I just find it ironic that you keep trying to throw cold water on our infatuation with Cortez while being deeply, deeply in love with Kasich yourself. I mean you fantasized about the Dem candidate in 2020 picking him as his VP.
If you get to hang a Kasich poster on your wall, let us hang our Cortez.
Good Christ. I like to think the majority of active Democrats are capable of enjoying AOC dunking on morons without burning the party down if and when she turns out to not be a generational political talent.
But i actually know who Kasich is. He’s served in government since basically before i was born. You have no idea who Cortez is.
Further, nothing of value is being tethered to Kasich. This isn’t just about you liking Cortez. Hell, i like Cortez. But letting a relative unknown become such a key part of the party’s public face is, potentially, opening yourself up to a weakness.
If you let that happen, and she says dumb things (which she does sometimes) it lets your opponent attribute those dumb things to your entire party.
You understand that I’m not saying any of this to hurt you, right? I want you to win. I want the GOP to be destroyed.
??? You are lecturing scarecrows here. No one is expected her to be a cornerstone of the party. The policy ideas she’s espousing are nothing new–it’s basically Bernie’s platform. Her media presence is largely because of saturation coverage on the right. Sure, she’s young and charismatic and fun to watch. (unlike any Republican), but you don’t have to tell us she’s young and inexperienced. We know. We also know that she’s an effective campaigner and organizer and that she has experience working in activism and on political campaigns. She didn’t pop up out of nowhere: she organized for Bernie in 2016, traveled to Flint and Standing Rock to do activism, burned shoe leather and rallied progressive organizations to her campaign. She’s got a seat on the House Financial Services Committee, where she’ll probably be able to have the biggest substantive effect, and a (maybe evanescent) media platform, which she is mostly very adept at using. She’s one to watch, and maybe hazily hints at the future of the party, but where do you see evidence of anything else? What else could there be evidence of?
(And Jesus, don’t bring up Matt Yglesias’s piece, which was much more about decrying undemocratic restrictions on who can run for office than an actual exhortation for her to run in 2020. Literally no one actually expects her to run in 2020.)
This is true, because she won’t be old enough. (She’ll be 31, the Constitution says 35. I know, it’s the point of the piece.)
Then good. It seems like both the far left and the far right are pushing for exactly that. If I’m seeing something that isn’t there, so much the better.
Yeah, Cortez seems to be an idol created entirely by the Right (with help from breathless media). If they would have ignored her she’d just be going about her business.
The media loves to build someone up to tear them apart. I’m afraid they’re going to go after her like a pack of vultures at some point.
I also remember my first progressive hero going down in flames due to his own infidelity, so I’m always cautious.
That said, I’m hoping she’s our version of Reagan who will bring our morning on America one day while I’m still alive (and hopefully Trumpland’s midnight in America)
I’d be more concerned about Cortez if it wasn’t the obsession on the right that caused a lot of this fame to begin with. She’s young, clever, and good at social media. I don’t even agree with a lot of her approaches, but her voice at the table isn’t alarming. Healthy parties can have a variety of voices.
She’s doing an excellent job at owning the cons.
All she’s really doing on Twitter is clapping back via facts and figures at all the bullshit the GOP tries to ram down our throats. If that seems like her head is getting too big or whatever, it’s only because the media has been so fucking derelict for so fucking long in that duty. It’s not hard - all it requires is a little courage to crawl out from under the GOP’s bootheel and point a finger. It’s like worrying Max Scherzer is going to blow out his elbow pitching to a bunch of little leaguers.
So you keep dunking on thirsty chuds, Alexandria, and I’ll keep laughing as they respond with comparisons to Mr.Ed (a timely reference!) and desperately try to tag her with Sarah Palin-esque quotes - which is extra hilarious, considering they fawn over a president that thinks the stealth fighter is literally invisible.
I would prefer that AOC had not been thrust into the spotlight this way, but given that she has been, she’s handling it a hell of a lot better than I would.
Freshman Congressman Gordon Cameron says:
“Everybody stop being mean to me I’m shutting myself in my apartment to play retro RPGs”
FCGC’s got my vote!
FAKE FCGCs
All she’s really doing on Twitter is clapping back via facts and figures at all the bullshit the GOP tries to ram down our throats. If that seems like her head is getting too big or whatever, it’s only because the media has been so fucking derelict for so fucking long in that duty. It’s not hard - all it requires is a little courage to crawl out from under the GOP’s bootheel and point a finger.
Preach it brother.
Pretty good long article, making the case that Democrats should start the impeachment proceeding now rather than waiting for Mueller’s report.
All Your Base is one of my first memories from the internet, which I only got in 1997, at the tender age of 11. It’s not absurd for her to have been on the AYB train (haha AOC train punz) from near its inception, tbh. The humor in the original AYB video is not exactly. . . sophisticated :)
(Also, I mean, it was one of like eleven things on the whole internet to even look at)
Memes existed and we’re even written about at least as early as 1996. I think they were prevalent on boards like The Well.