Once again, I’m not talking short term. Climate change is, and has to be, a major and overwhelming issue in the next decade. Already, two thirds of American adults think we are doing too little against climate change. Over the last decade, there have been major increases in people thinking combating climate change and protecting the environment are important. As things become more dire and more obvious, those percentages are only going to increase. AOC is on the right side of history.
Just out of curiosity, where did you get your economics degree from?
Yes. The green new deal may not pass. And i have no idea what’s in it. But “we need to pay attention to the environment” is growing. As wildfires take out chunks of the west, and hurricanes that we’ve run out of names for chew up the east coast, support for “the environment” grows. As renewable energy keeps getting cheaper, supper for renewable energy grows. And people will remember that AOC was on the side of “the environment” long after the GND is forgotten.
I don’t want to turn this into a debate on the specifics of the Green New Deal, but as someone who has been involved in climate change issues for the past 30 years I see nothing in it that shouldn’t be a long term goal, even if it may not be practical within the next 10 years. Conservatives are fond of saying we “can’t afford” strategies for combating climate change, while accepting that we can afford predictable consequences like catastrophic wildfires, droughts, more frequent hurricanes, and other extreme weather events. In my opinion as a scientist, a mobilization of the scale that was required to confront the Great Depression and win WWII is way overdue.
Florida State, an excellent economics program.
In fact, I took economics of the energy industry there . I also took Labor Economics and Advanced Labor Economics and have never flubbed how the unemployment rate is calculated
I do support action on climate change just not the bloated GND. Hopefully Biden rejoins Paris by the end of January.
This continual dismissal of AOC reminds me of the certainty that so many aging white rock fans of the 80s had, that hip hop music was just a passing fad.
They didn’t get it, and couldn’t get it, but it wasn’t for them. dalej42, you don’t get AOC, and you probably never will, but she’s not for you. You don’t have to understand her appeal, but at least you should accept that you’re no more likely to be right about her future than those aging rock fans were about hip hop music.
I guess I find both the AOC veneration and degradation at this point in her career to be premature. It’s ridiculous to dismiss her out of hand. She’s obviously got very impressive messaging and communications skills that have let her quickly build a national profile. But other promising young political talents have burned as bright and burned out just as quickly.
It will be interesting to see her career progress. Honestly I think the most promising early sign of her staying power is that for all her firebrand reputation she’s got a pragmatic streak. She makes some trouble for Pelosi but she voted for her for Speaker. She was a vocal Bernie supporter and critical of Biden, but never went so far in her criticism as to alienate him and his supporters when he wrapped up the nomination.
She recently did a Twitch stream where she played Among Us with some other people including rep Ilhan Omar. According to Twitch it was close to record breaking in terms of people watching while it was live and number of views since. While she mostly played the game and had a good time she took the opportunity to encourage people to go vote.
I am pretty sure I have never seen a congresscritter do that before (stream an online multiplayer game they are playing). When it comes to raking in the Millennial and younger vote she is light years ahead of her competition (maybe because she is light years younger than most of them too). Her opponents really need to up their game if they hope to stop her but I don’t think they know where to start. Usually when they try it backfires on them.
As a PC gamer (albeit not a young one) I think that stream was a genius move.
AOC is most popular with Millennials. The fact that Boomers hate her is a feature not a bug.
Dale appears to be seeing future electorates as they are now and not as they will be in 2032 and beyond. In '32 there will be somewhere around 140 million eligible voters born between 1980 and 2014. The Silents will be gone and the oldest Boomers will be 86 and that means fewer of them.
Yes, that’s been my point. AOC has positioned herself as a leader on climate change and other issues that will dominate the rest of this century. It’s very likely that her influence, and that of her cohort, will only grow over coming decades.
And this is something that has been mentioned before, she will not always be the rising young rebel firebrand and neither will those millennials and older GenZers. A day will come when she will be part of the “Establishment Left” – which may be “leftier” than what that is today, but that will also be a world different from what it is today.
Well put.
I continue to see more ads on Facebook that strongly imply that AOC needs money to defeat “our opponent”, who has apparently raised a lot of money. Unless there’s a tricky typo in the name, it looks like it’s for her actual Congressional campaign. I made a post on Facebook asking whether anyone else had seen it or knew what was going on and got absolutely no responses. I’m of the impression that she is raising money for her next re-election primary campaign in which she will quite possibly be faced with another Democratic incumbent due to redistricting, but she’s is not openly saying that. The ads are also very coy about who “our opponent” is, and for that matter, who even “we” is. I’m really not liking the look of it, and would much prefer the idea that they’re not actually affiliated with her at all, and are trying to trick people into giving them money.
I’ll also note that multiple ads refer to a mid-October deadline that had already passed by the time I first started seeing them. I guess she does refer the opponent as Republican, but I can’t imagine that those details refer to her own race.
She invited Hasan Piker to the party as well. ‘America deserved 9/11!!’
I’m quite sure that’ll help her get a Senate seat in NY.
I’m a Boomer, and I like her. You winking at me??? Huh? 
But I neither venerate or denigrate her. I just like her politics, and I like her style. She may flame out but I’m betting on ‘no.’
As a millennial and a fellow DSA member, AOC has been very exciting for us. Mainstream Democratic politics increasingly are irrelevant to us as they continue to make every attempt to denigrate the left. She and other progressives have shown that they are the future of the party, and it gives us hope since we have little actual power outside of the DNC.
I look forward to when I can volunteer for her Presidential campaign. 
Does it ever get old blaming the DNC for everything? I know progressives are both sore winners and sore losers but give it a rest.
AOC and other progressives have accomplished absolutely nothing except for sniping a few House seats in deep blue districts.
Biden won the primaries easily. I enjoyed seeing Bernie get stomped but even more enjoyable was watching Warren fall flat on her face, an embarrassing performance even finishing 3rd in her own state.
I’m looking forward to the new Senate with lots of moderates coming in. Replacing Republicans with smart moderate Dems is the future.
Somehow I think that your group of “Democrats who hate other Democrats” isn’t nearly as big as you seem to believe.
That’s like saying, “Does it ever get old complaining that the school bully keeps stealing your lunch everyday?”