I’m on the left, but even I can acknowledge Ryan had a ton of charisma. There was a reason that most publications around 2010 were touting him as a future President.
Are you kidding? He spoke coherently, but that’s about the best I can say about his charisma. Dull dull dull, IMO.
Good time to concede that’s your opinion. I actually can see where Ryan had some charisma, though that’s my opinion.
Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders
by Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy
Simon and Schuster (2010)
Kevin McCarthy, the only Young Gun remaining in congress, is 55 (45 when he cowrote Young Guns).
I will concede that they were relatively young.
It’s my hypothesis that AOC has the natural ability and talent comparable to Obama or Bill Clinton. If I’m right, then the sky’s the limit, as it was for those two. And she’s even younger than they were when they got started. I don’t think Paul Ryan is even in the same ballpark.
Concur.
I was just pointing out that once upon a time Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor were the fresh young faces of the next generation of Republican party.
Right. From the point of view of many within the GOP they were promising young champions of a clear ideological vision. Yet Ryan had a decent career but it was done with earlier than expected and Cantor eventually found himself in the same place as Crowley even sooner.
Supporters and adversaries alike would be well advised to take a couple of deep breaths at this point.
If.
(said the Laconians…)
I think you are simply looking at this from a left leaning side - and from hindsight at how he completely screwed up being Speaker of the House.
Here is the NY Daily News from 2012:
Washington Post Op-ed:
And this fun one from Politico which had this line:
Are these the same commentators that think Trump’s gonna win because Mike Pence makes suburban women horny?
Well, many of them are talking about not being able to take their eyes off of his fly…
Ryan was hot. Pence? Not so much, although here has conventional good looks.
The only way AOC loses her seat is if she gets primaried out of it by the Democrats. If the Democrats lose this election, or get crushed in the midterms because of a pushback against the left, or if she continues to make a hairy thing of herself within the Democratic Party by doing things like encouraging the primarying of ‘old guard’ Democrats who still have power, that could happen. But it’s really unlikely. I suspect that seat is hers for as long as she wants it.
If the Democrats find her to be too much of a pain, they’d probably punish her more by refusing plum committee assignments and that sort of thing.
The bigger difference between AOC and Obama or Clinton, is Obama and Clinton were both experts at speaking to what I’d call the “broad centrist” mainstream electorate, while also being good at energizing the farther left candidates in their own party. It’s interesting because Clinton especially (but this is true of Obama too), is recast by backward looking analysis as not really a liberal and modern liberals don’t much like him. But in 1992 he was seen as very progressive by the left, while his natural charisma and ability to speak to blue collar voters made him widely acceptable and non-scary to them.
There’s some parallels there to Obama right, who really energized progressives in 2008, but who didn’t scare the rest of the party at all, and in fact inspired them, he also inspired a lot of people who weren’t even particularly liberal at all (including some occasional Republican voters.)
AOC is much more akin to a female Bernie Sanders than this generation’s Clinton or Obama, she is openly confrontational even with the moderates of her own party, and has virtually no appeal to the centrist voters who bounce between both parties.
Now, in an era in which hyperpartisanship isn’t going anywhere, candidates like Clinton and Obama may not really exist again, and it could be a firebrand is what is needed and what will win national elections. That could be the case, but if it is, it’s materially different from Clintonism/Obamaism.
And that is what has got us to where we are today.
I’ve had enough of this middle-ground bullshit. Especially since that middle-ground has been moved to the right.
In most European countries US Democrats would be considered conservative.
And as for what can be done…we know most of it is possible. Free tuition is possible (the US used to have it). Single-payer healthcare (the US is one of the only countries left that doesn’t do that). LGBTQ+ rights. Good schools. No police brutality. And so on…
James Baldwin said it best:
I don’t think this is accurate any more. It may have been when she was first elected. But she’s been spending the last several weeks explaining to the most progressive young voters why it’s so important to vote for Biden. ISTM that she’s grown immensely just in the last 2 years. I think it’s likely that she’ll continue to get smarter, wiser, and more effective.
“Extremists” can win these days, we have living proof in the White House now. And in 2032 her views probably won’t even be considered extreme. There will be about 44 million fewer boomers and silents on the rolls and about 50 million new voters who are too young to vote now. Until I see some evidence that Gen Z is changing its generational tune, I’m gonna believe that the electorate will be substantially different in '32 than it is now.
I think this is fair. A high ceiling for her may be Ted Kennedy.
However the Democratic Leadership Council’s election strategy was to position themselves as “New Democrats” to counteract the weaponization of the word “Liberal” by the Republicans. “End Welfare as we know it”, anyone? So that makes it easy to retcon Clinton (and even Obama) as “not a real progressive”.
Huh?
Clinton was distinctly not a progressive. Not at all. He didn’t even pretend to be by embracing “third-way” politics. Hillary barely made a nod at it and Obama said some good progressive stuff but never delivered and was pretty much more Clinton third-way stuff.
No retcon needed.
Unless I misread what you wrote.
You didn’t misread, I miswrote, it should have been as “not a real Liberal” which is what Martin Hyde was saying. Which I suppose itself could be argued too.