What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

Almost as if ... uniting people around a vision of a better future can motivate them ... weird.

(not picking on Aimless or anyone)

roundup from Aidan Smith (Data for Progress) Twitter:

"House Dems who lost reelection in 2020:

- Donna Shalala, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Joe Cunningham, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Xochitl Torres Small, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Abby Finkenauer, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Kendra Horn, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Collin Peterson, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Joe Cunningham, an opponent of Medicare for All and defunding the police.
- Debbie Murcasel Powell, who once spoke in favor of Medicare for All but abandoned support for the issue, and also an opponent of defunding the police.
- Max Rose, who ran hard to the right on matters of policing, disparaged his progressive colleagues (Ocasio-Cortez and Omar in particular), and was still called a "cop hater" and lost."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/06/memo-centrist-democrats-stop-blaming-progressives-house-losses/

And what exactly are centrists asking progressives to do? It sounds like they’re saying, “Republicans falsely accused me of believing what you believe, so that means you have to change your positions and believe only what I believe.” Do they want the progressives to change their beliefs on health care or economics or some other issue? Should the progressives just stop advocating for their preferred agenda at all?

Let’s not forget, the Democratic Party nominated exactly the candidate those centrists wanted — and that didn’t in any way change what Republicans said about him. Biden was the moderate in the race, but Republicans still called him a radical socialist. It’s utterly bizarre that after all this time, there are still Democrats who believe that if they change what they say, it will change what Republicans say about them.

Obama was painted as a radical leftist, muslim, black nationalist and did pretty ok

I mean that happens to literally every democrat now (well, except the muslim part)

God help the progressives if they don't vote for the centrists now screeching, though.

It doesn't help that "defund" doesn't suggest any particular limit on how much funding would be eliminated. To me the prefix de- strongly suggests eliminating almost all police funding. I mean, you wouldn't think very highly of a degreasing compound that only got rid of 15% of the grease you applied it to.

When school districts and homeless services and public transport and parks departments and libraries in your region were defunded over the last four years, by what percentage was each?

are you fucking kidding me

Ideology + messaging are the spicy convos a lot of people jump to but sometimes it’s about execution and technical capacity.

Digital execution was not good, polls were off, ironically DCCC banned the firms who are the best in the country at Facebook bc they work w progressives!

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 6, 2020

xp - You're missing my point, sic. Those defundings were not sold to the public using the slogan "Defund the libraries!" or "Defund the parks!". If they were sold at all, it was via "Lower taxes!", not "Fewer services!"

To make myself clearer, the slogan needs to express the benefits, not just the mechanism. The slogan "Defund the police" expresses a clear benefit only to those who want fewer police, not to those who want more social services, even though more social services is the core benefit of the policy. I'm not saying it's bad policy, but rather that it is unclear sloganeering. One measure of how easily it can easily be misrepresented by its opponents is to see whether those opponents feel comfortable quoting it verbatim.

My congresswoman (Mucarsel-Powell) is on the list of those who lost reelection. It's a pity. She excelled at constituent services, certainly better than Donna Shalala a district next door (across the street, actually). Our district is overwhelmingly red: blood-red and upper middle-class. Medicare For All and DTP were losers in this district even if she'd embraced them.

Shalala otoh would've benefited from being less of a Clinton-ite hedger.

Finally, Miami-Dade's first female (and liberal) mayor voted to increase the police's budget every year despite her opponent (and fellow commissioner) trying to make it stick.

...and she won by seven points

the point I was going for (as was Smith in his thread) was merely that anyone trying on the "centrism is safer as a rule" narrative we always hear like a drumbeat is full of shit. I would have just linked the thread as that was clearer in context but I felt like giving us all a break from embeds lol

there's a reason why tough-on-crime politics has worked for a generation. it still works! other things can work too though.

also, local elections differ

i think the digital dodge is a really smart move for her tbh.

fwiw Aimless i think for many folks, defunding the police has at least one other "core benefit," which is, less funded police.

Yeah tbh if the Dem establishment takes this as yet another opportunity to shit on the progressive agenda that is popular and could actually win them some votes, then they can fuck off even more than before. No wonder so many people think they're full of shit-- they are!

