Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the New Congress

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Exclusive: Sit-Down With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez On Democratic Socialism

“So when millennials talk about concepts like democratic socialism, we're not talking about these kind of “Red Scare” boogeymen."
 

COINTELPRO

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Registered
I would like more efforts to tax the rich and lower the corporate tax rate. The corporate tax rate should be negative, to encourage higher wages and benefits and lower prices. It will keep more companies in the market for employment and to buy from. These tropes about stock buybacks to enrich executives may happen but a wealth tax will just negate this effort. Stock buybacks push up the price of the stock and encourages investors to sell, they will take this profit and buy other stock or other ventures helping fund other companies.

Obamacare should be tweaked to make it work better for everybody with a public option.

After all this is done, than you look at what the government can do to help people such as funding my high speed rail, car transportation idea which is 10x cheaper than building roads everywhere.
 
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the inspiration behind an upcoming comic book.https://abcn.ws/2TdVzW4
 

thoughtone

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BGOL Investor
White Supremacy being called out on the floor of Congress...by a Congress memeber!


source: Daily Beast

Cohen Hearing Explodes After Rashida Tlaib Calls Out Mark Meadows’ ‘Black Friend’ Stunt

Mark Meadows lost it after Rashida Tlaib essentially called him ‘racist’ for using a black woman as a ‘prop.’



Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) went there first.

“Would you agree that someone could deny rental units to African-Americans, lead the birther movement, refer to to the diaspora as ‘shithole countries,’ and refer to white supremacists as ‘fine people,’ have a black friend, and still be racist?” she asked Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, during his testimony before the House Oversight Committee.

“Yes,” he answered.

Pressley was referring to a stunt that her colleague Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) pulled earlier in Wednesday’s hearing. In an attempt to prove that Trump is not “racist,” as Cohen charged, he used black Trump employee Lynne Patton as a literal prop. How can the president be racist, he asked, if he has hired this one black woman?



But things took an even more dramatic turn a few minutes later when Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) raised the issue once more during her turn at the microphone.

“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them does not mean they aren't racist,” Tlaid said. “And it is insensitive, and some would even say that the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee”—here she took a heavy sigh—”is alone racist in itself.”

This did not sit well with Meadows, whom Tlaib had essentially said acted in a “racist” manner in her remarks. The Republican congressman interrupted her, demanding that her words be stricken from the record. “I’m sure she didn't intend to do this, but if anyone knows my record as it relates… it should be you, Mr. Chairman,” he said, seemingly unable to include the word “race.”

Tlaib insisted she did not intend to call her colleague a “racist” and after Meadows informed the committee that his nieces and nephews are “people of color” and proceeded to say it was “racist” to suggest he was using the Trump employee as a prop, House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) ultimately came to Meadows’ defense.

Calling Meadows one of his “best friends,” Cummings said, “I don't think Ms. Tlaib intended to cause you that kind of pain and that kind of frustration.”

“To my colleague, Mr. Meadows, that was not my intention,” Tlaib said. “And I do apologize if that’s what it sounded like. But I said ‘someone’ in general.”

“As everybody knows in this chamber, I'm pretty direct,” Tlaib, who entered Congress amidst controversy over her use of the word “motherfucker” to describe Trump, continued. “So if I wanted to say that I would have, but that's not what I said.” She added, “I was not referring to you, at all, as a racist.”

Meadows accepted her apology, but not everyone watching was satisfied.

One popular sentiment was summed up by the rapper Talib Kweli, who tweeted, simply, “Fuck that apology.” And others pointed out that despite Meadows protesting that he cannot possibly be racist, he once said during a campaign that “2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is.”


 
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thoughtone

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BGOL Investor
source: Politico

The Silence of the Democratic Lambs

Moderates like to whine that the left is sucking up all the oxygen. Time for them to bring their own ideas to the table.

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Last week, it seemed as if Nancy Pelosi’s iron grip on the speaker’s gavel was loosening ever so slightly.

Ferocious backlash from the left turned her draft resolution—initially intended to implicitly rebuke rising progressive star Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for her comments questioning the “allegiance” to America by supporters of Israel—into a broader statement about all forms of bigotry. Conservatives, such as National Review’s Matthew Continetti, charged the House speaker with timidity, unwilling to shame Omar by keeping the emphasis solely on anti-Semitism. “She’s supposed to be this Iron Lady,” he wrote. “But her hands are covered in Palmolive … [It’s] undeniable that AOC & co. is in charge.”

Undaunted, Pelosi threw another brushback pitch at the left this week, telling the Washington Post, and those on the left itching for President Donald Trump’s early ouster, that she is “not for impeachment” because it would be “so divisive to the country.” Although a handful of pro-impeachment lawmakers said they would forge ahead, many prominent House Democrats backed her up. Even “AOC,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a supposed caucus rebel who has already declared Trump guilty of impeachable offenses, bowed to her leader: “Legally, I don't think it's something that can ever be 100 percent off the table, but if that's how she feels right now, I respect that.”

When Pelosi triumphantly returned to power after a midterm election that featured many an aspiring House member threatening not to choose her for speaker—and again when she outmaneuvered the president during the recent shutdown imbroglio—the narrative in the chattering class was that she was a supergenius who was running circles around her hapless foes. Remember all those memes about her orange power coat?

Now, the question hanging over Washington is whether even Pelosi can control her wayward caucus, bursting at the seams as it is with mic-hogging progressives like Omar and Ocasio-Cortez on the one hand, and increasingly frustrated moderates like New Mexico Rep. Xochitl Torres Small on the other. “Democrats in disarray” often teeters between being a hot take by lazy pundits and comical reality. But if someone as skilled as Pelosi can’t keep her ideologically sprawling members inside the party’s big tent, many will begin to wonder if anybody can.

So, is the speaker still in charge? The short answer is clearly yes. She has single-handedly sidelined top progressive movement priorities that she finds half-baked and off-message: “Medicare for All,” “Green New Deal” and now, impeachment. At the same time, with relative ease, she has successfully moved through the House legislation that attracts support across the party’s ideological spectrum: expansion of voting rights and universal background checks for gun purchases.

And yet it’s the populist-socialist policies Pelosi quietly shivs that grab the most attention, leaving the impression, however inaccurate, that they are representative of the Democratic Party’s agenda. And as the Omar episode demonstrates, her’s control of the deeply diverse Democratic Party can be severely tested when ideological tensions combine with religious and racial differences.

Although she did not break, Pelosi had to bend more than ever to keep the party together in the wake of Omar’s remarks. She won unanimous Democratic support for her anti-hate resolution, avoiding the kind of rupture over anti-Semitism that prompted eight members of Parliament to quit Britain’s Labour Party. Still, she could not prevent the fissure over Israel from surfacing, and we can’t presume it has been healed. As debate over American policy toward Israel continues, it remains to be seen if the letter of the resolution—which declares that “accusing Jews of being more loyal to Israel or to the Jewish community than to the United States constitutes anti-Semitism”—will be followed by all who voted for it.

