What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

they have to be. it's like work from home, once a few companies start doing it, everyone's going to have to either start or have trouble attracting top-rate talent

Harry Enten still dumb as a wooden pundit: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/16/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-polls-like-trump-poll-of-the-week/index.html

(The fact that AOC is not running for national office and therefore has no reason to give a shit how she's polling nationally does not occur to him until paragraph 11:

It could be the case that Ocasio-Cortez doesn't and perhaps shouldn't care that her ratings have gone south. She clearly has a core group of supporters and is able to drive the national press conversation. For her own electoral sake, the group of voters who will decide her fate are in a slice of the Bronx and Queens' sections of New York City.

There's also nothing unique about nationally known politicians being unpopular with the general electorate. As I have noted on Twitter, almost every single candidate running for president in 2020 is more disliked than liked among all voters.

Still...

get ready for lots more tedious silliness of this kind in the months and years to come

I think we are entering an era where every single politician with a national rep is going to have either essentially 0% approval from Dems and some measurable amount of disapproval among their fellow Republicans, or vice versa, which is to say that everybody's going to have negative approval ratings overall.

I have never been polled about a candidate in my life.

Or any politician.

Me neither. I’ve never been polled about anything. I guess maybe it’s because I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize

Try moving to a swing state.

maybe eventually enough state legislatures will pass the national popular vote interstate compact and everyone's vote will actually count again

I was polled and I voted for AOC over Joseph Crowley.

Socialists in Congress expose how big capitalists rip off US taxpayers. Ex: tax-money helps pay for drug research but none of the "private" profits made on those drugs flow to the public that invested. So taxpayers subsidize drug company "private" profits.https://t.co/lClcYvPBYx

— Richard D. Wolff (@profwolff) March 19, 2019

not trying to defending big pharma here, that's for fucking sure, but the counterargument to that line of thinking is that the benefit to taxpayers comes in the form of greater availability of drugs, improved effectiveness of drugs, etc. obviously there are a ton of issues with that (for example, miracle drugs like oxycontin), but it's not like taxpayers funded a private yacht company and never see any changes in their lives - it's medical research that directly affects the drugs that become available.

similar areas where taxpayers are providing the funding for R&D and don't see "direct" returns: NASA, DARPA.

the question is whether the pharmaceutical research that's being funded by taxpayers would still take place if it was entirely funded by the pharmaceutical industry. i have no idea about that.

again, not saying that big pharma doesn't totally abuse the system and that maybe (like they allude to in the clip) it would be possible for them to funnel some of their ludicrously high profits back to the government. but i don't think it's scandalous or unusual that drug research is partly funded by taxpayers, or that taxpayers don't see a "direct" return

could part of the issue be *what* they research? the old point abt how they're super focused on things like the latest viagra improvement, or developing specialized patents for a nasal spray so that they can keep a dirt-cheap migraine drug at $3,000 a dose or w/e. but i dunno how much if any of that stuff comes from public dollars, or is possible because public dollars are subsidizing the r&d operation as a whole....

Time Cover Story: http://time.com/longform/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-profile/

AOC now officially too dumb AND too smart:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ocasio-cortez-trump-nematode

Schrödinger's GOP punching bag.

nematode is not a bad burn really

very millennial, I like it

It's ... interesting ... that only 23% of Republicans haven't heard enough about @AOC to form an opinion, compared to a sizable 44% of Democrats https://t.co/PIoWFDjUiK pic.twitter.com/ybf0YhykSa

— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) March 28, 2019

Hmmmm curious

as usual, AOC had a good rejoinder to that, but come on, this thread can't be ALL @AOC tweets

Because of her I kind of want to get my birth chart read. My spouse would totally disown me though.

AOC is so great. She is my benchmark.

your birth chart read?

https://www.thecut.com/2019/03/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-birth-chart-astrology.html

well this is def the right thread for it

lol @ the update there

otm

in my opinion, astrology is bad

in my opinion, anyone who takes astrology even 1% seriously should have to live on an island with nothing but astrologers

Aleatoric oracles are fun and cool, no problem.