I said: "Defund the police" expresses a clear benefit only to those who want fewer police

Doc said: for many folks, defunding the police has at least one other "core benefit," which is, less funded police.

We're both talking about the same people, the ones for whom fewer police is an end in itself. The question is whether there are enough of them to win elections. If so, then the slogan is perfect for those cities and counties where "we want fewer police" is the dominant sentiment. My sense is that this is not going to cover all the places that could benefit from the policy changes being proposed.

well those people should be browbeaten into it because they're racist and wrong

Pitching it as moving resources from cops to social services seems like the best move to me.

Like what if cops could do stuff like find your stolen laptop or mugging assailant because other people (or at least less cops) would handle the homeless interactions and domestic disputes?

^ this is the actual pitch, it's just not a three word slogan

I think it's cool than in a party that is very much a coalition that different ideologies clash and contradict each other, defund the police can't possibly mean the same in Brooklyn, Ferguson and some rural Kansas county, and that's okay because the diversity of the country probably means that for many types of policies different solutions can be applicable (not for health tho!). The messaging that is off here is when centrists and progressive are blaming each other for not allowing them to be 'the' message, as if one blanket statement could be applicable for all.

Medicare4All is the preferred policy of most voters. Fox News viewers endorsed a slew of moderate left-wing policies in exit polls. The war on drugs saw a fairly decisive victory by... *checks notes*... Drugs. 29 out of 40 national-level candidates endorsed by the DSA won their races. Every single Dem who lost their seat opposed M4A and other progressive policies. At some point the Democratic leaders might as well think about running on policies that are already popular, and just explaining to everyone else why they're good!

2 xp - Yes. We know. The only discussion here is how clearly that three word slogan conveys the intended message and whether opponents can effectively distort its true meaning. imo, they can and will distort it very effectively. it would be better to admit this and seek a slogan that may not be as popular with activists, but doesn't hand your opponents an opening they can very easily exploit against you. Because most people's politics are not much more sophisticated than what is said in a three word slogan, like e.g. Green New Deal.

The slogan works great as long as you message what a waste of money current police funding and operations are, and how that money could better serve the people via services, not tanks and tear gas and $300,000 overtime and $250,000,000 brutality lawsuit settlements.

The police have been pushing the message very very strongly this year, to be fair.

John Kasich spoke for longer at the DNC than Julian Castro and AOC combined, the latter of whom was pointedly not invited.

Rashida Tlaib got 66% in her two-way primary and was re-elected. Ilhan Omar got 58% in a five-way primary, and was re-elected. After AOC beat her primary challenger 82% - 18%, the challenger ran against her in the general and was beaten again.

Good communicators and policies are already successful in the Democratic Party. The party acting terrified of them is not, on the whole, motivating the electorate.

To have a party that allows that much diversity of opinion on such an important issue as health care is pretty rare, even outside of the US, I don't see much of it in Canada, even less so in France. There's a bit of a conflict of narrative when on one hand, the Dem party leadership is so powerful and evil they can decide a candidate without consulting the people and ignore a whole part of the electorate and yet on the other hand those progressive candidates keep getting elected under the Democratic banner. I don't think any side is truly the victim of the other and as long as people like Ocasio-Cortez or Jamaal Bowman are allowed the thrive I don't think we can talk about 'shitting on progressive ideas'.

To have a party that allows that much diversity of opinion on such an important issue as health care is pretty rare, even outside of the US

yes, this is true and good

Is the diversity of opinion not less to do with ideology per se and more to do with who donates to the party/candidates? M4A is popular with all voters, they’re not allowing anti-M4A opinion because they firmly believe that paying thousands of dollars a month for insurance and people being bankrupted by medical debt is intrinsically good.

In some places the notion of raising taxes isn't as popular as in other places. Pre-pandemic I've found M4A popularity to be vastly overrated by progressive (538 had a good article about it), but I think now it would make sense that a huge portion of the electorate switched, or maybe it's wishful thinking on my part. In any case if M4A's popularity skew younger voters, well it's just a matter of time now.

as long as people like Ocasio-Cortez or Jamaal Bowman are allowed the thrive

are you suggesting that as long as they're allowed to run as Democrats, they're not allowed to complain about their treatment by the party establishment?