If Pelosi is keeping the Democratic Party from drowning in ideological excess, it can appear like it’s only by sticking her own fingers in the dike. All the pressure to push the envelope on policy is coming from the insurgent left. What do we hear from the moderate-pragmatist wing of the party? Not much, beyond the occasional whine that it is being overlooked.

“Suddenly, an entire party is being branded by the perspectives of two of its members who represent 1 percent of the caucus,” first-term Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips groused to POLITICO Magazine’s Tim Alberta. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer similarly huffed, “We’ve got 62 new members. Not three.”

True. So why aren’t the other 59 grabbing the microphone?

Last month, Ocasio-Cortez mocked detractors of her Green New Deal for ceding the ideas turf to her: “I’m at least trying and they’re not … If you’re trying, you’ve got all the power, you’re driving the agenda … No one else has even tried … Until you do it, I’m the boss.”

On one hand, her braggadocio was as inaccurate as it was arrogant. Many in Congress have sought to enact ambitious climate legislation over the past several years, including the “cap-and-trade” bill that Pelosi helped get through the House in 2009. (Back then, eight Republicans provided the margin of victory, though of course, that was not enough to propel it through the Senate.)

This year, a carbon tax bill, the not-so-snazzy named Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, has been introduced with 18 co-sponsors including one lonely Republican, Florida Rep. Francis Rooney. (Note: That’s one more Republican than the Green New Deal has.) Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left, to their discredit, have pretended this bill doesn’t exist, in an attempt to suggest the Green New Deal is the only game in town. If they were as interested in moving the “Overton Window” as they claim, they would welcome parallel efforts, rather than ignoring or snidely dismissing them.

Nevertheless, Ocasio-Cortez also has a point. By grabbing the mic to push a big idea, however flawed or grandiose its details may be, she is seen as trying and, therefore, drives the agenda. Moderate pragmatists haven’t similarly rallied behind and loudly promoted their own alternatives. Perhaps they will eventually get there. Pelosi created a select committee to draft climate legislation. And the business-friendly New Democrat Coalition has assembled a climate task force. But by being slow off the mark, it has ceded the spotlight to its socialist colleagues.

Without many signature ideas of their own to prove their moderate bona fides, red-district Democrats have been susceptible to divisive Republican amendments. For example, moderates broke ranks to help Republicans modify the background check bill with a provision to require that undocumented immigrants who try to by guns be reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency increasingly loathed on the left. (Pelosi had to take a break from corralling the left to scold her right flank for aiding and abetting Republican mischief, which appears to have curtailed the aisle-crossing for the time being.)

Surely, individual Democrats in reddish districts are pleased that, on the whole, Pelosi is watching out for them. Newly elected Rep. Gil Cisneros of California said of Pelosi’s impeachment snub, “It does alleviate some of the pressure.” That’s what Pelosi has been doing; absorbing the pressure from the left and keeping it off her most vulnerable members. As a result, Pelosi’s entire persona has been transformed. Five months ago, moderates like Cisneros were shunning Pelosi to avoid being yoked to the Republican caricature of her as San Francisco liberal elitist. Now, Republicans share Pelosi memes and her quotes to buttress their arguments against the Green New Deal and impeachment.

Pelosi has done much for the moderates in her caucus, and it’s in the moderates’ interest to return the favor. Unless they get in the ideas game, and show how big the Democratic tent is, it won’t matter how much control Pelosi wields inside the House chamber. On the outside, rightly or wrongly, Ocasio-Cortez will appear to be the boss. And Republicans in 2020 will have a new caricature with which to yoke.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: Newsweek

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ TO HECKLER: CONFLICT HAPPENS 'UNDER A SCARCITY MINDSET. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE FIGHT'

blob:https://www.newsweek.com/3ad054ed-2a9f-4b16-80bd-de06a4ebea08




Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York took part in an education policy town hall this weekend, urging voters in Brooklyn not to fall into a “scarcity mindset” when it comes to college.

With education inequality brought into the spotlight last week amid allegations that dozens of wealthy parents had bribed prestigious universities to secure highly coveted places for their children, the freshman congresswoman became passionate as she told those attending the event that more schools must be brought up to a high standard to ensure sufficient opportunities for young people, and called on students and parents to demand progress rather than fight with each other over admission to a handful of prestigious schools.

Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, told the town hall of her father’s difficult experience as a young man trying to secure a good education in 1970s New York City.

“My dad was born in the South Bronx while the Bronx was burning,” she explained. “He was raised by five people in a one-bedroom apartment. And he did what he had to do, and my dad got into Brooklyn Tech,” one of the city's elite public high schools that require an admissions test.

“He told me about what his life was like, where as a teenager he got up and left his apartment at five o’clock in the morning every day to get on to the 6 train or to get onto the 4 train, and ride a very dangerous subway during the 1970s at 15 years old to go to Brooklyn Tech,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Because it was seen as his only opportunity to have a dignified life. And he loved his experience at Brooklyn Tech, because he went to a good school.”



But she stressed that not everyone is as lucky as her father was. “My question is, why are there only five—or a handful—of schools in New York City that are seen to give us this life?” She then declared that every public school in the city should be of the same quality and offer the same opportunity as Brooklyn Tech did for her father.

At one point, an audience member could be heard heckling the congresswoman. Though one woman tried to shout down the heckler, saying, “Excuse me, the congresswoman is speaking,” Ocasio-Cortez said she “would be happy to engage with these folks.”

The man then stopped shouting, allowing Ocasio-Cortez to continue. “My concern is that this right here, where we’re fighting each other, is exactly what happens under a scarcity mindset,” she said. “Because this should not be the fight,” she added, pointing between herself and the audience, garnering cheers from the audience. Then, pointing from herself and the crowd upwards—presumably referencing the political establishment dominated by the wealthy, “this should be the fight.”

alexandria-ocasio-cortez-education-scarcity-mindset-heckler-town-hall.jpg

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks at the 2019 Athena Film Festival on March 3, in New York City. She took part in an education policy town hall last weekend, urging voters in Brooklyn not to fall into a “scarcity mindset” when it comes to college.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: Rolling Stone


Forget ‘Conventional Wisdom’: There Are No More Moderates

Beware the latest call to “move to the center” — which is just the same old tune, re-packaged

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Voters stands behind a voting booth with a dog during the midterm election at the High School Art and Design polling station in Manhattan, New York, United States on November 06, 2018.

It happens after every election. National press voices sift through results, toss around hot takes, and within a news cycle or two, the disease called conventional wisdom is pandemic again.

Listening the other night to talking heads like CNN’s Jake Tapper yammer on about how “candidate recruitment” and “veterans” are big takeaways for Democrats going forward triggered years of campaign-cliché flashbacks.

The big takeaway was that Trump got creamed in the suburbs, where he lost the confidence of “suburban moderates,” especially women. Trumpism is moving into the hills, we’ve been told, and Democrats seized big new territory in the suburbs, which should be everyone’s focus going forward.

The New York Times meanwhile said the results were a “vindication of the party’s more moderate wing,” and that Democratic winners “largely hailed from the political center.”

