“What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
Baby accounts in here chirping about Jon Stewart and AOC running for president after killing Reddit. Getting prepared for the primary. AstroTurf moving over here.
What do you mean?
Ah yes democrat stalwarts AOC and Jon Stewart /s
The absolute waste of money and time it would be to AstroTurf on Lemmy really just makes me more skeptical to every user crying “bot” than anything.
It’s not a surprise that people with fringe or more radical opinions exist on Lemmy, an alternative platform
thx for confirming it’s happening
I was here before you by two years so the bot masters must be way ahead of you.
They’re good at pissing away money so yeah
This is why I love her.
In the world of politics governed by nepotism greed and optics, I am absolutely positive that the political world is anything but speechless about this particular statement.
It’s really great to see one of our politicians answer questions as if they were actually a public servant concerned with the good of the country. I mean, obviously.
But it’s equally tragic how unique it is for a politician to answer like that, and how many people in her own party (in addition to 99% of Republicans) will assume it is BS political talking points to suggest that somebody is serving a high profile political position for any reason other than blind personal ambition.
Im pretty sure that is a “no, not this time” answer.
I think she knows where she can do the most good, and survive to do the most good.
I like AOC but i dont think she is ready for the international political scene. I think she knows it as well. Domestic issues need her more, which happens in Congress.
And Jon Stewart, well i like him too but … another celebrity/actor president? Really?
At this point I don’t care. Trump set the bar so low that a colony of fermenting yeast would do a better job.
Let alone someone with actual good intentions.
You cannot give weapons to Israel and say you have good intentions. But if we reach a point where actual democratic orgs can tell her what to do, her personal intentions aren’t so important.
You also can’t pick just one line item and use it as a showstopper for everything else.
Before and during the primaries is exactly where these issues should be highlighted. Both to find the candidates with as few dead bodies in their closet as possible, but also to force the candidates to publicly address these issues.
The bigger issue is that presidency usually is a final political position with the only one people take after it being supreme court justice. She may worry that young representative with integrity won’t be replaced with another
celebrity/actor isn’t the issue.
It’s the content of one’s character. Jon Stewart has already proven himself very aware of the political state and being able to bully Congress into submission on behalf of vets and first-responders.
So yes, this is not a non-starter in any way shape or form, if we know they’re intelligent, authentic, charismatic, and empathetic.
Im just saying the past 2 were Reagan and Trump.
So maybe the 3rd time will be the charmed one?
Reagan sure sold authentic, charismatic, and empathetic vibes to get elected. And he had the Bush family push.
Trump just sold intelligence (dont ask me how), charisma, and empathy to the dumbest and the bigoted. The wealthy and the supremists were already on board.
Jon may well have all 4 aspects down, but he is too close to the establishmemt democrats and the financial economy, imo.
Kinda wish we had a peanut farming, nuclear engineer that we could turn to.
But can we try two celebrity Democrats for a change before making up our minds?
The problem is more they were conservatives; less so their celebrity status. All Republican presidents sucked since Ike, celebrity or not.
I see the problem as the financial sector having the reigns of both parties national commitees.
And remember the DNC can just pick who they desire, no matter the primary process.
At least nobody is suggesting Oprah this time.
Stewart’s brother is/was COO of NYSE iirc. Not to shame anyone, just saying there is a connection there.
I think she’d be great because she would hire very smart people to advise her on her weak areas. “If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.” She’s smart, and she knows a lot of smart people.
100%. Both her and Stewart are in the exact positions they need to be in to be the most useful to our country. Stewart gets the views of the center, while she works on progressive projects, where she can. Politics gets folks emotional, but it’s best to plan from reason.
her is in the exact position …
Jon Stewart would be better than another establishment Democrat.
We do not need another TV personality who picks low hanging fruit in politics.
Stop promoting celebrities for high office
Establishment Democrats like OBAMA and BIDEN led to Trump. I’ll vote for Jon Stewart before I vote another Obama or Biden.
Presidency would actually kill him, I think
I mean, when you have like the next 40 years to run, it’s not a hurry.
I’d vote for her. I’d also vote for Bernie again, if he ran again. I don’t care about his age, all that would matter is he got into office, and established a cabinet, and had a good Vice President to take over.
Bernie is 84 years old.
I am a huge fan of Bernie. Have been for over a decade. He is too old to be the president.
