Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

[Derec]

Define "rarely."

Not frequently.

Are you up for a monetary wager?

Monetary wagers are banned here I think. Maybe something like an embarrassing avatar?

I've not checked but I'll lay odds that YOU first introduced the notion that AOC was a bartender in a plurality of threads.

Define "plurality".
And "threads" is a problem, because most of discussion of AOC has been in one thread, this one.

(You've also denied that she organized a non-profit,

When did I deny that?

And here, while pretending to be less snide, you feel the need and urge to substitute the much more demeaning "barmaid" for "bartender."

Again, you brought up her profession. I chose barmaid for variety. What's wrong with that word? Why do you find it "demeaning"?

bar·maid
noun
noun: barmaid; plural noun: barmaids
1.
NORTH AMERICAN
a waitress who serves drinks in a bar.
"the barmaid brought me a beer"
2.
BRITISH
a woman bartender.
"she was working as a barmaid in a local pub"

I'd say Shame on you! but go ahead and wear your snideness and misogynistic bravado proudly like a badge of honor. I hear FoxNews has an opening.

Misogynistic? Is "barman" misandrist? You far leftists are weird with your incessant need to police the language for any signs of political incorrectness and unwokeness. Must be exhausting.

 

[Elixir]

Monetary wagers are banned here I think.

You know. They were banned after you made another foolish bet.

 

[Derec]

Acyn on Twitter: "Tucker says AOC is not a woman of color and calls her rich entitled white lady (vid link)" / Twitter

She does look pretty white to me, as far as skin-tone goes. It's kinda silly when language (Spanish) or religion (Islam) are used to give white people the coveted "person of color" status even without 1/1024 Amerindian heritage.

 

[Derec]

AOC: The Biden Administration’s Rightward Turn Is “a Profound Miscalculation” - interviewed by David Sirota

Rightward turn? More like a slight course correction from the hard leftward turn at the start of his administration.
Late is the hour in which this conjuror chooses to appear, but perhaps Gandalf finally showed up to free Old Biden from the grip of Sandy Wormtongue and Bernieman the White?

Note that Jacobin is a Marxist rag.

The Daily Worker for Millennials if you will.

I do believe that primaries are healthy. When I first got to the House, not just through winning a primary, but when I was sworn in afterward — even just a public acknowledgment that a primary process involving incumbents is legitimate and healthy for the party — it was just completely taboo, and me supporting that, including supporting primary challengers ...

I think partisan primaries are very unhealthy for US democracy. They end up amplifying extreme voices on both sides - AOC and MTG for example.

Part of the problem is likely from who she deposed, a long-time incumbent and a big name in the party -- and an old friend. She acknowledged that in another interview, that many fellow Democrats gave her the cold shoulder from who she deposed.

It makes sense. Her DSA-run campaign removed a leadership candidate from the House.

 

[Elixir]

They end up amplifying extreme voices on both sides - AOC and MTG for example.

One of those is not like the other, contrary to your misguided belief.

 

[Derec]

You know. They were banned after you made another foolish bet.

One foolish bet. I won another (on old FRDB), but, alas, Gurdur never paid up.

 

[Elixir]

You know. They were banned after you made another foolish bet.

One foolish bet. I won another (on old FRDB), but, alas, Gurdur never paid up.

Lol! Then, which bet was more foolish?
Sorry you got stiffed, but I am less than surprised that you made a bad character read.
Anyhow … you know.

 

[Derec]

One of those is not like the other, contrary to your misguided belief.

One is far left, the other far right. One is brunette, another blond. But neither thinks being factually correct is more important than being "morally right" from their own perspective.

 

[Elixir]

One of those is not like the other, contrary to your misguided belief.

One is far left, the other far right. One is brunette, another blond. But neither thinks being factually correct is more important than being "morally right" from their own perspective.

Both were born with two arm and two legs. One is a progressive, the other is an insane conspiracy theory nutbar.

 

[Derec]

This led to Maxwell Frost backing off from a pro-Palestinian stance and Katie Porter gushing about Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Summer Lee barely won against an AIPAC-financed candidate and AIPAC successfully defeated Nina Turner, Andy Levin, etc.