NBC said the results were a “gut punch for progressives,” although at the bottom of the piece it noted that high-profile incumbents who “tacked aggressively to the center” also lost – like Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin concluded, “It’s a good idea to go with a moderate,” and avoid a “fire-breathing progressive.”

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s basically the same post-mortem we get all the time: Democrats must move to the center, capture the suburbs, and embrace a less policy-specific, more personal-profile-based approach to politics, often pushing candidates with military records.

Meanwhile, after every loss, Republicans insist that moving to the center hurt them (“Conservatives join Trump in blaming moderates for House loss,” was a typical red-audience headline this week).

After Mitt Romney lost in 2012, Rush Limbaugh was one of the first to pooh-pooh the notion that lack of minority enthusiasm had triggered the defeat. The problem, Rush said, was “white voters stayed home” because they “didn’t think the Republican Party was conservative enough.”

This pattern repeats itself over and over. Democrats keep trying to run as non-specifically as possible, while from Bush to the Tea Party to Trump, the Republicans who fly their freak flag the highest win the day.

This results in an entire electorate that appears to continually move right, which in turn accelerates the cycle. Because the electorate is increasingly crazy and conservative, the thinking goes, Democrats need to be even more careful not to stand for anything that might scare “moderates.”

What is a “moderate,” exactly? Nearly every election cycle, the press comes up with a neat catch-phrase that purports to describe this person. The moderate is said to live in the suburbs and can be captured without offering much on the policy front. Implicitly, this voter is white.

You’ll notice there are a lot of articles about NASCAR dads and soccer moms, and fewer about the inner-city voters, who don’t get a catchy nickname. Why? Because the unspoken consensus is that such voters can be taken for granted.

So the focus is always on the suburbs. The press conception of this place seems based on a creepy mixture of My Three Sons and Roseanne. Pundits imagine a land where people drive boring cars, dislike smart talk, embrace sports and military uniforms, care more about looks and resumes than policy, and are generally scared of shit — especially “extreme” ideas.

Soccer moms were touted as the key “swing” bloc in 1996. Reporters had a lot of fun describing them. You can play a drinking game just by searching for “soccer moms” articles and trying to guess what brand of minivan the reporter mentions first.

After 1996, “soccer moms” joined “NASCAR dads” as cultural shorthand for one of a number of cliché demographics with whom national reporters rarely interacted. Most of what passes for conventional wisdom in campaign coverage is based on the idea that successful politicians have to be acceptable to such basically fictional representations of the American voter.

This is how we got John Kerry to run against George Bush. Conventional wisdom in 2003-2004 held that while we were at war, Democrats needed to nominate someone with combat experience, both as a juxtaposition against Bush’s draft-dodging past and to immunize the blue party against “soft on defense” charges. Flyover voters would respect the uniform, we were told.

Kerry headed into that summer running an ad that highlighted his military service, showed him in fatigues, or posing with his arm around John McCain. The ad boasted about how he’d broken with his party to support a balanced budget. He was no down-the-line Democrat, not this guy. He was almost Republican!

Once Kerry became the nominee, though, Republicans easily blew up Kerry’s supposed strength with the lurid Swift Boat campaign — it’s amazing how that stuff works with weak candidates, but sleaze campaigns like the Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright business bounce off the likes of Barack Obama.

Moreover, the press quickly cooked up new conventional wisdom: suburban “soccer moms” had become “security moms.” As such the campaign now hinged once again upon white suburban women, who this time were painted as very scared of trrrrists and determined to vote for Bush because of a “lioness factor” driving them to protect their kids.

This insanely insulting “security mom” thing took hold in about 10 minutes. It was based on nothing, but in a snap everyone was covering it: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, CBS, NPR, The Times UK, BBC, The Chicago Tribune, everyone.

This nonsense caused the last month of the 2004 race to be dominated by questions about whether or not Kerry had a problem with female voters. But evidence suggests he ultimately won the female vote, losing instead thanks to male voters overwhelmingly picking Bush.

Conventional wisdom on national security issues may have cost Democrats that election. In the years preceding it was said Democrats couldn’t oppose the Iraq war because of their “traditional vulnerability on national security issues” (this despite the fact that Democrats started wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Serbia).

These political considerations are what prompted “moderate” Democrats like Kerry and Hillary Clinton to vote for the lunatic war, which in 2002-2003 had seemed like a political winner for George Bush.

But by election night, 2004, public opinion had begun to turn against Bush’s war. In fact, it was by then probably his biggest electoral weakness, as even the libertarian Cato Institute noted after the election.

Had the Democrats just stopped playing guessing games in search of their hackneyed idea of what mythical suburban “swing” voters cared about and simply done the right thing — opposed a wrong war — they’d have had a better shot of hitting what turned out to be Bush’s real weakness. Also, not that this matters, they might have saved a few hundred thousand lives.

Even after the Kerry fiasco, Democrats kept pushing out the same idea. Rahm Emmanuel, as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, launched an effort to recruit veterans as candidates to “erase the Republican advantage on national security.”

The Iraq war by then had already been declining in public popularity for two years; the country was just two years away from electing Barack Obama, who blew off heated accusations of being “soft on defense” and crushed John McCain by 11 points. Yet there was still this myth that Democrats had to keep trying to look tougher and tougher.

At the start of the 2008 race, conventional wisdom had Obama far back of Hillary Clinton. The few national pundits who conceded that Obama might have a chance usually insisted that the race would turn on something other than policy.

“How competitive the Democratic contest becomes could turn on the question of whether voters are significantly more interested in a fresh face or in a candidate they see as projecting strong leadership,” is how the Washington Post put it, with its usual un-subtle messaging.

The point is, conventional wisdom is pretty much always wrong, and often spectacularly so. Invented media storylines too often dominate elections. The worst was probably the infamous “beer standard,” i.e. America always picking the candidate it most wants to have a beer with (Slate last time, in a headline it would probably like to forget, declared “There has never been a better candidate to have a beer with than Trump”).

Voters are not skittish, brainless creatures afraid of strong policy proposals. That more accurately describes the politicians and corporate donors who are invested in things staying as they are. Most actual people are living on the edge financially, are angry, and will take policy help from anywhere they can get it.

Polls today show Americans in large majorities now support expanded Social Security, drug re-importation, single-payer health care, free college, and they want Medicare to be able to negotiate lower drug prices. These positions would do well if any party threw its support behind them.

But conventional wisdom, once again, will likely insist heading into 2020 that something other than policy will matter, when it comes to picking candidates. CNN earlier this year, quoting pols and consultants, actually said that “in the era of Trump, where uniqueness is prized,” Democrats should search for “candidates with distinct backgrounds.”

I’d be very afraid of what Washington’s idea of a “candidate with a distinct background” looks like in the age of Trump.

Tuesday was a big night. There were some amazing results, including the historic Amendment 4 in Florida, re-enfranchising over a million felons.

But there were worrying signs as well. America is in a heated culture war. Something as dangerous as Trumpism isn’t going to be defeated by catch-phrases and political marketing tricks. The best bet is big ideas, and no matter what the talking heads on cable say, moving to the center — again — probably won’t cut it.
 