Shouldn’t be getting downvotes for this. Bernie deserves to rest, he’s been saying the same message for decades and it’s up to us to make it better for him, now.
He would be more valuable as an advisor.
Less energy wasted on the bullshit.
Exactly. He’d make a wonderful cabinet member or top advisor.
If Bernie wants to rest, then he can rest.
He isn’t acting like a man that wants to rest.
He’s also incredibly sharp for 84…but he’s 84…
He’ll be 86 at the next election.
And 90 by the time he is out of office, at least.
As president you get way more stress, more travel, less sleep. He wouldn’t do well in the president’s office.
Yeah his opening came and gone, unfortunately. Time doesn’t care, it marches on.
That’s the same thing everybody said last time and Bernie is in better physical, mental, and psychological condition than Trump.
better physical, mental, and psychological condition than Trump.
That bar is so low I’d need to dig a hole to find it.
The point of Bernie or AOC or Zohran or any socialist candidate is the movement behind them, which represents the will of the masses. The actual figurehead is largely irrelevant because everything they do is in the interest of their constituents. They might use their charisma to win (but usually it’s the movement that actually wins the campaign), but once they’re in power they just have to fulfill their promises, and they have staff to do this.
A regular politician, by contrast, enacts the will of the corporate class. In this way they’re mostly irrelevant too.
Bernie or AOC or Zohran
Or Kat Abughazaleh. If you don’t know her yet, you should look her up.
I like her, I hope she does well in the future, but she did lose her primary
Of course, and because of that he would never win an election, because people won’t vote for him because “he’s too old”. Like I said, I don’t care about his age, or that he would likely die in office, perhaps even in the first year. I’d still vote for him, because I agree with him, and I want his ideas in that office. That’s why he’d need a good V.P. I don’t understand why anyone would care how old he is, as long as they agree with him. Is it because he would probably die in office? Why does that matter?
I don’t care about Trump’s age per se, I do care that he’s got dementia. Bernie doesn’t have dementia.
Anyway, it’s a pipe dream, and I’ll happily vote for one of his protégés, too.
More importantly, he’s too old, and not aggressive enough, to win. We need someone that knows how to build and run a political machine, that can seize control of the party and purge the old guard. A true populist that can play a crowd. Bernie unfortunately lacks the killer instinct to overcome the establishment.
Bernie for president and AOC for vice president? That’d be something.
IF he died in office, the position likely would be taken good care of
What if we had a candidate that is not on his 80s, maybe?
This “Bernie” mentality elected Trump twice already.
Bernie was not the candidate in any general election
I’d door-knock for her.
Sheesh, and I haven’t canvased for a candidate in almost 20 years.
I canvassed for Bernie. It was a good experience. And he won the state.
I phone banked for her in her 2018 campaign.
I love Bernie, but he’s terrible at choosing staff. I don’t want him as president because I think he’d lose the war after winning the battle of gaining the presidency. Now if my choices were orange shit stain or Bernie, I’d be pulling out all my Bernie merch, but he’s not ideal.
Jesus, the Tad Devine hire alone was a disqualification for me.
UAW Boss Sean Fein would be a good candidate.
Well they need to get out and start doing media now. Regardless, a successful candidate is going to have to out in hundreds of hours in front of cameras and developing a level of comfort and ease of answering questions that only comes with practice and putting in the hours. It’s also one of my biggest critiques of AOC. She also hasn’t/isn’t putting in the reps in terms of media cycles. When they do, it’s very controlled and brief.
You are a fascist.
Explain how.
Explaim how you complain to management to get your critiics cancelled? You gave your hand away.
What did you get banned for being a gif hating loser in the other thread? I would never report you for being that kind of a loser; it’s far more fun to just mock you relentlessly when you have a psychological moment like that. Which was truly fun and brightened my day, so I do want to say thanks and I appreciate your participation. It was probably some one who agreed with me on how silly you were being that reported you. I would never do that, it’s far more entertaining to have you staying in the game.
For your participation yesterday, I sincerely appreciate it:
Now, into the comment at hand…
You can be and should be a critic of me but you should also have the charity to take my arguments on their face. I think AOC is mid among current progressives and I’ve outlined why several times in this thread. I can reiterate those points if you like and we can take it from there.
ha ha, you are pathetic.
She has work to do, because if she ran right now, she’d get eaten alive.
