And the only time I hear anyone use that phrase is when someone is calling them out for their bigotry/selfishness and they tout it as if it’s a force of nature, not a choice they made.
Ever see the Mitchell & Webb sketch that plays a bit on this theme?
I don’t know that much about him.
In what way was he as bad as AOC?
What on Earth is your beef with AOC? She’s a brand new rep, in her late 20s, with lots of talent, compassion, and energy. She’s exciting lots of young folks. She’s very liberal, in a very liberal district. She matches well with the views of her district. Her talent and views remind me of what I’ve read about Obama in his 20s – very liberal, very energetic, very talented, and very ambitious. A couple of decades brought lots of wisdom and savvy for Barack Obama… but AOC is starting in national politics even earlier, and has a great chance to gain that wisdom and savvy even quicker than Obama did.
She’s not a candidate for governor, or Senator, or VP, or President. She just a very young representative; a very progressive one, in a very progressive district. Why are you so worried about her?
AOC isnt bad. She does put her foot in her mouth every now and then.
George was as liberal then as AOC is now.
I am baffled as to how one reconciles the desire for a candidate who is sympathetic with Christian values to being “not sure” whether or not you intend to vote for the orange fleshy embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins.
I think she is bad for the party over the long run.
Being young is no excuse for being so embarrassingly ignorant.
So is Trump. The tea party excited a lot of people too.
I grew up in her district. What do you know about the people in her district?
I thought this might be true when she was first elected as well. But after her time in congress so far, comparing her to Obama is a LOT of wishful thinking.
You just compared her to Obama.
I am worried about her for the same reason Republicans SHOULD have been worried about the tea party. And now look where they are.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope you’re right. But nothing she has done since taking office makes me think so.
I grew up in a right wing Republican family who voted Republican strictly and explicitly (to this day) because they dislike black people. It was all I ever knew. And then I married a non-white woman and realized what a piece of shit I had been.
There was other stuff as well, but I had something of an epiphany in my 20s. It wasn’t overnight.
Explaining to my kids that they should love their grandmother despite her overt racism is not an easy discussion.
Obama in his 20s was a relative nobody. His views then, from what I’ve read, were far to the left of how he governed as president.
And you haven’t offered any “embarrassing ignorance” from AOC.
Energized, excited young progressives who care about doing good are hugely valuable to the party. If the party boots folks like AOC, it loses tons of young progressives - the whole next generation of the party. We have room for progressives like her, and we’re far better off with her on the team than outside.
She’s been in congress for less than a single term. It’s crazy to make the kind of conclusions you’ve made about her so quickly. She’s barely 30! In ten years she’ll be ten years smarter.
What you advocate sounds like a path to a dead party. I want progressives in progressive districts. And I want moderates in moderate districts. I want a big and diverse party.
I made a different shift: I moved from having a Big Theory ideology to having a pragmatic one.
When I was a teenager I was a Libertarian. I had a Theory on how politics, economics, and society as a whole should work. It’s truly the Marxism of the Right, as Ayn Rand said, which is one of the few things I agree with Rand on.
There was nothing I couldn’t answer and no problem I couldn’t solve.
It took me a little while to figure out that was a bad thing.
These days, I’m a fairly progressive Liberal and much more interested in policies which have a positive impact on the world than ones which are in line with a Theory. I know some problems can’t be solved quickly, and that there’s no such thing as one ideology with all the answers.
I shifted from the Right to the Left with that, but not so far Left as to fall into the trap of Marxism, another Big Theory.
I didn’t take long (like till I was 16) to realize that even “moderate” GOPs then were not working to benefit most of America. And 16 years later, deregulation rolled in, proving it.
Liberal: Let’s make things better by next week.
Conservative: Let’s keep what’s good from last week.
Reactionary: Gotta return to good-old-days of 1900, dammit!
The first two can work things out, but not with the last. I guess my liberal-conservative chimera emerged when, as a rad-lib longhair in my mid-20s, I volunteered for the US Army. Not so I could kill people, but because I thought service to my country was a noble duty. And I feel no need to regard the views of those who failed put themselves at risk to serve a greater interest. If they didn’t care enough to pledge their Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor” for their nation, fuck-em.
No, I didn’t vote for Obama.
I can’t position myself in relation to “center” because US politics no long HAS a center. I can’t rail at DemoGops because the parties rarely cooperate, as they did supporting past non-constitutional wars. Now, no party reflects me. But I can tell which is shit.
And if AOC comes back in her 40’s with a more mature, less ignorant, less petulant, and less divisive approach to politics, she might be good for the country. Right now she is just part of the Left’s version of the tea party.
Do you really not know?
She ended up costing her district thousands of good paying Amazon jobs with her rhetoric and then pretended tha tthe opening of a 1500 person office in manhattan is somehow the same thing as a 25,000 person headquarters in her district and her neighboring district.
