What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

xpost I wasn't talking about AOC! she's the best

wasn't talking about ppl itt but the ppl mentioned who apparently think AOC is a sellout

Well, what's to "win" in a world that's already doomed?

Winning is for losers iirc.

xp sorry ums I conflated your post w unperson's

yeah, AOC is the opposite of all the aggrieved polit. posters here who would rather speculate themselves into submission.

getting a little tired of all this winning!

booming post.

wasn't talking about ppl itt but the ppl mentioned who apparently think AOC is a sellout

While such people surely exist are the numerous enough to be significant? Unless they are important or significant enough to address directly it can lead to misunderstanding about who is meant

Apologies if they were mentioned and I missed it

some unknown number of them have been seen by someone on twitter at some point; therefore speculation about their beliefs and motivation should drive all political discussion on ilx

yeah, AOC is the opposite of all the aggrieved polit. posters here who would rather speculate themselves into submission.

― Yerac, Tuesday, August 25, 2020 8:29 AM (one hour ago)

heavily otm

AOC would have talked herself out of running, had she listened to hardcore left twitter. so who the fuck cares what they think about her?

also, paranormal sci-fi thought: if a hardcore left didn't exist to pre-emptively decide that AOC sucks, a new hardcore left would invent herself in order to do it. the law of humanity is this: everyone has to be criticized heavily from at least one side, preferably from all sides. absolutely everyone. there is no hope. the cold reality of there being no hope and no future will create itself, if it is not being heard

#voteAOC

so who the cares what they think about her?

I've no idea!

hek

AOC is a sellout, P.S. my opinions are not so much reasoned observations but rather projections of my addiction to misery.

If 99% of Democrats are hopeless sellouts and delusional incrementalists who aren't worth engaging with, how do the remaining 1% manage to get anything done? Or is the idea of "getting things done" itself delusional, given that Everything Is Fucked and We're All Doomed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeWduNomDqY

As they are never named specifically and we never find out who they are this may be difficult information to come by

the answer is cryptopolitics, with every political transaction publicly recorded on the blockchain

Twitter mind phantoms: owned

This is worth clicking through and reading. (The lessons on how to read the media are likely obvious to all in this thread - the point is, how many other sitting members of Congress will bother trying to educate the public in this way? Fucking none.)

.@aoc has a very good take on being media savvy: Find reporters you like vs. blanket fandom of an outlet. I think that’s the future of the business, readers will follow individuals, not organizations. pic.twitter.com/ipejHpCBEa

— Steve Beynon (@StevenBeynon) August 25, 2020

If 99% of Democrats are hopeless sellouts and delusional incrementalists who aren't worth engaging with, how do the remaining 1% manage to get anything done? Or is the idea of "getting things done" itself delusional, given that Everything Is Fucked and We're All Doomed?

― jaymc, Tuesday, August 25, 2020 11:18 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

just making sure we’re still dunking on anecdotal twitter leftists mentioned off-handedly about 30 posts ago

I'm not dunking on anecdotal Twitter leftists, I'm directing questions at the leftists in this thread.

Incrementalists would be worth engaging with - like AOC, or Bernie!

The Pelosis, Schumers and Bidens, OTOH, the actual power brokers of the party, don’t represent progressive change in even an incremental way. How do we know? The last 40 years of Democratic history.

Well, I'm glad you like AOC and Bernie. I'm not wild about Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden, either, but hopefully we can elect more progressive Democrats and push the party's balance of power further to the left. And in the short term, that may require working with the power brokers and applying pressure where it's needed.

Like, guillotining Nancy Pelosi isn't an option.

By all means, primary her, though!

push the party's balance of power further to the left. And in the short term, that may require working with the power brokers and applying pressure where it's needed.

That sounds good - but isn't it just what was being talked about before the Twitter doomer circlejerk? ie the idea that AOC is a future President/party leader/etc.?

The leaders and center of the party have shown themselves completely resistant to pressure and change - because it inherently comes at the expense of their power and the power of their backers. There's no reason to believe they're going to be more accommodating of AOC than they have been of the party left at any other time since 99% of us have been alive.

AOC's function in many ways seems to be to assuage people that they're right to keep ridin with Biden/etc. because the party future is so bright - and explains why so many people who abhorred Bernie (who served to remind people of how awful and useless the Democrats have been for multiple generations) are superfans.

the likely greatest national impact of AOC in the 2020s is that she's part of the proof of concept vanguard: yes, an intelligent young non-white woman can break into politics and excel even while under pressure. Which is to say as much as i like AOC, i'm more excited about what she represents and engenders than what she actually is, which is a promising first term progressive congresswoman with a lot of buzz but understandably extremely limited clout to effect change

The leaders and center of the party have shown themselves completely resistant to pressure and change - because it inherently comes at the expense of their power and the power of their backers.