Notice that AOC doesn’t do very many hard interviews, and that when she gets a question asked of her that she isn’t prepared for, she stumbles.
AOC has been basically absent from leftwing media while plenty of other very solid progressives are out there putting in reps doing hard interviews in combative environments. AOC doesn’t do that and is only does very controlled media opportunities. That’s not good for someone who wants to be president. I don’t think she’s done the time like others have to be able to weather a primary.
AOC doesn’t do very many hard interviews
Define “hard”. If you mean antagonistic, that’s because she wisely tries not to waste too much time and energy boosting the false narratives of the billionaire-owned mass media that bear a lot of the blame for how things got awful enough for fascism to return.
she gets a question asked of her that she isn’t prepared for, she stumbles
As do pretty much anyone. Which is why she and most competent politicians make sure to be prepared for all possible pertinent questions.
It still depends btw: do you call refusing to entertain a deliberately false narrative “stumbling”?
AOC has been basically absent from leftwing media
That’s a bit of an exaggeration but she’s not made herself available as much as for example Ro Khanna, I’ll give you that.
Ro and most of the ones making that many media appearances don’t seem as genuine and principled, though.
Whether that’s due to the sheer volume of gotcha questions or because they ARE less principled, that’s not a good look to the ones they need to reach.
hard interviews in combative environments
AKA contributing to disinformation by accepting their clickbait false narratives as legitimately in the interest of the people.
AOC doesn’t do that and is only does very controlled media opportunities.
Yeah, imagine preferring to talk about the REAL issues rather than how everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan are either immature children or dangerous radicals 🙄
That’s not good for someone who wants to be president.
I’d argue the exact opposite. If you mud wrestle with a pig, the pig beats you with experience and you get filthy no matter how well you do.
I don’t think she’s done the time like others have to be able to weather a primary
Dude. The way she ENTERED politics was by going from volunteering for Bernie to unseating a 10-term incumbent who was the third ranking Dem representative in two years!
She has since easily beaten more right wing Dems favored by the DNC in primaries twice (and won unopposed except for the Republican nominee once).
If anyone knows how to beat overwhelming odds and win against the experienced establishment favorite, it’s her.
Fox news, Piers Morgon, are both very antogonistic as examples, and I would list Zeteo, any interview with Medhi or Pratt as a hard interview (I personally think Medhi is one of the bester interviewers in medi, hands down).
It’s not a matter of it being time wasting, it’s a matter of putting in reps and communicating a message. It’s about rhetoric and convincing an audience. Bernie finds time for those audiences. Ro Khanna finds time for those audiences. Ilhan finds time for those interviews. And go read the comments under those interviews: MAGA trust Bernie and Ro more than they do most of their own Republicans because Bernie and Ro have put in the reps, done the laps.
And to volley the question back over the net, why does AOC get an accountability pass when all the rest of her squad cohort don’t suffer from this same issue? Its not like they aren’t effective or productive members of Congress, I’d argue quite the opposite. It was not the Cortesse-Massie bill that got the Epstein files released it wash the Khanna Massie bill that did, and Ro found ample time to take his messages and arguments before the people while doing so.
It still depends btw: do you call refusing to entertain a deliberately false narrative “stumbling”?
Let’s take the example I gave. AOC got asked by dropsite if she supported her former chief of staff who is trying to oust Pelosi in California. A fairly gentle question from a friendly source about litterally the person who helped get you into Congress. And she fumbled it. Badly. In a way that should give any progressive pause.
When Ilhan Omar was attacked by a maga supporter at a recent event she didn’t back down. She litterally got in the attackers face in a way that should have made national headlines. We’re she running for another seat, it would have.
It’s fair to juxtapose AOC against her cohort, and she is at the back of that pack in my view. The pack is still leagues ahead of other Democrats but that’s beside the point, because now is when we need to make these evaluations.
I’d argue the exact opposite. If you mud wrestle with a pig, the pig beats you with experience and you get filthy no matter how well you do.
I think your an utter fool to believe you can get away from hard interviews. I will not support a candidate who can’t handle the pressure of a campaign or read the room or the moment. That’s how you get “Please clap.” Jeb, and “Nothing would fundamentally change Harris”.
These politicians are not your children. It’s not your job to protect them. They need to be held up and have their mettle tested before we need to rely upon them to be a backstop against fascism, not after.