Trump rode into office on a similar wave of excited ignorant fool. Ignorant fools are only valuable if they eventually stop being ignorant and foolish. AOC shows no inclination to do either.
She is not irreplacable. Heaven help us if she is. We won’t lose a whole next generation of the party. That’s alarmist. You might as well say that the world is going to end in 12 years
Ocasio-Cortez on climate: Millennials fear world will end in 12 years.
That’s what the republicans said about the tea party. Look who they have leading the party now. We have room for progressives like her in the tent but not as the face of the party in any way shape or form.
Tell her to come back then.
So what is it that you think you know about the people in her district?
You keep saying this, but it’s nonsense. The tea party was a culture-based white grievance movement. AOC is not comparable to that. There are lots of young progressives like her.
Two math errors and hyperbole… God forbid! Imagine a politician making an error, or using hyperbole? How terrible!
What a joke. On the facts she’s better than pretty much all the Republicans and, AFAICT, about the same as most other Democrats (most of whom have way more experience). A 29 year old first-term politician using hyperbole and a couple of math errors is not evidence of ignorance.
This was a policy difference. She didn’t want her community giving Amazon lots of tax breaks/perks. Maybe you disagree, but that’s a legitimate policy position.
Trump rode a wave of cultural anxiety and white grievance, largely from older white Americans. That’s not remotely comparable to youthful progressive exuberance.
And once again, she’s just a representative. She’s not perfect, but she’s already been enormously helpful to the party by bringing so much excitement, relatively speaking for someone in her position. That overwhelmingly makes up for a handful of extremely minor mistakes she’s made.
Of course she’s not irreplaceable (and oh no, more hyperbole!). But being unwelcoming to all the folks like her will lose the party millions. There are tons of young progressives who like her and who think like her. The party needs these folks, now and especially in the future.
The party needs folks like you, folks like me, and folks like AOC. It shouldn’t be trying to boot any of these categories.
That’s what we said about Obama. And Bernie. And lots of other popular Democrats. The tea party was bad, these guys are good. AOC is good. The GOP and Trump are terrible. AOC is not. She’s not remotely comparable.
Only if I wanted to hurt the future of the party. Sounds like a bad idea to me. I want young, smart, energetic progressives like her. And they don’t have to be perfect, especially not in their first terms in Congress. A few mistakes and occasional hyperbole aren’t the end of the world.
Sounds like you buy the Rush Limbaugh view of AOC. On this, like most things, he’s full of shit. AOC and folks like her are great for the party.
They voted for her and generally support her.
How does attacking AOC relate to liberal-to-conservative shifts? Does going pro-Tramp qualify as a move to actual conservatism, or grievance politics, or treason, or insanity?
And there is room for them in the tent. Happy to have them on the bus. Don’t want them anywhere near the steering wheel. And we certainly don’t want them kicking other democrats off the bus.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/opinions/aoc-biden-democratic-party-harrop/index.html
You asked for examples, I gave you several now it seems like you are either asking for more or will actually never admit she is embarrassingly ignorant no matter how many examples i offer.
Perhaps one day she will mature into someone that can be taken seriously. But that day is not here yet.
In the end I think that probably worked out. Amazon is opening it’s headquarters in Virginia and that will probably go a long was towards keeping Virginia blue in the future. We don’t really need more democratic voters in NYC.
I agree with much of your diagnosis of why trump got elected. But her Justice Democrats are still a radicalizing force in the Democratic party. Every bit as dangerous as the tea party was to the republicans when they first started out.
She is trying to push the party to the left in the same way that the tea party was trying to move the party to the right. In fact her stated goal at one time was to help primary more democrats so that she could move the party further to the left.
She did not play any part in how we won the house. She won a safe Democratic seat by primarying a Democratic incumbent. We didn’t win the house because of people like AOC. We won the house on the backs of dozens of MODERATE Democrats who won in swing districts. If I have to choose between exciting radicals like AOC and controlling the house, I will take Pelosi controlling the house any day. AOC can be exciting without crapping on moderate democrats.
They are welcome. We want them on the bus, we just don’t want them driving it and we certainly don’t want them kicking other democrats off the bus. And that is what they are doing. The justice Democrats want to purge the Democratic party of moderates.
They are welcome in the tent, there’s a nice table in the corner where they can hang out with the other radicals until it’s time to vote. Radicals do not win you state legislatures and governorships. Radicals don’t win you the house. Radical do not win you the senate. Radicals do not win swing states or the white house.
How do you think AOC and her squad would do in swing districts? In swing states?
And yet that is almost exactly what she wants to do. She is critical of moderate democrats. AOC is not going to win us any seats we weren’t already going to win.
I don’t recall ever saying that about Obama. Heck, people have accused me of being a Bernie bro on this site.
Why would that hurt the future of the party? I thought we agreed that she is not irreplacable. She doesn’t even have to leave. Just sit down and stop attacking other democrats for being moderate. Stop embarrassing herself on the national stage.
