That last part is how I interpreted it. The actual site is actblue.com, i.e. for Democrats in general. So the “our” and “us” reads more like it’s Democratic Congresspeople in general, and she’s just being a spokesperson for them.
I do agree that the way it is worded is unfortunate, though, and have also asked for clarification with no response.
And this sort of thing is exactly why moderates turned progressives into an enemy. The way it’s supposed to work is that we’re both on the same side, but progressives are more idealist while liberals (i.e. moderates) are more for what can practically be done.
Yeah, it’s great to have a liberal replace a conservative, because that’s what’s practical. What’s not good is that you want to keep everyone liberal, keep on pushing for moneyed interests over the principles you supposedly agree with us are right.
For example, supposedly liberals also accept the science on climate change. So you should wish that stuff in the Green New Deal could pass, but lament that it can’t right now and push something more practically. But, in the future, you’d hope we’d be able to actually do something to stop climate change.
The reason I got mad at Bernie Sanders was his push towards vilifying the liberal part of the party, pulling the same BS tactics that Trump did with calling it rigged. But this is the counterbalance: liberals who want to take down the people who actually get young people excited–young people who will increasingly vote as they get older.
We’re supposed to be a coalition. We shouldn’t be attacking each other.
I blame the Russians.
Okay, that’s not completely true, but I think there’s a decent chance that this is at least partly the result of Russian social media ads trying to drive apart American politics. Look at Bernie. He had some rabid supporters who really were opposed to the liberals, and even went so far as to support Trump to “burn it all down”. But that’s not Bernie. Bernie himself is a competent politician who is aware of the value of coalitions and who works with his liberal colleagues. Bernie himself has endorsed the people who beat him in the primary. He has endorsed Biden pretty powerfully, actually.
Did you see the Russian facebook ads 4 years ago? Someone published a lot of them, and the “liberal” ones were pretty persuasive. And they tended to vilify “the middle”.
Anyway, I think AOC is also a very competent politician, who works with the middle and nudges it to the left. And I think she’s likely to be in congress for a while.
My only issue with the Green New Deal is that it is a bit of an albatross around your neck. I can agree with their motivation and desire but at the same time believe there needs to be a better framework for legislation than simply accept this document as the litmus test for all democrats. Due to the fact it isn’t actually a piece of legislation. It doesn’t have a coherent plan fully explained and costed. It is more of a wishlist or resolution than a bill. It’s too vague to run on as a presidential candidate but too much of the Democratic primary was spent on whether you were ‘running’ on it and if you weren’t you’re a corporate shill.
Interesting article in the Washington Post about how, despite not being at all competitive, AOC’s race is currently the second most expensive House race in the country. She’s raised over $17 million while her no-chance Republican opponent has raised $9.6 million.
She makes the good point that every dollar Republican donors dump into this race just to spite her is a dollar that doesn’t go to more competitive races. And she’s more than willing to be the Republican’s posterchild for the far-left if it will cause them to act this stupidly.
I like this kind of strategic thinking.
True also of dollars donated to her, unless she is sharing the wealth (which I believe is allowed?).
One thing I’d push back on is that Joe Crowley lost because he wasn’t “progressive enough”, I don’t think that’s actually true, right? He was one of the most liberal politicians in the House, and actually mostly held almost identical positions to AOC. I think he lost because he wasn’t seen as “representative” of his district because he was a white man, and because he didn’t really campaign very well, got outworked, and didn’t realize how much trouble he was in until about the last month when he tried to dump money into the race to salvage it and that didn’t work out for him.
An irony is AOC actually won off of white urban liberals who had moved into the district–which is an irony because the messaging against him was he wasn’t “representative”, but it was AOC who actually won on the backs of white voters, minorities in the district largely remained loyal to Crowley.
That’s neither here nor there, but trying to portray it as her unseating some moderate or centrist Dem just isn’t accurate, she unseated a very liberal Democrat largely on inside baseball issues. Which is fine–no one is entitled to their seat in Congress.
I also think the district laws in New York these days intend to create geographically compact districts and have a less politicized districting process than in the past, so if those principles would lead to her district being split across multiple other ones, that is likely what happens. It’s not going to be as simple as people in Albany deciding who to screw or not screw.
is she or the other guy running TV ads ? as you might expect TV ads in NYC are super expensive since it’s the #1 media market .
We have a local Dem congressman who was gerrymandered to allow more GOP guys in other districts. He does not even bother to campaign at all. No TV, no radio, etc. 538 gives him 99% chance of winning.
She could donate her campaign funds in unlimited amounts to the party campaign committees, but I’m not sure why she would do so since she so often opposes the establishment candidate. Otherwise, she’s limited to $2,000 donations to each candidate in each election (e.g. $4,000 for the primary and general election).
But more importantly, she can use every cent of that in a future run for any other federal office.
If she can put strings on the money (and surely can at least on a handshake basis), then she can support challengers to incumbent Republicans - any Democrat is going to be preferable. And she is smart enough to know that the more Dems there are in office, the better the chances of passing legislation that advances her goals.
Everyone knows that I don’t like AOC, but she had the perfect strategy to snipe that primary. New York had two sets of primaries that year and the federal office one was bound to be a low turnout affair in the middle of summer. Abolish ICE is toxic in many districts but not there especially with endless stories about kids in cages hitting at the same time. And, there’s a good base of progressive activists in the area to help with grassroots.
Because she’s a very talented and skilled politician, and we should be extremely grateful that we have such a talented young politician on our party bench. She’s only going to get smarter and more skilled as the years go by. Lately she’s been spending lots of time online explaining to young voters why it’s so important now to get Biden elected - holding his feet to the fire for progressive causes can come after the election. If the election is close, it may well be her help that got enough young voters to vote Biden.
Agreed. I have no idea if it’s on her to do list, but I hope she runs for POTUS one of these days, maybe in 2028 or 2032. Any Democratic POTUS primary field would be better with her in it.
She would make a primary field better, but if she won the nomination, she’d be facing the same problem Hillary Clinton had: demonization. The rightwing media-industrial complex jumped all over Hillary from the beginning of the Clinton Admin and never stopped. So by the time she was running for president, it was amazing she hadn’t grown horns and a forked tail. Even in only 8 years, AOC is going to face the same thing.
Except that AOC has about 100 times the natural communications talent and charisma of Hillary Clinton. And she’ll just get smarter and smarter as the years go by.
Yeah, the answer I got from someone on a neighboring Congressman’s staff was “Crowley was too confindent and got caught napping”.
Oy… it’s just gonna keep at like this, isn’t it?
Buncha people are gonna be so surprised or disappointed if we end up hearing about “30 year veteran Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, longtime Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, announces her retirement”.
Maybe… but when was the last time someone this young and this talented had any kind of national profile in politics? The only comparison I can think of is Obama, who was still quite a bit older.
Paul Ryan comes to mind (but he was closer to 40 when he was in the national conversation, which is a good decade older than Ocasio Cortez).
Yes, the natural charisma of Paul Ryan!