You not only have to be able to get jnto the mud and learn to wrestle with the pigs, you need to be able to do so and win. I’m not interested in someone who hasn’t put the time in to win dirty fights.
The candidate will have to face down Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens, or any one of the innumerable shit birds who have piled up on the right.
Dude. The way she ENTERED politics was by going from volunteering for Bernie to unseating a 10-term incumbent who was the third ranking Dem representative in two years!
Yeah and for the first two years she was a fire brand. Then something happened and she became far more reserved and calculating. She genuinely changed after getting iced by Pelosi for occupying her office. I think it impacted her and she shifted her approach.
I need to see her taking harder more competitive interviews. I need to see her all over leftwing media and safe space interviews. I need to see her in spaces where her team doesn’t control the questions getting asked.
Because there are other progressives who had just as difficult if not more difficult fights than AOC has had, and they don’t seem to have a problem taking in those battles.
But to be fair, when is the last time that is there wasn’t a softball interview or debate? A huge portion of the US population have never seen a real debate lol
There have been softball interviews and debate for liberal/conservative/fascist candidates the corpos like. Leftist candidates, on the other hand, get a hostile treatment or get ignored entirely.
Bernie takes hard debates ALLL THE TIME and uncle is strong because if it.
Ro Khanna also. They take every media call they can and because of that they are very comfortable getting asked tough questions.
AOC got a softball from dropsite about endorsing her former chief of staff who is challenging Pelosi, and she dropped the ball in an utter what the fuck moment.
You gotta be tough to stand up to nonstop events and pressers and interviews that come with a campaign. AOC genuinely hasn’t been putting in the reps and it shows.
"And a waitress will lead them… "
Better her than Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio by miles. If we are picking teams, AOC all the way.
Is this headline actually accurate?
Did this really leave the “political world” speechless?
why?
That’s my girl.
I have been thinking about the problem with politicians in general: they want to climb, they want positions of power and probably also money. But do they want to make policy even more? As in, for the people? Maybe in the beginning, but at some point, it seems, they all made a deal with the devil.
I hope what she said is an answer to such thoughts.
As a European this is how I read it too. Politics in the US are so driven by “team sport” and grand personalities the actual policy sometimes gets forgotten. “He says what I think” and “I’ve always voted for party X.” are very common arguments and you may occasionally hear about some wedge issue, but really understanding how these people would govern?
AOC has policy goals and fight for them regardless of her title. If she thinks she can there as President she will run, if not she will do something else.
deleted by creator
lmao this comment was up less than a minute without anyone even seeing it, before I removed it. Yet the downvotes started non the less… And kept coming 😂
Speechless to old white redneck fucksticks perhaps. To the rest of us she sounds like a goddam American patriot who has the good of THIS fucking country in her heart.
Clickbait headline is Clickbait.
News at 11
To young white redneck fucksticks, too, tho’.
“single payer healthcare is forever”
The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.
I don’t disagree with her point though. In the UK, after decades of neoliberalism reigning supreme, I am often extremely depressed at how it’s changed things culturally. I was born in the 90s, so all of my life, I have seen the people who are struggling most scrutinised ever closer, and the state becomes more and more like a business.
If the NHS didn’t already exist, I can’t fathom there being political will to implement it right now. There would be far too much outcry over people “reaping rewards from the system despite not contributing to it”. There was that kind of opposition when the NHS was founded too, but far less of it. It was a different world. As I understand it, the Reagan and Thatcher era of politics were a big part of what caused things to change.
Learning the history helps ground me. A political philosopher I read a bunch of last year who influenced me greatly was Frederic Jameson, who advocated that we should “always historicise”, because connecting to our history is a great tool in resisting the cultural logic of late stage capitalism.
Or to put it a different way: the society we live in has a way of making itself seem eternal and immutable, but things have not always been this way, and they need not always remain this way. If AOC spearheaded a campaign that led to single payer healthcare, but the scheme was later repealed, that achievement would still last forever, in that it could serve as a template for those in future.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I’m just depressed and trying to clutch at hope. I’d say I don’t know if it’s working, but hey, I’m still alive — that’s something. I should probably get some sleep though
The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.
The NHS isn’t the problem. The chronical underfunding and privatisation is. The tories have both been underfunding it and selling it off to their gentlemen’s club cronies. Of course it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean that nationalised healthcare is a bad idea.