What is the Rush Limbaugh view of AOC?
A few terms in congress may sand away the ignorance and counterproductive behavior but attacking other democrats and calling for fairly liberal democrats to be primaried if they aren’t progressive enough is bad for the party.
That was turned me off of her. Since then she has said or done many things that have reinforce my opinion of her.
2% of her district voted to make her the Democratic candidate in an off year primary. The incumbent didn’t take her seriously enough.
She is significantly more radical than her district of mostly immigrant working class and poor voters. But she is charismatic and she will likely get re-elected.
I don’t follow the news. How and who is she “attacking”? Or is this an exaggeration?
Your “2%” figure is rather disingenuous. I assume you realize that non-citizens and and under-18’s are not allowed to vote. Even so, the correct figure is a little higher than 2%.
But another way to describe her primary victory is that she got almost as many votes in the low-turnout primary as her GOP opponent got in the general! She’d whupped Crowley in the primary — but on the topic of Democrats attacking their own party, what about Crowley? He refused to take his name off the ballot in deference to the woman the Democratic Party had picked. Didn’t he even get his pal, the ex-Senator from Insurancecticutt, to endorse him in the general?
Citing an opinion piece that AOC should leave the party doesn’t sound like you think there’s “room for them in the tent”.
You gave extremely weak and mundane examples. The problem in American politics is not math errors and occasional hyperbole. That’s not why the Tea Party was awful, and that’s not why Trump and co are awful.
So… she was right? Glad to have you onboard the AOC train!
The Tea Party actually helped the GOP in terms of getting elected, unfortunately. If that’s “dangerous” to the party, then I’m all for it. But unlike the Tea Party, AOC and her allies aren’t driven by hatred and cultural grievance. On policy, she’s pretty damn good, and pretty damn smart. A few math errors and occasional hyperbole don’t eliminate that at all.
Excitement played a huge role in getting back the House. She was part of that wave, even if she was just a small part. We won because of her and plenty of other exciting young Democrats, including some moderates. Luckily, we don’t have to choose – we can have them all, and we can have Pelosi too… and AOC has been on record, many times, supporting Pelosi. Occasional disagreements haven’t marred that support at all.
She’d probably do about the same as moderates (like Crowley) would do in her district – not so well. So what? Why is this notable? Obama probably wouldn’t have won a Senate race in Missouri or Arizona. But despite fears that he was radical, unelectable, or extreme, he turned out to be a fantastic candidate. Right now AOC is just a rep, and we don’t have to worry about such things for her at all. Maybe one day she’ll run for Senate or Governor of NY – and there’s a great chance she’ll win. We can talk about your worries again on that day.
Oh no! Criticism against moderates! How horrible! Almost like a Democrat criticizing progressives like AOC… I’m sure that would never happen, and you’d be very angry about that, right?
I was never a conservative. I was always on the left in the context of the time, but I have steadily moved away from views that I held as a child and pre-adolescent and adolescent that are considered conservative views, mostly in the area of personal choice—pre-marital and extra-marital sex, monogamy, abortion, single parenthood, same-sex relationships and marriage, traditional gender roles, integration of the sexes in social and semi-professional settings, etc.
Have you not heard her going after moderate Democrats. She thinks the Democratic party’s tent is too big.
I’m going off of census numbers. She won her seat with 15,000 total votes. There are 700,000 people in her district. It’s the only number I saw on this site New York's 14th congressional district - Wikipedia
Do you have better numbers you would like to use? There is almost no metric by which 15,000 votes looks like a lot unless you look at people who actually voted in an off year primary election that was not really supposed to be competitive.
Crowley endorsed AOC in the general. The fact that some splinter party continued to run him on their ticket is not really his fault. It’s not really his fault that Joe Lieberman thinks AOC is a fruitcake and horrible for the party.
It was serendipitous but it was never her intent to make Virginia more blue.
I would not describe her as smart (she’s not stupid) and certainly not good on policy.
If I were to describe her I would say that she is charismatic, well spoken and photogenic. Perhaps she just needs better advisors that will prevent her from making such embarrassing mistakes and help her navigate a course that doesn’t involve being a perpetual minority.
Donald Trump played a huge part in us taking back the house, 2018 was alargely a reaction to 2016. He also played a huge part in radicals like AOC getting elected. Hopefully we will discard politicians like her when we get rid of Trump. We don’t need politicians like AOC acting like they are the face of the party.
I hope that day never comes.
BTW Crowley isn’t really moderate by almost any standard. He is probably somewhere to the left of this board.
But crowley doesn’t go around threatening to primary his more moderate fellow democrats in an effort to try and remake the party in his own image. He understand that we win our majorities in swing districts with candidates that are significantly closer to the center than he is.
We don’t need progressives like AOC to win any district in the country. Not a single one. We can make do with progressives like Crowley and Pelosi. We need moderates to win in many of them.