2733
2734

Heh, I can imagine the GOP right now, salivating at being able to jump on the bandwagon of calling the Congressional Black Caucus racist. They’re gonna be all, “SEE! WE TOLD YOU!”

2735

Whomever made that statement needs a talking to. At this point it sounds like one person. It was completely inappropriate and yes, racist.

2736

Is this a Texas v. NY thing? Goomba might just be a weirdly obscure anti-NYC construction that made sense in their head.

Or the person who composed the tweet has a bunch of gaming-related searches in their history, and so that’s what google popped up when they searched for “puppet”.

2737

To clarify, I am not saying using a Goomba puppet is racist, by itself racist, I am saying combined with that statement, yes it is. It’s a piece of a whole ugly statement. It cannot be presumed okay when paired with something like that person said.

Kind of like posting a monkey picture isn’t racist… until you associate it with a person of color. Any / many other contexts, that would be fine too.

2738

Yeah, I think there’s no doubt what the intent of the overall message was.

2739

The thing is the racist attacks on AOC- they pretty much show what I expect out of the centrist Dems- that they’re just Republicans who care about gay rights and feminism, not for working-class folks or POC.

At this point I’m going to drop trying to work within the system for the Dems- the corruption is just too entrenched. Seeing it in my district in the 2018 House primary, and how much it failed, angered me, and seeing how these folks really feel towards us ordinary folk was the last straw.

2740

Ah, I think it just occurred to me what the goomba reference is…

I think it may be a reference to AOC’s eyebrows. If so, that’s not really racist.

Eh… in this case, we’re actually talking about the congressional black caucus, specifically, so I think it’d be a heavy lift to say they don’t care about people of color.

2741

If I searched for an image of a puppet, and found an image from a video game I have never played, I might have used it as a generic puppet without knowing it would be interpreted as racist.

2742

I think women of color would like to have a word with you. Beauty standards are absolutely a racist front.

I keep seeing references to a group. Isn’t this a single aide, and an aide is not an elected person?

2743

The context of that single comment was from that larger piece, talking about AOC’s apparent feud with the CBC.

2744

I agree completely that what makes it potentially racist was the connection with the comment (that she’s basically a brown puppet controlled by elite white liberals). It’s not just the puppet, it’s the context.

2745

Feuds are okay. At least one person needs to re-examine their approach, and if they can’t admit that what they said was completely inappropriate and racist, they need to be sent packing.

One aide does not represent the entire caucus, and again, they’re not the elected individuals.

2746

Yes, it’s unmistakably the objective.

2747

Gay rights, feminism, healthcare, Russia, immigration/ kids in cages, climate change, public education, tax rates… there are gigantic differences in the policy positions of centrist democrats and republicans.

I also think you’re going to have a hard time saying the CBC doesn’t care about POC.

2748

They care , when it doesn’t impact them. When it does, the solidarity goes down the drain. Just look at all the Nimbyism where Pelosi comes from.

I mean, I’ll put up with them if it means getting something done, as they’re not bad people at their core, but when they’re just telling the folks who actually care that they’ll get nothing and like it- then you have to remind them that they need us just as much, painfully if necessary.

We’re in coalition with them due to necessity, but it’s still a coalition. I can accept, unlike some of the angrier folks I know, that we’re not going to get everything we want, but I won’t accept a straight nothing.

The CBC isn’t a monolith- there are some good folks in there. One of NC’s Dems in Congress, Alma Adams, is one of those folks. There are some in the CBC who are flat-out machine politicians though.

2749

The representatives have to answer to the people who voted them in. You can’t force Democrats from centrists areas not to be centrists. You simply can’t. You might as well just hand them over the Republicans if you try to do that. It is not realistic to ask reps not to represent the people that voted for them. You simply cannot do that. If they’re on the Democratic ticket, they at least don’t answer to Trump, and they vote with the Dems most of the time, presumably.

AOC doesn’t just represent people of color, although being who she is, I assume she takes them, many of the groups, into consideration most of the time. She also represents white people, so of course she is supposed to listen to them. And she is young and new, so she will absolutely make mistakes, probably be taken advantage of a few times, until she gets seasoned… that isn’t a few months worth of learning, that’s years.

Aka, we should not be ousting anyone who works for the people they were voted into to work for so long as they are actually a Democrat. If the population voting for them is ready for a change, let them do the work and make the change, but don’t target them just because it’s 2019. A lot of the seats we picked up in 2018 are not as radical as some are trying to potray them to be. We picked up some tight seats… let’s keep them.

2750

I generally accept this, but on the other hand I think Dems in vulnerable seats generally overestimate how their votes with Republicans on policy and bills and appointments will help them keep that seat. Voting to e.g. confirm Acosta doesn’t seem to have helped anyone keep a Senate seat in 2018.

2751

But it doesn’t seem like they were targeting such seats. They were targeting seats of long time milquetoast centrists.

I would celebrate them raising a challenge to my soon to be former rep Dan Lipinski. It’s people of his ilk who need to be ousted. It’s a safe D seat, he’s been there too long, and is probably the most conservative Dem in Congress, yet has been unopposed in primaries for years.

This is not some centrist district. It’s a solidly blue seat in Cook County where the GOP barely tries to muster a challenge and last time ran an actual fucking nazi instead.

2752

Being a centrist doesn’t make them anymore or less flawed than anyone else. If the Dems didn’t overestimate as a group we wouldn’t keep losing when things are going great to the group that brings the country back into the toilet again.

They still have to represent, and blue in California does not mean blue in Texas, and even within the state there are stark differences. It’s simply not realistic to try and make everyone think and act the same. That’s the shit the GOP is demanding from everyone, and just because some of the results seem nice on the other side, doesn’t mean we should even consider taking on that tactic.

You don’t just go around calling Dems with policies some don’t agree with really a secret Republican. That’s kind of silly, and unlike the AOC, the existing members don’t have the same leeway she has and they don’t have cameras to play for all the time. AOC is doing fine, especially since the media chases her around like that, but not being AOC is not a crime.