The problem is Britain doesn’t have a left wing party with any power. Labour is just tory-light (and not that light anymore really). It was encouraging to see the greens doing so well but also very scary to see ‘reform’ doing even better. I put ‘reform’ in quotes because what they want to do is not reform anything but just to fuck everything up for everyone. They should call it the ‘fuckup’ party.
There is a solution for that, tax the rich and fund the NHS. This isn’t rocket science.
Yeah, but my point is that there’s currently a lack of political will to do that
Insomnia, eh?
Yeah, the NHS is horribly underfunded - but I think it’s still one of very few things the UK can still be proud of. I think most people wouldn’t mind paying a little more tax, if it were specifically ringfenced for the NHS. Yeah, I doubt it would be created today, and it’s constantly fighting creeping privatisation but it still has a great deal of public support. And desperate as services are these days, I’m still alive because of it.
The greatest lie ever told about the NHS is that we need to pay more tax to fund it properly.
We don’t.
We need to unwind a web of outsourcing agreements that siphon money away from care provision and into the pockets of the 1%.
There’s enough money if you remove the grift
Edit typo
A while back, I spent a couple of weeks in hospital despite there being nothing medically wrong with me
My carer had died a few months prior, and social care services were fucking around a lot so I spent a long while without any daily living support at all, except the occasional friend travelling across the country to spend a weekend helping me. A friend who hadn’t heard from me for a while called emergency services, because they were worried I might have tried to kill myself, because the last thing they had heard from me was pretty concerning in that respect (I was in a bad place mental health wise).
When paramedics got there, they found me on the floor, having had a fall. I hadn’t even in a week, and was severely dehydrated. They took me to hospital, got me hydrated and stuff, but then I was in limbo for a while. They couldn’t discharge me, because it wasn’t safe to send me back home without care. But the various services that were meant to be supporting people like me just weren’t working. It was basically like the NHS and social care services being the meme with two versions of spiderman pointing to each other.
And so I took up a valuable hospital bed for multiple weeks, in a place that wasn’t well situated to even support me. It made me so angry because of the inefficiency of it all. It’s all so preventable, but there’s so much inefficiency.
And that’s not even counting all the x-rays I’ve had following a fall that I had because wheelchair services were fucking me around, so I had preventable falls that cost the NHS more money.
A decade or so ago my mum was in hospital for a couple of days. She had to go for a test and so missed her evening meal. So at around 7 or 8 one had to be brought to her. It was a small microwave meal for 1, still in its plastic microwave container. One of her nurses told her that the charge to the NHS for this single meal from the catering company was £45
Yep. I’m on the NDIS in Australia. You can get a quote for out of pocket for say 40$/hr or whatever. But as soon as companies hear NDIS, they charge the govt the max. It’s ridiculous.
Even though the NDIS funds only a small portion of the population, it costs MORE than Medicare which funds most of the country. Crazy shit
Glad you’re still here with us. For a variety of reasons, I’m similar. The average person is pretty pro-NHS, but when it comes to politicians, there seems to be a lack of political will to change anything.
I think something that makes it harder is that it’s not just a case of funding (though that is also needed), but a restructuring to reverse some of the insidious privatisation and outsourcing that’s so prevalent these days. Additionally, there needs to be more money put into skilled administrators — whenever there’s talks about cutting the fat from the NHS, pointing the fingers at “unnecessary” administrative staff is an easy tactic, but a lack of skilled administrators means that medical staff have to spend more time filling in forms and chasing up referrals.
The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.
Yeah this is an example of why you can never stop fighting for what’s right. The Epstein class will spend millions in order to not only save themselves taxes but put their own tax on us by privatizing essential services.
The US and UK has the same problem of two party system and late stage capitalism. Although, the UK has a much more dramatic shift, not seen since the 1900s, because of the rise of Reform and Green Party.
This headline makes me want to kick someone’s trashcan.
Plus the article itself is primarily dramatic fluff writing, followed by something I loathe: quotations from social media reactions. I’d love for anyone that does like them to share why because I cannot see the utility.
TV news has effectively done the same for as long as I can remember - send a reporter out with a mic and cameraman and ask random people what they thought of current events.
Hey, those interviews are responsible for some of the best memes in history.
We never would have had things like I like turtles, Hide your kids, hide your wife, and wouldn’t you like to know weather boy.
Sadly, I fear the Dems keep her around for the same reason they keep Bernie.