I don't think this is true. I think the party has changed quite a bit in the past 20 years. And although party leaders have often lagged behind those changes, they've eventually adapted to them.

I *am* excited about the future of the party because I feel like people like AOC and Stacey Abrams and Katie Porter understand the tactics required to effect change in the current moment better than some of the party leaders who have been in Congress for decades.

I'm not sure how you look at the platform Hillary Clinton ran on and say with a straight face that there has been no change in the Democratic Party's center

Because I lived through Hillary’s entire political career and saw how she would have governed.

(Also that Hillary Clinton was the nominee.)

Biden’s camp is already floating austerity and budget hawking. Pelosi and Schumer’s instinctual response to a once in a lifetime economic crisis was tax credits.

AOC's function in many ways seems to be to assuage people that they're right to keep ridin with Biden/etc. because the party future is so bright - and explains why so many people who abhorred Bernie (who served to remind people of how awful and useless the Democrats have been for multiple generations) are superfans.

I'll start praising the Dems when single-payer's on the menu. In the meantime, fuck them less than the GOP, who needs to get voted out asap.

maybe if there were, idk, 200 AOCs acting as Dem reps you'd see some real changes happen at a near acceptable pace. that is never going to happen.

idk, we can dream, can't we?

you can but AOC basically exploited a weakness (with exceptional skill) to get in in the first place. it's just not going to happen that often, and certainly not helped along by the party

When y'all start Reaganland, prepare yourselves for the Joe Biden that emerges during the Carter era.

many xps - but even if you're of the class that has benefitted from Democratic economic policy, on the social side the nominee and likely President was an architect of mass incarceration, has been accused of sexual assault, is a known groper, touts his ties to segregationists, voted for DOMA, avidly supported the Hyde Amendment until last year and is on record as saying abortion is not a right. Neither Biden nor the party can even get on board with legalizing weed.

The 2020 Democratic nominee sits mostly to the right of Al Gore in 2000 - and the party itself, aside from a halfhearted feint about the minimum wage (but not a wealth tax or anything to actually tackle inequality) is no further left in a meaningful way.

I'm a little more optimistic. It's clear that the dems have been hostile to the progressive wing of the party, but I think it has more to do with the (widely-believed, and I think wrongheaded) perception that centrism is the magic sauce that wins elections. The reality seems to be much simpler - charismatic people win elections, pretty much regardless of their political views. So if we can get some more charismatic progressives winning elections, I could see that centrism evaporate from the party, especially now that progressives have their own people-powered fundraising machines.

AOC's function in many ways seems to be to assuage people that they're right to keep ridin with Biden/etc. because the party future is so bright - and explains why so many people who abhorred Bernie (who served to remind people of how awful and useless the Democrats have been for multiple generations) are superfans.

This is obviously a reductive characterization of both of them, but the AOC function seems more productive? IMO, she does a really good job of being critical of the party (in a way that applies pressure within, and also signals to voters that she understands their frustrations with party politics) without being wholly dismissive of it (in a way that would alienate her colleagues and discourage voters). I mean, that just seems like good politics.

xp That sounds right to me, DJI.

what is this "pressure"

one could point to the unique combination of factors that led us to having Biden as the nominee instead of any of the more progressive options - significant liberal fear of Trump getting re-elected, a huge field, a disastrous primary strategy by the second place campaign - but again, since that doesn't support the argument that the Democratic Party is actually right wing, who cares.

there's no reason to think that the democrats won't continue to steer a centrist path. Biden is (fingers-crossed) going to win the general. he won't need to try and pass medicare for all or a green new deal or what have you, as he hasn't promised anything like that. the Bernie wing has been shown to be a busted flush, the contest with Clinton gave a false sense of the popularity of Bernie - lots of his voters in the primary last time around were voting against Clinton, not for Bernie. Biden, while absolutely addled and doing no GOTV in many states, absolutely blew him out the water. Why would the party establishment need to make concessions to a vanquished foe who isn't that popular among registered Dems?

AOC is cool and all but she's one person.

yup. there's no motivation to change beyond doing the right thing and why would that be enough

what is this "pressure"

― unpaid intern at the darvo institute (Simon H.)

geriatric democratic political leadership reading the room and realizing their base is shifting to someone with views that are about 50+ years more progressive than theirs?

did u see the convention
.