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BREAKING: ALexandria Ocasio-Cortez just SHREDDED Fox News and Mike Huckabee in a must-watch new interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor


source: The Nation


Centrists Are Using Calls for Civility to Silence the Left

Nobody should fight in the gutter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a vigorous debate about policy.


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Senator Bernie Sanders speaks to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential candidates debate in 2016. (Reuters / Mike Segar)


As the Democratic presidential field continues to grow, we are beginning to hear warnings about the primary turning into a “circular firing squad.” Self-appointed, high-minded political proctors have tried to lay down “rules for civility,” but these appeals should come with a warning label.

Many members of the civility police come from the beleaguered center-right of the party, and their calls for unity are often just forewarning progressives to lower their sights and curb their tongues. The chiding often comes with shots at Senator Bernie Sanders specifically or the left more generally.

The civility police assert that Trump will pounce on any weakness of the Democratic nominee that gets exposed in the primaries. Michael Tomasky argued that the “one terrible and unforgivable thing the Democratic contenders can do to one another” is to “expose that Achilles heel and worsen it.” “This is what Sanders did with respect to Clinton in 2016,” he claimed, by setting up “Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ line of attack.”

Really? Donald Trump has a canny and ruthless instinct for the jugular. He didn’t need Sanders to prey on Clinton’s self-inflicted vulnerabilities. “Lock her up,” the infamous Trump rally chant, was about Hillary’s e-mails, an issue that Bernie explicitly dismissed out of hand. Trump has already labeled Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” and, sadly, got her to take the bait and take a DNA test. Tomasky is using the plea for civility as a threadbare excuse for recycling an embittered assault on Sanders.

“We should not eat our own,” cautioned David Brock, which is rich coming from a professional hatchet man servicing both sides of the aisle at different points in his career. In reality, the ones doing the eating are primarily centrist pundits using high minded postures to skewer Bernie. Sanders has been assailed by a former Clinton staffer for using private planes while stumping for Hillary in 2016. He’s been attacked for hiring David Sirota, a respected left-leaning journalist who got his start in Sanders’s House office twenty years ago. (Sirota was raked over last week for supposedly hiding his conflict of interest while at The Guardian, a claim that turned out to be simply false). Tomasky presumptuously issued a “personal plea” to Bernie to rein in his supporters, while saying nothing about the Clinton advisers publicly vowing to unleash their oppo research from 2016 on Sanders.

The civility police call for a debate over policy and ideas, not personal attacks, which is surely right. The question, however, is what is a personal attack? Biden insider and Washington lobbyist Ron Klain argued that “a debate about ideas is healthy, a debate about motives is not. The Democrats should hash out their differences in 2020 without slashing up one another—not casting aspersions on each other’s integrity, motivation or intentions.”

Clinton and her supporters consider Sanders’s repeated criticism of the hundreds of thousands she pocketed for speeches to Goldman Sachs and other banks an “aspersion” on her integrity. But the corruption of big-money politics and the unholy alliance with the financial sector is at the center of the failure of the establishment of both parties. Trump made the corruption of politicians—Republican and Democratic alike—the central theme of his campaign in 2016. The Democratic primary debate would be foolish to rule airing the issue out of bounds.

The pleas for civility are grounded on the fear, as Ed Kilgore puts it, that “Trump and his media allies will ruthlessly take advantage of any Democratic divisions.”

Of course they will. Amanda Marcotte and others then use this to recycle the argument that bitter Sanders fans cost Clinton the election in 2016. In fact, Sanders endorsed Clinton and stumped relentlessly for her. Some disaffected Sanders voters no doubt stayed home or voted for a third-party candidate or even for Trump, but they turned out far better for Clinton, as The Washington Post reported, than Clinton voters did for Obama in 2008 after their primary battle. The disaffected Clintonites didn’t stop Obama from winning. There are many reasons Clinton lost an election to the most unpopular candidate in history by 80,000 votes; Sanders was the least of them.

This concern about unity too often masks the real concern of centrists: their belief that only a “moderate” candidate who offers “realistic” reforms can win. Politico trotted out Stuart Eizenstat, Jimmy Carter’s former policy adviser, to make the case explicitly. “Maximalist ideology is a prescription for division and defeat,” he wrote, adding that Medicare for All may be a “useful campaign slogan,” but a “totally government run program is not a solution.” The answer to climate change is “not a Green New Deal…but ‘market based incentives.’” He believes that if progressives want to win, they’ll join a “united front” around a centrist candidate.

In the name of unity, Eizenstat calls for robust debate in which progressives defer to the responsible center. Democrats ran an experienced centrist with moderate policies against Trump in 2016 and got beat. Democrats won twice with a charismatic center-left candidate in Barack Obama, and Sanders’s agenda has gained ever more adherents. Most of the top-tier candidates—from Sanders to Warren to Senator Kamala Harris—are making the case for bolder ideas and politics.

Eizenstat might be more on target were he focused on cautioning centrists on the need for unity behind a progressive nominee. Jonathan Chait’s dyspeptic article—“Will Bernie Sanders Split the Democratic Party in 2020?”—exposes just how savage and embittered centrists are. Chait is simply deranged about Sanders, accusing him of running a “factional splinter campaign” in 2016, hiring aides committed to “left-wing factionalism,” espousing “hard-core socialist politics” and “vaguely Marxist concepts, by which he means “describing most issues as being driven by an economic divide between the people and ‘the billionaire class.’” This would apply also to Obama in his rhetorically populist 2012 reelection campaign). Chait scorned Sanders’s followers as an “irrational cult,” packed with “schismatic Bernie diehards.” He accused them of not realizing that the primary contest should be viewed as a question of “which Democrat can beat Trump,” as opposed to a battle of ideas and direction. Sanders, he argued, has to choose whether he is a “partisan Democrat” or a “schismatic leftist using the Democratic Party.”

This ugly rant reflects the venom of those who fear losing control. In reality, Sanders is now part of the leadership of the Senate Democratic caucus. He ran and won on both the independent and the Democratic line for the Senate in Vermont. He ran a powerful 2016 campaign for the presidency in the Democratic primaries—and then helped fashion the party’s platform, while endorsing its nominee, and working harder for her election than virtually any other ally. He now is the most popular senator in America, trailing only Joe Biden in the polls of Democratic voters. He’s already pledged to work for whoever wins the Democratic nomination, arguing that beating Trump is imperative. He’s vowed to run—as he always does—focused on issues, not on personal attacks. He’s pledged not to run a negative ad. He’s issued statements urging his followers not to engage in personal attacks on other primary contenders.

Running with a bold agenda, fueled by small contributions, opposed by the establishment of the party and legions of embittered Clinton devotees, facing a skeptical mainstream media, he will have a difficult road to the nomination. Were he to win it, he could be well suited to expose Trump’s betrayal of working people and take him down.

Democrats are remarkably united about basic propositions: Beating Trump is vital, and unity behind the eventual nominee is essential. Democrats should not allow a bitter primary to divide them. Yet even these commonsense propositions are being wielded to mug the left.