To keep them reigned in so they don’t become a threat to the old money powers. The last thing the Dems want is for them to splinter off into a viable third party, gain traction and actually make life better for the poor.
Keep your friends close and all that…
I don’t even know if that’s a thought. This country has little hope of a third party without radical changes to how we vote.
But keeping loud progressives in the party where they can be seen and heard is good to keep progressive voters engaged. Note that Bernie, AOC, and the more outspoken libs are given more airtime come election years whereas they only get minor sporadic coverage the rest of the time. So the Dems attract the progressives by amplifying convenient voices when it suits them, but otherwise progressive policy is essentially nullified by neo-lib willful failure to block shitty conservative policy.
The US system is similar to the UK as far as I can tell, and our two party system is starting to collapse.
The third party in question is actually even fucking worse, but at least it’s no longer a two horse race.
I think any system of government where one party can end up with an overall majority over everything is fundamentally flawed. Policy needs discussion and compromise, not just shoving through because “we won you lost get over it”
The US system is similar to the UK as far as I can tell, and our two party system is starting to collapse.
Not really since UK has a parliamentary system, which is far more hospitable to third (and fourth and fifth…) parties.
We’ve never been as two-party solidified as the US and our system isn’t thaaat similar really imo
They elect the president by state, with senate and house seats separately
We elect our priminister by voting in mps in constituencies and then the leader whichever party if any has enough mps to vote down the other members is the prime minister
It’s more like, for the US, if the leader of whichever party wins the most members of Congress appoints the president but there’s way more congressmen and smaller constituencies and the senate isn’t a thing
We’ve had hung parliaments and coalition governments - both recently and in the 40s, 10s, etc - and that just doesn’t exist in the US
Don’t get me wrong, our version of FPTP is bollocks and leans toward a two party system, it sucks
But I don’t think it’s really comparable to the US
The only way a third party gets in is if there’s a coup. The Big Two aren’t going to let anyone else at the table willingly.
People doom way too much about the two party duopoly. It’s a deeply ahistoric and defeatist narrative.
Yes, you can’t have a stable three party system in the US, but independent candidates can win and the parties in the duopoly can be swapped out for one another. Ross Perot almost won in 1992, losing only because he suspended his campaign for a time. And the Republican party was itself originally a third party. Abolitionists got tired of do-nothing centrists dragging their heels on slavery. Ultimately they found it was easier to start a new party rather than to work within the existing power structures that had been thoroughly captured by slave interests.
One thing i never see coconsidered is in the two part system, which two parties does it have to be? Third parties in our system will never work, but who said those two parties need to be dem or gop? There used to be different parties.
At some point, if traction cant ve made to cha ge the parties, then we may have no cboice but to replace them. Not with an unserious party like the green party, but a real party
This is literally how the Republican Party was formed. Slaveholders had captured both parties. Abolitionists found it easier to create a new third party rather than working within the other two.
Yeah, and Bernie spawned AOC, the Squad, Max Frost, and more, and there’s more on the way. They all can see the door Bernie opened, and they have already enlarged it, and are pouring through it.
It’s too late for the DNC. We don’t care what they want. They better do what they’re hired to do, or they’ll face the same punishment as MAGA.
lol punishment? Maga got rewarded by giving the turd the presidency.
She’s a prodigious fundraiser and a fantastic “this left and no further” stalking horse
I 100% get not committing to run right now, it would be stupid to do so.
“In this op-ed that Bezos paid for in The Washington Post, there was a veiled threat — it was the elite saying if you want this job, you just stepped out of line,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
But I sure as fuck hope she realizes becoming president is our best shot at that.
Shed drive down ballot races like Obama did, but isn’t as cocky and obsessed with personal power to ignore the DNC after winning like Obama did. Shed name a progressive chair.
Bringing in a wave of progressives and putting the party firmly on the progressive side of the divide is absolutely the biggest thing she (or anyone) can do to get us single payer healthcare.
So like I said, hopefully she’s planning to run, just smart enough to not say it yet.
I’m not telling her what to do, she’s clearly better at this stuff than I’ll ever be
I mean this completely seriously:
Not with that attitude.
Maybe without that attitude it’s still true, but we need more people than AOC even if they’re not “as good”
Your point is well taken. There is the small matter of my having moved abroad… Sorry for that.
Like drinking or eating meat, I still follow American politics against my better judgment, and occasionally I opine.
