Friday, July 12, 2019

AOC Will Wise Up Or She Will Quickly Become The Republicans Best Friend In Congress

You have to wonder if the other three Congresswomen who are lumped in together with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Representatives, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley,  might, sometimes, at least, wish they could assert their independence from her. 

Somewhere online, here or somewhere else, I remember wondering what price the Democratic Party might eventually end up paying for having Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's dynamism, charisma and other political assets.   Well, we're paying.  

My misgivings about AOC, from the start, were tied to her association with the Democratic Socialists of America, a group which has, in its four decades, apparently produced one and only one political success of its own, her, and that depended, entirely, on her running as a Democrat in a seat secured by the Democratic Party and local democrats decades before she was born.  

The crowing about that one success reminded me of the crowing of Greens in Maine and, remarkably, around the country when they produced their apogee of political success, their one and only candidate who managed to be elected to a state legislature,  John Eder, who subsequently lost that seat in Portland, Maine,  one of the Greenest cities in the United States and who has been heard of almost not at all since then.*  The socialists and others on the play-left seemed to think her election was the start of the great new Socialist millennium on the strength of her winning as a Democrat in a safe Democratic seat - something which Nancy Pelosi pointed out that she had in common with her as she tried to explain things to her a while back.  

I was impressed with AOC's intelligence and energy and social-media chops as well as much else about her but I had early misgivings that she might believe or come to believe the hype the play-left was mounting around her.  I hoped that she would see through it to the fact that she was one vote in the House of Representatives and that any possible success she would have in actually doing something depended on the votes of Democrats who were not from safe seats, who represented people who were not enthusiastic for every part of the Democratic Socialists or the "Justice Democrats" or her largely affluent, white, mostly urban fan base's agenda.  That is if the shifting, at times contradicting emotional piques and enthusiasms of so many of that fandom can be called an agenda.  

This past few weeks, I don't think she's grown in realism while in office.  Or at least not enough to avoid the kind of thing she has generated as a problem for Democrats.  Look who is using the fight she and her chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti picked with Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats,  I mean, I read a lot of what  I've read about it in the frequently friggin' Republican tool box, The Hill.   
 
I agree with what Representative Lacy Clay said in slamming AOC and Chakrabarti and the "Justice Democrats" about the absurd accusation that Nancy Pelosi was singling out four Women of Color for criticism - Lacy Clay could probably teach AOC more about real racism and confronting and fighting it than she'll ever learn in her district.  

“What a weak argument, because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. That’s unbelievable to me,” Clay said. “I could care less. I could really care less. I agree with the Speaker. Four people, four votes out of 240 people, who cares.

. . . “It shows you how weak their argument is when they have to resort and direct racist accusations toward Speaker Pelosi … it’s very disappointing to me,” Clay said.

Still, I like AOC and think she has a lot of potential.  But she only has that potential the extent to which she understands that her district, her fan base are a small fraction of even the Democratic Party, any of those not being Democrats NOT likely to help in passing any bill she wants to see made law.  In fact, given their behavior since their very limited success, her fan base is clearly going to hurt the chances of anything she wants to do.  That is assuming that splitting the Democratic Party and the Democratic Caucus of the House AND EVEN THE PEOPLE OF COLOR IN THE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS isn't part of her agenda.  Though it certainly seems to be part of the "Justice Democrat's" agenda, as it has so much of the play-left composed mostly of white, affluent play-lefties. 

The Missouri Democrat also described Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti and the progressive group Justice Democrats as “juvenile” and “ignorant.”

The Justice Democrats have endorsed a progressive primary challenger against Clay and other centrist Democrats. Chakrabarti last week sent out a tweet comparing centrist Democrats to "new Southern Democrats" that "certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s."

“It shows you how ignorant and little history [Chakrabarti] knows, how ignorant he is to American history. How dare he,” Clay said.

“They’re missing the fact that we have a very thin margin of a majority that we’re operating under and apparently it doesn’t matter to Justice Democrats, they just want to get skins. They want to score points for whatever reason. But I find it juvenile, their tactics, I find their ignorance to be beyond belief about American history and about who are really segregationists. And so how dare they try to play the race card at this point, it shows you the weakness of their arguments.”