The civility police suggest that the differences between Democrats are relatively insignificant as opposed to those with Trump and Republicans. This somehow coexists with the argument that if Democrats embrace candidates espousing bold reforms that Eizenstat scorns as “demanding the moon,” or Chait poisonously labels “hard-core socialist politics,” the party will crash and burn.

The reality is that Democrats are in the midst of a fundamental argument about the future in the wake of the abject failure—in policy and in politics—of the established center of the party. The differences between a Biden or a Beto calling for a return to Obama and Sanders or Warren calling for a fundamental change in course are significant and should spark a fierce debate. The difference between those financed by big-money contributions and those relying on small donations goes to the heart of our politics. If they are serious, the civility police should start focusing their attention and concern on the center, which is losing its hold, not the left, which is rising.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
source: Truthout

Progressives Dismiss DCCC Threats on Primary Challengers


2019_0405-Pramila-Jayapal-1200x800.jpg

Rep. Pramila Jayapal listens to Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker testify before the House Judiciary Committee on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on February 8, 2019.


As tensions escalate in an internal battle between the centrist and left wings of the Democratic Party, a group of progressives is making a move to begin a new left wing party apparatus.

A decision by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee late last month to blacklist vendors that support primary challengers over party incumbents drew a line in the sand against the potential progressive overthrow of the party’s established order.

In response to the new policy, 14 progressive groups Thursday announced the launch ofthe DCCC Blacklist — a collective of left wing vendors that are bucking the Democratic campaign arm’s directive.

“If we want to fight for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free college, getting corporate money out of politics, and an end to mass incarceration and deportation then we need to help build a network of alternative campaign infrastructure to support progressive primary challengers from this DCCC sabotage,” said Waleed Shahid, communications director for the progressive group Justice Democrats, one of the groups behind the new vendor list.

As Common Dreams reportedThursday, reconciliation attempts over the vendor policy stalled out this week. Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), the chair of the DCCC, told Politico Wednesday that she had no intention of backing down in her decision.

“We’ve got a policy that the caucus supports, the leadership supports, and it plays the long game,” said Bustos.

That prompted a response from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

“It is not playing games for the Democratic Party to be inclusive of all its members perspectives,” said Jayapal.

The divisions over the policy appear to have deepened to the point that there’s not likely a way out for both sides. In a statement about the creation of the new vendor list, Indivisible’s María Urbina said that intentional or not, the policy on vendors would serve to keep the party less diverse.

“We reject the DCCC’s attempt to hoard power, which will only serve to keep that talent pool — and Congress itself — disproportionately white and male,” said Urbina.

Thursday’s announcement of a shadow vendor group would seem to imply that the split in the party is reaching beyond rhetoric and into the realm of material reality — a secondary, progressive party apparatus, if created, will pose a credible threat to the party establishment as it is currently constituted.

“As a loyal Democrat and proud progressive, I believe that we don’t just need more Democrats in Congress — we also need better Democrats in Congress,” said Rebecca Katz, founder of New Deal Strategies. “I won’t hesitate to work with progressive candidates challenging incumbent Democrats who are out of touch with their constituents.” “

“If that means getting blacklisted by the DCCC,” Katz added, “then so be it.”

Sean McElwee, a Democratic activist whose company Data for Progress is a founding member of the project, said in a statement that he relished the opportunity to fight against the entrenched interests of the party in the 2019-2020 cycle.

“This cycle, progressives made our intentions clear: we would work to unseat anti-choice, anti-LGBT bigots like Dan Lipinski and Henry Cuellar,” said McElwee. “The DCCC made a choice: to stand with bigots instead of the progressive future of the party. They will fail.”

Marisa Franco, the founder of Latinx advocacy group Mijente, said in a statement that the new list was part of a movement to reshape the party and, hopefully, the country.

“The Democratic Party is at a crossroads and establishment party politics are not going to successfully lead us into the future,” said Franco. “We need new voices and bold ideas from people who represent the diversity of the country and are willing to lead the new American majority that is built by movements for social justice.”
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor

Gary Varvel Copyright 2019 Creators Syndicate


source: American Herald Tribune


Is Ilhan Omar Cynthia McKinney 2.0?

Will the Zionist Parasite Be Purged from the USA This Time?



Ilhan_Omar_Cynthia_McKinney_b4aeb.jpg


There have been two major events in the US Congress recently that bring to the fore the long-festering matter of whether the US Congress works for the US public or the foreign state of Israel. The first event was the passage in the US Senate of a bill that makes it a felony – a major crime – to call for the boycott of Israel, never mind the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. The second event was a series of truthful statements by a newly-elected Representative with respect to the genocidal apartheid behavior of the Zionist state of Israel – statement immediately condemned by every Member of Congress taking money from Israel – or being blackmailed by Israel – as “anti-Semitic.” [1]

America First means NOT Israel First. Cynthia McKinney (today Dr. Cynthia McKinney), almost alone among all Members of Congress in her generation, refused to sign the written “AIPAC Pledge” swearing loyalty to Israel. It took the Zionists twelve years to gerrymander her district out of existence and bribe everyone else in Georgia that mattered, but they finally ran her out of office.

Like Representative McKinney in her time, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, domestic and foreign. She has also refused to make the now verbal pledge to AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the largest most oppressive subversive organization in the USA, an undeclared unregistered agent of a foreign power, Zionist Israel.

It is surely difficult for most intelligent people around the world to appreciate the degree to which Zionists control the US economy, the US government, and US society. The best analogy I can draw is that we are in precisely the same position as Palestine, only in the US the atrocities are hidden with the complicity of a Zionist-controlled media; instead of walls and guns the Zionists use bribery, blackmail, and lies.


I am not going to get into the history of Israel as the occupier of Palestine or its status today as the foremost sponsor of terrorism, cyber-crime, and rendition & torture for hire. What I will say is that I believe that after the Koreas it is the Middle East that will be denuclearized and demilitarized; Palestine will be restored to the Palestinians; and Benjamin Netanyahu will die in jail or by his own hand, all in my lifetime – in the next twenty years. [2]

What I will do here and now is two things:

First, draw a sharp distinction between the war crimes (in Palestine) and the treason (in the USA) that are the standard by which Zionist Israel should be measured; and Judaism, which in the USA is both progressive and reformist but all too complacent with respect to Palestine; and

Second, outline is very specific terms what has changed in the USA since the Zionists planned and executed 9/11 with the complicity of Vice President Dick Cheney, and the post-9/11 cover-up led by Robert Mueller as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). [3]

Zionism is evil, Judaism is not. For the last fifty years the Zionists – working closely with the British Empire and its secret intelligence services and psychological operations elements, -- have been very successful at doing three things:

1. Conflating Zionism – the criminal state – with Judaism, the religious practice of individuals;

2. Collaborated with the UK and US secret intelligence services and the controlled media to label any criticism of Zionist and particularly the genocide of Palestinians, as anti-Semitic; and

3. Bribed and blackmailed a majority of executive and legislative leaders including Presidents and Speakers of the House, as well as judges, prosecutors, military commanders, university presidents, and others.