I mean she’s not great. She’s probably the weakest among the squad cohort at actually playing the game of politics. She gives a good speech but she regularly gets her ankles broken because she seems to have, like the article demonstrates, a very calculating nature, or at least developed one after sher first two years in Congress.
And that’s bad. Like, very bad if you seek higher office, because people are done with the whole not saying what you mean thing.
So you want someone stupider, or at least better at seeming like they don’t think? I don’t think I take your meaning. Politicians are meant to be ‘calculating’, it’s a famously viperous workplace. I prefer one that thinks, and I don’t mind if you can tell when they’re doing it.
People should be less obsessed with optics, and more oriented towards what politicians do.
Maybe you just don’t follow politics much, but this critique of AOC isn’t new and we’ve been getting on her about it for years. Instincts matter in politics, a lot. Getting through a presidential primary is hard.
Just try and notice how your now defending the things that we specifically went out of our way to remove from our politics as progressives, because it’s coming from someone you identify with as being in your team.
Look, politicians don’t need cheerleaders. They need critics who can make them stronger, and if AOC does want to run, shes got some real issues that have been piling up shell need to address. And yes, this developed tendency to become more and more couched hlin her language, to become more and more politically calculating, it’s a real problem.
You’re not wrong. But I also think this point of view is perceived as a kind of auto-fellatio.
I think the negative reaction from us, the great unwashed, is due to people being so sick of political processes devolving into a meta-game that revolves primarily around the ability to think cynically and act tactically.
Meanwhile we’re out in the world, dealing with fallout from actions in that sphere that don’t make any kind of sense to the material reality of most people. People with rent to pay and groceries to afford and gas to pump.
Playing 4-D chess with the law of averages, playing the long game, and cornering other narcissistic kitten-eaters in saying and supporting things that, on their face, sound horrible… We’re just not sophisticated enough to understand it’s part of the process. We have problems that need solving right now and whatever tactical victory that moves an abstract chess piece forward doesn’t seem to do anything to remedy that.
I take your points, but we’re in the pre primary stage. If that’s not the time to be critical if the details, when do we get to be?
Also, it’s a political forum. It’s supposed to be a safe space for auto fellating in these topics. And maybe I misread or over read, but that auto fellating thing, it’s the critique I’m making of AOC too. She become too calculating, too much like Pelosi.
I also think AOC can fix these issues, but they were issues she had 2 years ago too. and they aren’t issues her cohort shares, they are unique to her.
Bernie takes hard interviews. Ilhan takes hard interviews. Khanna takes hard interviews.
AOC only goes for softball safe space media opportunities any more. And she’s weaker because if it. She can fix that issue and strengthen her game in this regard, but that’s on her.
Fair enough points, I can take them at face value. I just grew up very disillusioned with leftist infighting generally, so I tend to see any leftward scrutiny with a jaundiced eye. In a first past the post system, the side that is least critical of their candidate is going to mainly win I feel, and though I know the value of being critical too well, living in this system makes me of two minds about it.
Many of us are done with saying nothing with meaning thing.
I’m more concerned about how she regularly missteps and misplays moments. She genuinely doesn’t have great political instincts and is usually last to the table among her peers when it comes to doing or saying the right thing. It’s kind of baffling.
Both Ayana Presley and Ilhan Omar are leagues ahead of being in the right side of issues and leading when things matter the most. AOC trails them on issues.
Like, it’s gotten bad to the point where I don’t know if AOC could make it through a primary. Her ability to get a question and form an answer that is a good, correct take, the first time, without having to test it. It’s not great.
She is so threatening to the Epstein class - so much so that it causes comments like this from “ordinary people”
I mean somewhat. Not nearly as threatening as Ro Khanna though. Someone also who has shown faaaar better political instincts. Ro might be a bit more boring and not as pretty, but they are FAR better at the game compared to AOC, who is a bit of a B student in her class.
It’s the unforced errors she keeps piling up that give me the most pause.
Oh, you’re not a serious person. Got it, sorry for wasting my time
So like I said, hopefully she’s planning to run, just smart enough to not say it yet.
Being a Representative, she’s got an entire other election to win between now and the next Presidential election anyway.
Announcing that she plans to go for President (and would therefore be leaving the House) might attract primary challengers.
I like her mentality. <3
I hope she makes it but I doubt she will. Not in America.