The energetic youth of AOC,  of her chief of staff, of so many of her most ardent fans is not an unalloyed virtue, no more than long experience is necessarily so, but to ignore the wisdom that comes with experinece is one of the stupidest things the young habitually do.  But the backfiring failure of these kinds of antics are exactly what the ever-Green idiocy of the play-left, even very old play-lefties never, ever seem to learn anything from.  Believe me, I remember the as full-of-themselves lefties from the time I was AOC's age, lots of them are now problematic fan-boys and gals of AOC and those led into unreality by her Chief of Staff.    

I think that safe in their bubble of tech-world, safe-district, affluence supported leftiness it takes a really exceptional person to see past it.   That AOC is now beholden to such idiocy, having been a participant in it as a Democratic Socialist, a "Justice Democrat" and a Bernie Sanders supporter is probably the thing that will make or break her career as a political doer instead of an empty symbol.   If she doesn't dump her Chief of Staff, to start with, I think she'll turn out to be a flash in the pan.  She could probably remain in Congress as such an ineffective flash-in-the-pan but Democrats are already talking about mounting a primary challenge to her in 2020.  There is no gurantee that even her district is entirely OK with what she's done in Congress.**  Which gets us back to where we started, with the other three Congresswomen lumped in with her.  They need to wonder if they want to be a part of that problem for the one and only party through which they'll ever actually do something while in Congress.  I have a suspicion that Ayanna Pressley, for one, will probably show faster that she understands the situation and is prepared to do something different, she has a lot less to overcome in the play-lefties of her base.  I don't know the other two or their districts so I don't know.

That the "Justice Democrats" have also picked a fight with the Congressional Black Caucus, seeking to unseat many of their members with decades worth of practical experience or replacing people who have proven they can win their districts for unproven, untested, in many cases likely unelectable "Justice Democrats" shows how really, really dangerous they are.  It's no wonder Nancy Pelosi, the most able and capable Democratic leader in decades has to speak down to them. 


* I believe that Eder still has the distinction of being the Green who attained election to the highest office in that fraudulent parties history.  Eder ran AS A DEMOCRAT! for the Maine 12th legislative district  in 2018 but lost the nomination spectacularly to Victoria Foley who went on to win the seat, spectacularly.   The goddamned quisling Jill Stein and the Greens need to be crushed, exposing the reason she was at that infamous RT dinner with Michael Flynn and Vladimir Putin is essential.  

**  Given the history of the play-left in Democratic politics,  if I were in her district, I'd get AOC AND EVERY OTHER DEMOCRATIC POLITICIAN on record as pledging their support to whoever wins the nomination of the Democratic Party members.  Given her origin in the Bernie Sanders campaign, where her Chief of Staff also came from, given the Democratic Socialists' past endorsement of Ralph Nader against the Democratic nominee, it's especially necessary to force their public commitment to supporting Democratic candidates and not running against them, risking becoming the spoilers that play-lefties have been.  I would say that the left AOC is from has had their most significant political impact in acting as spoiler-enablers of Republican-fascism.

3 comments:

  1. She's beginning to remind me of Dan Crenshaw, the newly elected representative from my district, who won mostly because he's GOP. Crenshaw has spent his first months chasing publicity by criticizing Omar and tangling with AOC on Twitter. Per a picture, he was at Trump's"Tech Summit" yesterday. I don't think he understands his district very well. AOC may understand her's better, but she needs to figure out her job is legislation, not self-aggrandizement. I hope Crenshaw finds out he blew his chance, but I also hope AOC figures out it's not all about her.

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    1. Is she doesn't, I hope her district John Eders her. I would expect any congressional district in the country has people as capable as AOC, if not as media catching. I think someone should point out to her that a lot of the attention isn't based on more than Republicans and Republican friendly media figuring she will cost Democrats in ways like she is showing she could cost Democrats. I'd guess that's a majority of the media attention. She might feel that she's in control of that but she's only in control of what she tweets and says, not even how people will use those things.

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    2. Media bubbles are usually mirrored on the inside. That's the problem.

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