People being super into astrology makes me feel very sad

it's weird, i feel like astrology was a joke for like years and years and now i see that shit all over the place

i guess maybe it's a 70s thing, millennials love their unicorns too

My spouse is an astronomer. He even gets prickly when people talk about biodynamic wine (using astrology and moon phases for growing/harvesting grapes).

I should totally tell him he needs to figure out how to do my chart.

idk I've dealt with astrology quacks my whole life -- there was no hiatus

i think like 70 percent of my friends all actively engage with and keep up with their astrology? they also know it’s all bullshit. sometimes i think it’s fun

yeah it's fun and relatively harmless, or more harmless than instead believing the descendants of Ishmael will have a home at the Temple Mount or whatever

I grew up around Christians w/ this absurd snobbery about astrology and it's like, yeah mom, well the tide *really* is out and you *really* are on your period, so lets's dial it down a little

I may have mentioned it before but my mother’s family joined the JWs in the 1950s to get access to childcare during a family crisis and once my grandfather decided it was bad to be affiliated with them, actually became an astrologer to freak them into leaving the family alone.

talking about astrology is more a social faux pas--especially because people who do it will not stop even if you give them a ton of signals that you don't fucking care. It's like people going on about their RPGs.

It's ... interesting ... that only 23% of Republicans haven't heard enough about @AOC to form an opinion, compared to a sizable 44% of Democrats https://t.co/PIoWFDjUiK pic.twitter.com/ybf0YhykSa
— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) March 28, 2019
― Karl Malone, Thursday, March 28, 2019 9:01 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm fairly certain if you drilled down that Republican subset to "Republicans who watch Fox" that 23% would almost completely disappear. I genuinely think most Fox viewers are already convinced she's the second most powerful politician in this country aside from Trump.

Good.

The most fervent believers in astrology in my purview tend to be gay men looking for supernatural forces outside traditional churches -- a view with which I sympathize and repulses me too.

I have no opinion on the accuracy of this story, just for the hell of it

Yeah, this is the Post, but @aoc really needs to tend to constituent services if she wants to be re-elected. I admire her tremendously and want her to stick around, but this is not the way to go about it. https://t.co/d7b4uKcewW

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) March 31, 2019

She definitely should not be ignoring constituents, but this -- “I thought AOC would be our savior, but that’s not the case,” complained Roxanne Delgado -- was their first problem.

I thought if I voted for AOC that I could lie immobile in the street and that all my wildest dreams would come true. Boy, was I ever wrong about her.

This NY Post writer seems to be assigned to investigating everything Ocasio-Cortez.

I can imagine this is what happens when you win the lottery. Distant relatives and old classmates all have a ten minute pitch and get mad when you don't have the time to entertain every single one right away.

"I could lie immobile in the street and that all my wildest dreams would come true [just four months later]"

I definitely believe that her staff probably has trouble keeping up with all the calls and emails coming in.
The full voicemail thing seems pretty common for lawmakers.

(for the record her official house site has a casework intake form just like every other representative's)

I was just looking at Roxanne Delgado's twitter. She was already mad at AOC in mid Feb for not having her constituent office in the Bronx already opened and for being spotted shopping at Whole Foods.

yerac otm

here are some more gems from this journalist's file:

https://nypost.com/2019/03/02/gas-guzzling-car-rides-expose-aocs-hypocrisy-amid-green-new-deal-pledge/

https://nypost.com/2019/03/02/ocasio-cortezs-chief-of-staff-might-have-broken-campaign-finance-laws/

https://nypost.com/2019/03/23/ocasio-cortez-still-hasnt-paid-tax-bill-from-failed-business-venture/

lol as if pushing for the GND ISN'T about helping people in the Bronx, where they have the highest child asthma rates in the country and ANY improvement to the environment, emissions controls, improved/safe/affordable housing, access to health services, etc would immediately and directly help them.