Summer Lee should have lost. This anti-Israel movement on the left fringe of the Democratic party is highly troubling.

 

[Derec]

Both were born with two arm and two legs. One is a progressive, the other is an insane conspiracy theory nutbar.

Both like stunts. One is a fauxgressive nutbar who thinks money grows on trees, and cars can run on unicorn farts, the other is a QANON nutbar who thinks a classified materials leaker is some sort of hero.

 

[Derec]

I do believe that some of the latest developments coming from the Biden administration are highly concerning — increasingly concerning — and not just from an ideological perspective, not just from a substance perspective, which is the most important, but also from a political perspective.

Joe "Theoden" Biden not listening to your manipulation nearly as much? The wise speak only of what they know, Alexandria daughter of Sergio. A witless worm have you become. Therefore be silent, and keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy words with a serving-wench till the lightning falls.

I think it is extremely risky and very perilous should the Biden administration forget who it was that put him over the top.

Biden was elected because people wanted a return to normality after 4 years of Trump (and 8 months of COVID). He was not elected because people were clamoring for radical change.

When you look at the places — not just abstract levels of turnout, not just where numbers came from, but these swing places that gave Joe Biden the edge on an [Electoral College] victory — it was young people that that won him this election, communities of color, high turnout areas.

Biden won because he carried many purplish states - Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, Georgia.

This lurch to the right at a time when the Right is scrambling and lost in the desert on how to even win an election after these stunning losses — I think it’s a profound miscalculation. And it is quite dangerous.

If this "lurch to the right", or more accurately, course-correction to the middle, is really happening, it is a good thing. Not only policy-wise but also politically for 2024.

That's how she won, and that's how her friends won. Barack Obama did not hold on to his activists after his first Presidential election, and that was a disaster for him. AOC did, however, and her activists have formed "Team AOC".

She won in a D+28 district. Her friends Cori Bush (D+27), Ilhan Omar (D+30), Ayanna Pressley (D+35) and Rashida Tlaib (D+23) hail from similarly lopsided districts. Running for president, or even for statewide office (governor, US senator) is a whole different ballgame where one has to appeal to a much wider range of people than in more homogeneous safe congressional districts.

 

[Elixir]

thinks money grows on trees, and cars can run on unicorn farts

You don’t charge for your psychic readings, I hope, because you’re about as far off as MTG is.
I give you credit for creativity, but detachment from reality reveals the intellectual bankruptcy of your vitriolic assertion. Try arguing against her ACTUAL positions - and don’t forget to compare them to MTG’s.

 

[Derec]

You don’t charge for your psychic readings, I hope, because you’re about as far off as MTG is.

Not psychic, and not far off at all. More like right on the money.

 

[Elixir]

Unicorn farts might be on the money you never collected from the bet you say you won. But here, it’s fantasy bullshit not “right on” any money.
Try arguing against her positions instead of name-calling.

 

[lpetrich]

Then about how Medicare for All has seemingly dropped out as a political issue.

The insurance lobby is so incredibly powerful. If I had to think about the top, it would probably be fossil fuels, but pharma and insurance are way up there. I also believe that Big Pharma and the insurance companies have a broader number of members that can be influenced by that. With Big Oil, it’s predominantly Republicans and then a chunk of certain Democrats. But with insurance, it’s much broader across both parties.

That would be interesting to explore in detail.

When Bernie ran on Medicare for All in 2016, it created an enormous amount of electoral fervor that led a lot of members to cosponsor Medicare for All. But I believe that when push comes shove, the number of people who are willing to fight for Medicare for All is probably less than the number of cosponsors on that bill. And frankly, even if we had a floor vote on it, because of the lack of prospects in the Senate, I also think there would be a lot of disingenuous votes for it when people know that it’s going to a graveyard.

Because of the Senate filibuster.

"Mounting a really strong fight to dismantle the filibuster in the Senate has to be a precursor to any fight for universal health care."