No i’m suggesting that the fact they can openly complain about the establishment is a pretty rare sight in party politics.

Because the Democrats aren’t a political party in any meaningful sense.

Well good then it seems to be working very well for the progressives.

In the sense that they’re allowed to run? Sure. Not supported, just allowed, mind you.

In the sense that the party leaders will adopt progressive policy stances? No.

And slowly and surely they won’t need the party leaders, so who cares.

people who die as a result of the slowness might, but they won't be around any longer, so who cares

the fact they can openly complain about the establishment

A mark of her excellence as a politician is that AOC almost invariably frames her arguments as disagreements on the best route to a common positive goal, not as complaints.

Agreed. AOC has amazingly sharp communication skills. Excellent political and diplomatic skills, too. She must have started honing them when she was very young, since they seem to be innate by now.

a big part of this is called "working in a regular-ass public-facing job for a long time" which the majority of US national elected reps have never done

(not to discount that separately from / on top of that she is v skilled)

her tweets have better zings on both libs and republicans than like 99% of left twitter

That’s not hard

Thank you sic for your recent posts that did a better job of explaining my frustrations with the Dems than I ever could, mostly because I get so angry that my general incoherence really ramps up

To have a party that allows that much diversity of opinion on such an important issue as health care is pretty rare, even outside of the US, I don't see much of it in Canada, even less so in France. There's a bit of a conflict of narrative when on one hand, the Dem party leadership is so powerful and evil they can decide a candidate without consulting the people and ignore a whole part of the electorate and yet on the other hand those progressive candidates keep getting elected under the Democratic banner. I don't think any side is truly the victim of the other and as long as people like Ocasio-Cortez or Jamaal Bowman are allowed the thrive I don't think we can talk about 'shitting on progressive ideas'.

― Van Horn Street, Friday, November 6, 2020 6:52 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think a lot of the American left doesn’t appreciate that in other countries the party has much MORE control over who runs on its ticket. I guess our semi up for grabs ballot lines are the consolation prize for our rigid two party system.

TBF more leftists have finally woken up to this and that’s why we are seeing these left on dem ticket wins. It’s so much more fruitful than the bullshit like the Green Party that people were focusing on when I was younger.

Here's the middle of a thread that, at this point, breaks down AOC's specific messaging on Defund The Police and other applications of that three-word format.

Here's AOC's tweet history on the word "defund." When "Defund ICE" was an important part of left messaging, she tweeted about it all the time. "Defund the police"? Very different story. https://t.co/P5t3MuMp77

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) November 6, 2020

I said: "Defund the police" expresses a clear benefit only to those who want fewer police

Doc said: for many folks, defunding the police has at least one other "core benefit," which is, less funded police.

We're both talking about the same people, the ones for whom fewer police is an end in itself. The question is whether there are enough of them to win elections. If so, then the slogan is perfect for those cities and counties where "we want fewer police" is the dominant sentiment.

BTW by my re-reading, Doc was saying "less" on purpose: I certainly think less funded police is a far more urgent issue than fewer police.

Even if the former has a corollary benefit of leading to the latter, by weeding out some of the types who are only in it for the ability to use resources against their peers.


(Appreciate it, tabes.)

people are saying "defund the police" isn't a workable slogan, but personally i think every city should have a big billboard with a chart showing police budget vs every other department's budget, paired with the line "when was the last time a cop helped you" pic.twitter.com/3MgLoAPsUo

— Aisling McCrea (@ambientGillian) November 6, 2020

That tweet is exactly right. Another potential approach: show pictures of the most horrifyingly militarized cops in Yourtown and ask, "Does Ourtown really need a tank more than the library needs a new roof (or whatever)?"

Although even "defund ICE," I think it was easily manipulable by opponents into sounding like it meant "stop doing border control" when it just means "go back to doing border control the way we did it for decades until we impulsively decided 15 years ago to create an unaccountable subagency to take over the job and do it worse"