Since Cynthia McKinney left office the war crimes of Israel have become so extensive that the Jews of America are now very close to publicly condemning Zionist Israel and withholding their donations from AIPAC and the tens of thousands of funding channels that AIPAC oversees. [4] This will lead to a cutting off of US military and financial assistance to Zionist Israel, particularly when Zionist Israel is fully exposed for its total responsibility for planning and executing 9/11.

The two recent events in the USA – the passage of a bill in the Senate and the censure of a Member of Congress for telling the truth – are in my view a turning point in American history.

Here are some recent specific Zionist atrocities in the USA, not counting the USS Liberty and 9/11: [5]

• 25 States demand oath of loyalty to Israel as a condition for employment or assistance

• 46 Senators and 245 Representatives co-sponsor Israel First Act (Israel Anti-Boycott Act)

• 77 US Senators vote against First Amendment, make it a felony to call for boycott of Israel

• 88 Members of Congress call for US Ambassador to serve as global censor for Israel

• 9% of Members of Congress and Senior Executive Services known to have Israeli citizenship

• Al Jazeera produces The Lobby, a most extraordinary exposure of Zionist bribery operations

• Benjamin Netanyahu tells Progressive and Reform Jews in America to “piss off”

• Bill Maher denounced as a Zionist agent of influence (and unregistered Zionist agent)

CNN openly challenges Benjamin Netanyahu on live television regarding his nuclear arsenal

• Ethical Jew Henry Siegman denounces the Zionist occupation of Jerusalem (corpus separatum)

• Ethical Jew Thomas Are writing in Ha’aretz denounces Zionist bigotry and racism

Ha’aretz asks if it is time for all Jews to boycott Israel

• Israel abuses US Jews and in some cases detains them, for supporting boycott of Israel

• Israel declares itself an apartheid state and all Jews world-wide to be its subjects

• Netanyahu brags about creating three more Israels in Central Asia and elsewhere

Strategic Culture denounces US Embassy in Jerusalem as a mistake of epic proportions

• Texas fires a teacher for refusing to sign pro-Israel oath (she will win her job back in court)

• US Supreme Court strikes down state laws favoring Zionist Israel

• Zionist control of social media established – Anti-Defamation League is the chief censor

• Zionist false flag events and lies lead to US missile attack on Syria

• Zionist Israel credibly accused of killing US soldiers in Syria to draw US deeper into Syria

• Zionist lies lead to further demonization of Iran

• Zionist role in assassination of John F. Kennedy, Jr. exposed

• Zionist sniper assassinates Associated Press cameraman wearing a Press vest

• Zionist training of US police to treat US citizens as “cockroaches” is publicized

• Zionist-led vaccine eugenics program exposed

• Zionists known to be doing rendition & torture world-wide as a service for dictators

Representative Omar – whom I am honoring with the appellation of “Cynthia McKinney 2.0,” was smashed down by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi [6] but she held her ground against AIPAC. Three things are changing that favor Representative Omar and suggest that the Zionist parasite will be expunged from the USA by 2024 at the earliest, 2028 by the latest.

1. We have more Muslim citizens and will see more Muslims elected to Congress;

2. We are going to pass #UNRIG – Unity for Integrity Election Reform Act and this will shut down all forms of illicit influence now exercised with complete impunity by AIPAC; [7] and

3. The complete exposure of the Zionists for 9/11 will achieve what decades of genocide against the Palestinians have not: turn all Americans including all American Jews against the Zionists.

I defined the Deep State and the Shadow Government in early 2018. [8] President Donald Trump is not the Zionist pawn most think. Q Anon has said the Zionists will be last (because they are the hardest to root out). What I will add in conclusion is that we are controlling – and will eventually nationalize – the Federal Reserve, and we have put the Rothschilds, the Vatican, and the British Empire into a corner. The defeat of those higher forces leaves the Zionists without support. In my opinion, General Secretary Xi Jinping, President Vladimir Putin, and President Donald Trump are one on this topic: death to the Deep State, and an end to the Zionist parasite that has infected every economy, every government, and every society. May God Bless all people of faith, and most especially Jews that reject Zionism.

Endnotes

[1] Yoda, “Zionist Strike 31 — 77 Senators Vote Against First Amendment and in Favor of Israel First Not America First — Seek to Make It a Felony to Call for Boycott of Zionist Genocidal Apartheid Israel UPDATE 1: Naomi Klein Video,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 6 February 2019; and Robert Steele, “Ilhan Omar Rocks! UPDATE 5: Cynthia McKinney 2.0?,” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 10 February 2019 updated 17 February 2019.

[2] I was the first to report the planned unification of the Koreas and the related denuclearization and demilitarization of the Koreas in Robert Steele, “Is Zionism Over?American Herald Tribune, 4 March 2018. I was called a lunatic. Now of course everyone knows I was right. I anticipate being right about the Middle East as well. My eight-point peace strategy has been published as Robert Steele, “Peace in the Middle East: Denuclearizing Israel, Restoring Palestine, and More,” Russian International Affairs Council, 18 May 2018.

[3] Robert Steele, Memoranda for the President, 9/11 Truth: From Campaign Promise to a Presidential Speech on 9/11 2018?, Earth Intelligence Network, Certified Delivered to the White House on 8 August 2018.

[4] Marjorie Cohn, “The Progressive Except Palestine Problem,” Consortium News, 16 February 2019 and Mira Sucharov, “BDS Blacklist: Sadly, Now Might Be the Time for Jews to Boycott Israel,” Ha’aretz, 7 January 2018.

[5] I have specific stories for each of the 32 “strikes,” all of them can be found with links at Robert Steele, “32 Zionist Strikes (Zionism is Not Judaism),” Phi Beta Iota Public Intelligence Blog, 14 December 2018 updated 16 February 2019.

[6] Nancy Pelosi is not only a multimillionaire after decades of being on a government salary, but she is also a top fund-raiser, very likely with the considerable assistance of AIPAC. She represents everything that is wrong with the “pay to play” Congress. Cf. Stephanie Asymkos, “How Nancy Pelosi Has Earned Millions as She’s Confirmed as Speaker of the House Once More,” GoBankingRates, 3 January 2019; and Manu Raju, “Pelosi pulls in staggering sums for Dems despite facing opposition in the ranks,” CNN, 15 August 2018.

[7] Robert Steele and Cynthia McKinney, “Former Representative and Intelligence Official Team Up to Unrig Elections,” Independent Voters Network, 26 September 2017. See also https://unrig.net.

[8] Robert Steele, “Dealing with America – and the Deep State,” American Herald Tribune, 4 February 2018
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

Barack Obama warns progressives

to avoid 'circular firing squad'
  • Remarks come as Democrats battle for 2020 nomination
  • Former president was addressing young Europeans in Germany


Barack Obama addresses a town hall of young leaders from across Europe at an Obama
Foundation event in Berlin, Germany, on Saturday. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters




Barack Obama warned on Saturday that US progressives risk creating a “circular firing squad” at a time when prospective presidential candidates are competing fiercely against each other to run against Donald Trump.