Also, this talking a good game is good for fundraising, even if the lack of following up is very annoying. Like wringing one's hands about how helpless one is, something I remember from the Clinton and Obama years. AOC and her progressive friends are determined to change that. If one insists on running on something, one ought to at least try to deliver what one ran on if one gets into power.

 

[lpetrich]

I’m a major critic of the party. I think the Biden administration has been very disappointing on climate. In the first twenty-five months of the Trump presidency versus the first twenty-five months of the Biden presidency, Biden has authorized more fossil fuel permits. This is a serious issue. The Biden administration is failing on immigration as well, but that’s a separate conversation.

But nevertheless, the "Inflation Reduction Act" is a big step forward, with "the biggest action in American history with these substantive and structural shifts that will, I believe, unlock significant developments on climate, clean energy, and other types of infrastructure."

She concludes with "Compared to the science of the situation, the Inflation Reduction Act is both the biggest thing we’ve ever done and also still not enough."

 

[Elixir]

I look forward to hearing about her Republican opponent Tony Pappas’ take on these things, and why his take is “better” than AOC’s.

(What I expect: some version of “They’re better because they’re not as wrong, and they can’t be worse”)

 

[lpetrich]

Jacobin also has AOC in Conversation With Noam Chomsky

NC likes AOC's Green New Deal, and AOC is happy to see widespread support of versions of it.

I do think that there is a dam breaking, in electoral politics but also in organizing beyond our electoral system, like what we’re seeing with strikes, on a scale that really has not been seen in many years. It’s a bit of an emperor-has-no-clothes type of situation for our political establishment and our capitalist system. People are beginning to realize that we can name these systems and describe them, that this water that people have been swimming in actually has a name, and that there are alternative ways of doing things.

Seems like an end-of-era sort of thing, where the old regime shows more and more weakness, and with rebellion against it getting more and more success.

After I won, there was such a large, concerted attempt by the media to marginalize my victory as a fluke. You had then governor of New York Andrew Cuomo saying, within days, that this was a complete accident. You had every major elected official and Democratic Party member trying to dismiss what happened.

But she was not alone. She was joined by Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Katie Porter in 2018, and Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Mondaire Jones in 2020, and Summer Lee, Maxwell Frost, Greg Casar, Jasmine Crockett, and Delia Ramirez in 2022.

NC was asked about his calling AOC's election "spectacular" and "significant".

Very much. It’s a sign that the one-sided class war of the last forty years is becoming two-sided. The population is actually beginning to participate instead of just accepting the hammer blows.

 

[lpetrich]

Also The End of the AOC Honeymoon

Starting off with a discussion of Bernie Sanders's 2020 campaign, where AOC stumped for him, as she did in 2016.

Two years later, the outlook for this new left is still not clear. Thanks to the limits of the human life span, there won’t be a Bernie 2024. And large parts of the post-Bernie vacuum are losing faith in his young successors, thirty-two-year-old Ocasio-Cortez and the progressive members of Congress surrounding her.

She called herself a democratic socialist, though she doesn't call herself a socialist very much more recently.

... she simply wanted “basic levels of dignity so that no person in America is too poor to live. . . . That’s what democratic socialism means in 2018,” she told Business Insider.

Doesn't seem like what is usually called socialism, either by self-styled socialists or else by right-wingers who use "socialism" as a dirty word.

The outsize media attention that AOC and the rest of the Squad have gotten relative to pretty much any freshman lawmakers in history is, for the organizations behind them, a big part of the point. As Alexandra Rojas, a founder of Justice Democrats, explained to me, a major goal of the primary-from-the-left strategy is to use congressional seats as bully pulpits to build support for “big ideas” like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, thereby shifting the party’s political center of gravity that determines what’s possible. “When you have that sort of gridlock, I think we do have to make the case directly to the American people,” Rojas continued.

Then a lot of discussion of #ForceTheVote, a strategy supported by some online left-wingers but that AOC and her friends had little interest in. It was to refuse to confirm Nancy Pelosi as Speaker in 2021 unless she promised to hold a vote on a Medicare-for-All bill.