about a green woke revolution that changed society as we know it, I think that’d be pretty cool. No what I’m afraid of is that in trying to make a tea party of the left, complete with circular firing squads, litmus tests, DINO cucks and primarying otherwise safe candidates for not being sufficiently progressive, she will over reach and we will lose all the progress that was made in the 2018 election.
This little thing draws you to hate her?
It’s certainly a good reason. An idiot such as AOC and her fellow ‘progressives’ have already made up their minds that Facebook is EVIL!!!
But, she’s in Congress, not at a cool kids coffeehouse. So, yes, should should have dialed her self righteous anger back a lot and at least let Zuckerberg answer the questions rather than play the gotcha game. Let’s leave that shit to Jim Jordan.
Hate comes easy to some, apparently. I always thought “hate” should be reserved for the truly awful, not for energetic young progressives who, at worst, have made a few tactical or rhetorical errors.
Riiiiight.
Reading a few articles, I think you’re right, at least so far. The two sitting Dem Congressmen the PAC is going after are Lipinski in IL and Cuellar in TX, both being conservative-leaning Dems in solidly-blue districts. I’m not concerned about some moderate-progressive infighting in safe districts – little would change if nobody pushed leftward anywhere but always picked the most moderate possible Dem, and the proof of the pudding (how moderate or progressive is District X?) can only be by eating (Dem primary voting) – so long as we’re not striving mightily but counterproductively to throw away chances in winnable purple districts.
This was my concern when I first heard of this PAC, and I’m still inclined to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t drift that way in future elections, but I feel a lot better for now.
She’ll be fine. She didn’t ride into office on Bernie’s coattails, and she doesn’t need him to stay in office.
I was the one who asked for the cites and I see you brought one of the two I requested so thanks for that.
Clearly AOC’s statement that “unemployment is low because…” is not a display of “stupidity” about “how the unemployment rate is calculated” but is more of a “rhetorical excess”, as your own citation says.
I find it really, really difficult to get all het up about that and it’s odd to me that her statement is being presented as an example of “stupidity” at all since it’s such very much not an example of “stupidity” and is also a ridiculously minor “crime”.
Did you happen to locate the other cite I requested?
“I’m afraid that Democrats are just like Republicans and will do the same exact things they do.”
:rolleyes:
A cite for being required to read Keynes and Friedman? No, but they’re two of the most prominent economists in history. Even my high school economics class mentioned Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman.
I simply can’t imagine any economics curriculum that doesn’t cover Keynesian economics or Monetarism, they’re contrasting theories about government intervention and the money supply.
I was referring to the post where you said AOC mixed up or misunderstood Keynes and Friedman and something about an English town.
Looking back, I see this happened in your post (post #42), and you had included the link to the Business Insider article titled Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confused 2 of history’s most famous economists and ended up name checking the most ridiculed town in the UK you cited in that post already.
I just missed the cite, I guess.
So in the news story you cited, AOC Tweeted about a prediction made by the British economist John Maynard Keynes but she Tweeted his name incorrectly as “Milton Keynes”.
You own cite says that AOC corrected the error quickly and “said later (that) she had confused him with the US economist Milton Friedman.”
As an amusing added bonus, there’s apparently a town 50 miles from London called “Milton Keynes” that is named an “amalgamation of “Milton” and “Keynes”, (that was built) from scratch in 1967 as an experiment in centralized town planning,” and “is often ridiculed in the UK as an uninspired and banal settlement.”
The article goes on to have some fun with “Keynes roundabouts” on the roadways there.
I still don’t find this kind of simple error to be convincing evidence that AOC is “stupid”.
Your own cite says that the only people what have latched on to this as evidence of “stupidity” are “several right-of-center media outlets, including Fox News and the Washington Examiner.”
It appears to me that these very weak criticisms of inconsequential errors made by AOC boil down to simple partisanship far more than they are evidence of her being incompetent or stupid.
Well, they aren’t wrong about that.
AOC creating a PAC to support more elected officials who have similar views seems to been an entirely normal thing for someone in her position to do.
I’m in Texas and two people she has endorsed are running for seats here. Neither are on my particular ballot and aren’t likely to get elected in November but it’s nice to see progressives getting some love down here.
Buck Godot said “… what I’m afraid of is that in trying to make a tea party of the left, complete with circular firing squads, litmus tests, DINO cucks and primarying otherwise safe candidates for not being sufficiently progressive, she will over reach and we will lose all the progress that was made in the 2018 election.”
I actually don’t have an issue with a bit of “Tea Party of the left”. Those/these kinds of fringy movements often seem to pull policies and idea proposals forward; to the middle. Reasonable fringy ideas can help both create and shape public conversation and eventually a fringy idea can find its way to the middle with real voters having real opinions about them sometime later.
IMHO, it seems to take 4-20 years for big ideas to filter down to voters.
For example
-Reagan talked about “Welfare queens” in the mid to late '70’s or early '80’s and Clinton “reformed Welfare” in the mid '90’s, 15 - 20 years later. Notice how this sort of shocking at the time original idea pulled the idea to the middle (and it also switched parties)?
-The “Tea Party” movement began in earnest in about 2007 or 2009 but didn’t gain a strong foothold until about 2012, 3 - 4 - 5 years later and now they’ve got the tax cuts they wanted (although they seem to have completely forgotten about their other concerns). And the Tea party movement has pulled ‘the right’ even further right which is what I think it was intended to do.
-Health care reform, which was a Clinton topic of the early '90’s, took about 15 years to get to Obama.
Anyway, I could be wrong but I don’t think AOC would allow the pitfalls you mention (“circular firing squads, litmus tests, DINO cucks and primarying otherwise safe candidates”) with this PAC. It’s her PAC and she appears to have some firm ideas about who it will support even if those she chooses to support aren’t expected to win. I think she’s really looking at the long game and at pulling the conversation to the left now so that it will find a spot in the middle later. I can support that wholeheartedly.
(That doesn’t mean her intentions and movement can’t be hijacked or astro-turfed though.)
Overall I find the PAC, and its potential, to be a good thing.
I don’t think it’s an entirely normal thing for a first term Congresswoman to organize a PAC to primary “bad” Democrats. Sorry.
Definitely not “entirely normal”. Not at all. We’ll see over the next few election cycles if it’s effective and positive.
Who cares how normal it is? I’m somewhat familiar with two of the incumbent Dems in question: Lipinski and Cuellar. One’s in a pretty safe Dem seat (D+6) and the other’s in a very safe seat (D+9), but they side with the GOP on numerous votes and on major issues.
If they were defending R+4 seats and they were being primaried from the left, I’d be up in arms about that. But we can’t waste solidly Dem seats on people who aren’t going to be on our side any more often than these guys are.
In any given Congressional seat that a Dem can win, I want the most liberal Democrat who can keep getting re-elected to that seat. In D+6 and D+9 seats, that Democrat is someone well to the left of Lipinski or Cuellar.
I was responding to someone saying it’s perfectly normal. So that’s who cares.