The former president was speaking in Berlin, at an Obama Foundation event.

“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States,” he said, “maybe it’s true here as well, is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be’ and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a ‘circular firing squad’, where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues.

“And when that happens, typically the overall effort and movement weakens.”

Among Democrats, the field of prospective presidential nominees has swelled to nearly 20. All are eager to appeal to a party base pushed left in opposition to a hard-right president and motivated by success in the midterm elections.

Championed by progressive luminaries including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, policy ideas such as Medicare for All and the Green New Deal have achieved rising prominence.

On either side of the aisle, party primaries are traditionally brutal affairs in which candidates are tested against rivals from other wings or factions. The first debates of the 2020 Democratic contest are months away but fierce fire is already being directed towards some more centrist candidates.

Obama’s former vice-president, Joe Biden, for example, has not yet entered the race but has nonetheless attracted attacks on his record over close to 50 years in national life, including previous stances on racial issues and women’s rights. He has also struggled to respond effectively to claims from a number of women that he made them physically uncomfortable.

Among other candidates, the former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke has been attacked over a voting record on issues such as the environment and immigration which indicates a willingness to engage with Republicans.

Kamala Harris, the California senator, has attracted broadsides over her prosecutorial record before she entered national politics.

Republicans are of course seeking to stoke the flames of controversy themselves. Sarah Dolan, executive director of the America Rising political action committee, told the Guardian this weekend the group’s “mantra this cycle is really just to cause chaos, especially with how big the field is”.

In Germany, Obama also discussed the virtues and drawbacks of political compromise. He advised his audience of young Europeans to “take some time to think in your own mind and continually refine and reflect, ‘What are my core principles?’

“Because the danger is if you don’t know what your principles are, that’s when you compromise your principles away.”

He added: “You can’t set up a system in which you don’t compromise on anything, but you also can’t operate in a system where you compromise on everything.”

Answering questions, Obama said progressives needed to think about remaining “true to our values and principles while recognising that in democracies … the only way we are going to be able to get things done is that we agree to a certain set of rules and part of those rules are that you never get 100% of what you want”.

He cited the Paris climate agreement as an example of an imperfect deal achieved under his presidency with the aim of building on it later. Trump has withdrawn the US from the deal.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-progressives-circular-firing-squad-democrats

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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Barack Obama warns progressives
to avoid 'circular firing squad'

source: JACOBIN

The Midterms’ Winners, Losers, and Double-Losers

By running to the right, Democrats insist on losing twice: at the polls and in constructing an inspiring agenda. Bold left-wing politics are our only hope for long-term, substantive victory.


In the throes of an identity crisis and scrambling to recover ground lost in 2016, Democrats tried a wide array of tactics in this year’s midterm elections. Some tacked left, others tacked right. Both strategies yielded mixed results. But the major difference between the two approaches is that the Democrats who parroted conservative talking points ceded politically to the Right, even when they won their elections. Those who articulated a bold progressive political vision claimed a crucial victory for the Left, even when they appeared to go home empty-handed.

When Democrats compromise on left-wing values to win office, that’s a draw for the Left at best. This is because the task of the Left in the political sphere isn’t simply to prevent Republicans from gaining majorities — it’s to defeat the right-wing agenda, in all its forms. If that’s your goal, incorporating conservative positions and rhetoric into your own campaign is an unsound strategy, destined to undermine you in the long run.

Not Whether, But How You Win

Consider the case of incumbent Democratic senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Donnelly tacked way right — touting his collaboration with President Trump and voicing support for the proposed border wall, promising to “cut regulations that cost jobs,” positioning himself as the more reasonable of two pro-life candidates, and warning that Medicare for All would pass “over my dead body.” He calls his brand of politics “Hoosier common-sense middle,” but the word he’s looking for is “conservative.”

Donnelly lost. Even with an incumbent’s advantage and the ringing endorsement of Barack Obama, who visited Indiana for a last-minute rally with the senator, he was unseated by Republican challenger and Trump acolyte Mike Braun. Braun is an aggressively pro-corporate multi-millionaire businessman and free-market evangelist who exploited a man’s death against his widow’s wishes in a campaign ad designed to spread fear about undocumented immigrants.


"Sanders did something even more important than defeating his opponent on the political stage: he gave millions of people permission to take their innate disgust with economic inequality and exploitation seriously as a political framework."


There are two main reasons to be leery of Donnelly’s approach. First, it doesn’t work.

When Democrats tack to the right — often on economic issues, less often on social ones — they justify it as a shrewd stratagem, even a prerequisite for victory. But the idea that Democrats stand a better chance at winning office if they posture as Republican-lite is baseless. Ordinary people, whose living standards are declining as their wages stagnate and their safety net disappears, are increasingly attracted to distinct and explicit political agendas and proposals for bold change.

So when a Republican puts forth a brazen (if dystopian) vision of the future, and a Democrat responds by proposing a watered-down version of it, the Republican has the advantage. This is clearly what happened in Donnelly’s case. It’s also the reason that arch-centrist Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, and why Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in Indiana.

Second, politics isn’t just about whether a candidate wins. It’s also about how they win, and on whose terms.

Elections are a unique opportunity to speak to people on a mass scale about the principles and values that should order society. Political candidates have a chance to say whatever they want to thousands and sometimes millions of people at a time. The choices they make about how to wield that power shape the popular conception of what ideas are admissible, what policies are desirable, and what social transformations are achievable.

[menacing voiceover] radical left” abolish ICE and asserting that we must do “whatever’s necessary to protect our border” — this entrenches rather than challenges the conservative worldview. It’s a political victory for the Right, no matter who wins office.

Similarly, when a Republican calls for “market-driven health care solutions” as part of a larger program to pad corporate pockets at the expense of working people’s health, and a Democrat responds by aiming his indignation at the segments of the Left seeking to attain universal public healthcare, the Democrat has thrown the match. He’s wasted his opportunity to lay the groundwork for long-term left-wing victory by proposing an alternative to the right-wing capitalist vision of a world where people are subordinate to profits.

Winning on those terms is far from guaranteed — and it’s hardly a victory at all.


A Widening Split


Donnelly’s a somewhat extreme example, at least on social issues. Though many Democrats agree with him on the need to cater to large businesses and the impermissibility of Medicare for All, most are pro-choice and oppose Trump’s border wall. But Donnelly’s strategy is not as anomalous in the Democratic Party as you might think.

Barack Obama could have gone anywhere in the country in the days before the midterm elections. He chose three, and one of those was Indiana. There, he stumped for a man who decided to campaign against a racist capitalist by shadowboxing with imaginary “radical left” opponents. Obama threw his weight behind Donnelly — who openly opposes amnesty for immigrants and refugees — by saying, “We need leaders who will actually stand up for what is right.”


"Politics isn’t just about whether a candidate wins. It’s also about how they win, and on whose terms."


Thus we saw how the Democratic Party establishment is fully on board with this strategy of swapping political conviction for what they assumed would be partisan victory.

