What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

There is no collective effort with the establishment. They want different things. One side organizes tenants' unions, the other side takes a million dollars to lobby against rent control.

xpost no, but contrary to popular opinion, people don't all process the same information in the same manner

i mean i'm not gonna deprive someone from feeling misery over things like this but i'll be damned if i'll let anybody tell me I'm wrong for not feeling that way

That’s a good question, but I generally choose to be happy when like-minded people are so happy they are dancing in the streets.

I am also generally an optimist, and we just saw a lot of growth and victories for progressives over the past week and the falling of one gigantic hurdle (a GOP presidency) so really i’ve just been peeved by the doom and gloom of some posters here.

Prop 22 is one of the worst harbingers of the future of being a working person in America - the cretins at Uber and Lyft and behind the proposition movement aren't hillbilly Republicans from Tuscaloosa, they're former Obama staffers and Kamala Harris's family.

(But the cretins from Tuscaloosa will happily pick up the ball from here, of course.)

Yeah hope you enjoy sharecropping for venture capitalists in your golden years

i could die of just about everything any day of the week, and i don't wanna die with my butthole clenched

Would you believe the actual communists I know inform me I’m basically just a liberal

They aren’t wrong neither

earnestly wondering if it might be a good idea to have a dedicated gloom and doom thread so the nice people can enjoy themselves in peace

There’s only #onethread

I’m genuinely not doomy or gloomy!! I resent the implication that I am actually.

We have the Joe Biden sucks thread and it's not okay to say Joe Biden sucks there so... doubt it.

There is no collective effort with the establishment. They want different things. One side organizes tenants' unions, the other side takes a million dollars to lobby against rent control.

To be fair, rent control is a disaster that made millions and millions for landlords and keynesian economists, the same that are vouching for single payer, consider it to be a fraud most of the time.

A good NYTimes interview.

We finally have a fuller understanding of the results. What’s your macro takeaway?
Well, I think the central one is that we aren’t in a free fall to hell anymore. But whether we’re going to pick ourselves up or not is the lingering question. We paused this precipitous descent. And the question is if and how we will build ourselves back up.

We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.

But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat.

...

What if the administration is hostile? If they take the John Kasich view of who Joe Biden should be? What do you do?

Well, I’d be bummed, because we’re going to lose. And that’s just what it is. These transition appointments, they send a signal. They tell a story of who the administration credits with this victory. And so it’s going be really hard after immigrant youth activists helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It’s going to be really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her district.

It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout.

If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is.

Incredible that she apparently didn’t even to run for re-election

*want to

I mean I understand 100% obv

Some of this is criminal. It’s malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election. I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet.

this reminds me of this classic clip of Nomiki Konst at a post-2016 DNC Unity Reform meeting

It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout.

will more ilxors start to agree with me about this now that AOC is saying it

fuck she rules, hope she keeps running

What is your expectation as to how open the Biden administration will be to the left? And what is the strategy in terms of moving it?

I don’t know how open they’ll be. And it’s not a personal thing. It’s just, the history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grass roots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.

Hope she follows her bliss and moves into a Maine lighthouse

hope she keeps running

right through Schumer's dessicated form so that he explodes into dust and she ascends to majority leader


classic clip of Nomiki Konst

good stuff

Some of this is criminal. It’s malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election. I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet.

My favorite part of this is that "the year of our Lord 2020" is a very internet-y turn of phrase.

kinda condescending to presume that non-miserabilists care less about the world not being better imho

― flopson, Saturday, November 7, 2020 4:56 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

whenever ppl say stuff like that it reads to me as self-pity at your own pessimism of the will

― flopson, Saturday, November 7, 2020 5:00 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also, flopson otm

My favorite part of this is that "the year of our Lord 2020" is a very internet-y turn of phrase.

it might even be a dril thing

pessimism about longstanding institutions that have worked more often than not to hamper progress ≠ pessimism of the will imho

AOC is in fact very clear-headed and unequivocal about their record in this very interview. even someone with her remarkable skill/ability set and extremely influential position is by no means confident that "pushing the party left" is going to work out at all

There's a fine line between hopeful skepticism and hopeless fatalism.

I find myself, as I expect many do, on different sides of that line from day to day!

AOC right on in those comments, tbf.

I will add to Rob's post, though, and say that while Milo and silby and myself and other more left-oriented people on this board can be extremely soaked blankets, the 'rationality and even-handed realism' view is equally cumbersome and imho, shows a deep lack of imagination and capitulation to a system of so-called governance and justice that doesn't actually serve anyone. It takes the status quo for granted and then when argued against, says 'but the status quo is this you idiot.' it's circular and lazy.

At least some of the left idealism expressed here and elsewhere on the board dares to dream of a better life for people instead of constantly saying 'bUt tHe sYsTeM w0rKs aNd dOEsN'T wAnT tHaT, bE ReAliStIc.'

the one gift of the soon-to-be-deposed administration is that "being realistic" in the post-trump era - when literally the most egregious, explicitly politically impossible shit happened every day for years - means nothing

90% of the time you guys (and it’s always guys) are not expressing what you are for, it’s what you’re against, and 80% of the time what you’re against boils down to “my existence as an upper middle-class person of color” mixed in with “I’m not saying Obama is a race and class traitor but WINK WINK”

there's a shit ton more to be against than for in the existing order. the fucking planet is burning.

millions and millions of people in the global south will die in my lifetime due to completely predictable forces in part to maintain the lifestyle of nearly everyone on this board (myself clearly included) and I'm not inclined to be sunshine and roses about it, especially when all existing praxis in our hyper alienated world seems to me to be utterly unequal to the task of significantly righting the ship.

(that's not to say we shouldn't do things to try. I do!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsT2akkI4lc

Simon, wouldn’t energy be better spent on trying convincing people who vote for those centrist than to just add to the animosity by shitting on those same politicians? I think sometimes our contention as less to do with goals, all in all there is more common ground than anything, and more to do with how we get there. All of the BLM, the Sunrise Movement, Ocasio-Cortez, Thunberg have been succesful because they aren’t afraid to embrace people who are initially comfortable with the status quo in order to speak to them directly and grow their ranks, instead of constantly rehashing that no progress is ever going to happen unless we abide by your ethics and understandings of society; I firmly believe most people react negatively to dogma.

It’s not even about being nice to centrists, it’s about making a positive case for why your policies are better (which should be really easy to do because they are) rather than performative self-flagellation disguised as shitting on everyone around you

I think sometimes our contention as less to do with goals, all in all there is more common ground than anything, and more to do with how we get there.

Aka ILX's raison d'être.

performative self-flagellation disguised as shitting on everyone around you

You've got this backwards; the shitting on everyone else is the real purpose.

Thunberg (has) been successful...

I think she'd dispute this

jesus

Her role is not to fix climate change herself on her own, but to raise awareness and action and in that regard she has been extremely succesful.

DJP, the only reason I tend to go more toward Simon's side is that the case has already been made for many of the policies that would help people, such as a $15 (or $20, which it should be by all rights) minimum wage, universal health care, building up mass transit and infrastructure, cleaner energy solutions, etc. Arguments for these policies have existed for a long time, and yet progress on them has been incremental at best and completely oppositional at worst.

So, at a certain point, having people tell me to "argue my case with positive solutions" when that's what I've been doing for most of my adult life is *incredibly frustrating.*

If you are frustrated that people don’t see the Light of your Obviously Much Better policies then yeah that’s a problem.

performative self-flagellation disguised as shitting on everyone around you

You've got this backwards; the shitting on everyone else is the real purpose.

to be clear, I have some differences of opinion w a bunch of you but I don't wish ill on anyone (on this board). but I react negatively to dogma, too.

The other night I was discussing similar issues with a friend, who was saying that the left is at fault for not reaching out to religious people or those in rural areas, and I was like, "look, while I agree with you in spirit, having to continually make my case to people who have never met me halfway on anything is a bit of a fool's errand."

If you are frustrated that people don’t see the Light of your Obviously Much Better policies then yeah that’s a problem.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, November 8, 2020 8:42 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You obviously can't read.

I think some proselyting is impossible as well, when you made it clear that restricting abortion is the political hill you'll die on, it's a difference of opinion that can only be resolved at the ballot.