Mostly this manifests as a fetishization of compromise. The Democrats recovered a majority in the House yesterday. Instead of taking the occasion to claim a victory for the Left over the Right, Nancy Pelosi promised that Congress would now function as a “bipartisan marketplace of ideas.” Even in their wildest political fantasies, basking in the glow of victory, Democrats see themselves sharing governing power with Republicans rather than defeating Republicans’ ideas.

This obsession with combining left and right politics, instead of simply pushing against the Right from the left, is the same strategythat for more than thirty years has kept Democrats busy mastering the art of compromise while Republicans pursue their high-octane austerity, privatization, and reactionary social agenda without any pretense to bipartisanship. Not only is it pathetic to behold, but the payoff is supposed to be electoral victory. That victory has been elusive.

Meanwhile, concessionary centrism from the Left matched by zealous ambition from the Right have combined to produce a rightward drift in American policy, especially as pertains to corporate empowerment and evisceration of the public sector.

But there is a split widening within the Democratic Party, and not every candidate in the midterms struck a centrist pose. Quite a few Democrats tacked left instead, contra Obama and Pelosi.

National Nurses United found that in 52 percent of congressional races, Democratic candidates supported Medicare for All or single-payer health care. This surge in candidate support for Medicare for All is pretty astonishing considering that two years ago Hillary Clinton, then the face of the Democratic Party, assured the public that single-payer healthcare will “never, ever come to pass.”

most well-liked politician in America. Popular support for Medicare for All shot up from 21 percent in 2014 to a whopping 70 percent this year. Popular support for tuition-free public university reached 60 percent, up from an idea so obscure that pollsters didn’t even inquire about it.

By treating his campaign as an opportunity to reset the terms of the debate and raise the expectations of the ordinary people who comprise the broad working class, Sanders did something even more important and long-lasting than defeating his opponent on the political stage: he gave millions of people permission to take their innate disgust with economic inequality and exploitation seriously as a political framework. A majority of Americans now want to eliminate the private insurance industry and replace it with a single public alternative, and more than half of Democratic congressional candidates ran on the issue this November.

Candidates who backed Medicare for All and other progressive policies sustained a combination of defeats and victories. But they had in common a willingness to walk through the door that Sanders opened and use their campaigns to raise ordinary people’s expectations for what a good society can look like.

In an era dominated by unhinged Republicans and equivocating Democrats, running a widely observed campaign aimed at generalizing progressive and democratic socialist principles is a victory for the Left, whether or not the candidate defeats their opponent. When the Left runs as the Right and it loses, as Donnelly did, that’s a double loss. When the Left runs as the Left and it wins, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Julia Salazar, and Franklin Bynum did this midterm season, that’s a double victory. And even when explicitly left-wing candidates don’t win office, their losses aren’t complete if they’ve dedicated their campaigns to articulating and popularizing progressive and democratic-socialist ideas on a mass scale. Let’s build more of those kinds of campaigns, instead of insisting on losing twice.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Merriam-Webster:

concentration camp
noun
Definition of concentration camp

: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard —used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners


source: upworthy

Republicans freak out over AOC calling Trump's concentration camps what they are. Jewish people have her back.

Another day in Trump's America, where the main debate between members of Congress is whether or not the kids concentrated in camps at the border are indeed in concentration camps.

Rep. Liz Cheney, third-ranking Republican in the House and spawn of Dick, is absolutely AGHAST that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the detention camps to migrant children to those made famous by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Immigrant children and families are being held in detention facilities on the southern border, and are even being transferred to an Oklahoma army base that was used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, so yeah, comparisons to the 1940s are not out of nowhere."The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are," Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram. "The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it."

Cheney, a self-proclaimed authority on Jewish history and memory, accused AOC of "demeaning" the memory of Holocaust victims, whom Cheney herself dehumanized by describing them as having been "exterminated" like vermin.



AOC explained "to the shrieking Republicans" that her use of the phrase concentration camps "is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis."



Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, defined concentration camps to Esquire as "mass detention of civilians without trial," which is precisely what's going on.

AOC also asked Chiz Leney for her take on the semantics.













This article originally appeared on SomeeCards. You can read it here.
 
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Barack Obama warns Democrats
to avoid 'circular firing squad'
  • Remarks come as Democrats battle for 2020 nomination
  • Former president was addressing young Europeans in Germany


AOC renews public feud with Pelosi





AADXeol.img

© Provided by MediaDC: Washington Newspaper Publishing Company, Inc.


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez snapped at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for criticizing her and a few other left-wing Democrats, renewing a war of words between a rising liberal star and a veteran congressional leader.

"That public 'whatever' is called public sentiment. And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country," the New York Democrat said Saturday about Pelosi after the New York Democrat said Ocasio-Cortez and her inner circle of liberal freshman Democrats were just "four people."

"I find it strange when members act as though social media isn’t important. They set millions of dollars on fire to run TV ads so people can see their message. I haven’t dialed for dollars *once* this year, & have more time to do my actual job. Yet we’d rather campaign like it’s 2008," Ocasio-Cortez added.

In a New York Times interview published Saturday, Pelosi dismissed the influence of Ocasio'Cortez's "Squad," which includes Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

This is the latest flare-up between the two Democrats. In April, Pelosi dismissed Ocasio-Cortez fellow left-wing members of the party as insignificant to the larger Democratic caucus.

“That’s like five people,” the California Democrat told Lesley Stahl. After Stahl pushed back saying the "progressive" movement in the party was larger, Pelosi said she considers herself a progressive.

“Well, the progressive — I'm a progressive. Yeah,” Pelosi said.

Ocasio-Cortez has pushed Pelosi to support liberal policies like her Green New Deal and the push for impeaching President Trump. She has also been quick to criticize if the speaker over gestures of bipartisanship.

In June, Ocasio-Cortez condemned Pelosi for approving a vote on a bipartisan border funding relief bill. "Hell no," she said. "That’s an abdication of power we should refuse to accept. They will keep hurting kids if we do."



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...c-feud-with-pelosi/ar-AADXeom?ocid=spartanntp

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=======================================================

P.S.

Children, Children . . .

Harris-Biden, AOC-Pelosi, and anybody else.

It's a Big "Diverse" Tent.
The Constituency is not monolithic!

Positions and Counter-Positions,
All have to be Heard and Considered.


But, Don't Fuck this up!


.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Dems insist on making the same mistakes over and over.



source: Business Insider

Trump actually did way better than Obama in his first midterm

  • President Donald Trump on Tuesday night lost control of the House of Representatives.
  • Democrats seized at least 26 seats to gain a majority that could stymie his agenda and lead to investigation of his administration.
  • But he did way better than then-President Barack Obama in his first midterm election.
  • Presidents almost always lose a few dozen House seats in the midterms.Barack Obama lost 63 in 2010 and Bill Clinton lost 52 in 1994.
  • The elections haven't all been called yet, but Trump likely lost around 30 House seats, making it a pretty strong showing.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night lost the House of Representatives to the Democrats, who seized at least 26 seats from the Republicans.

A majority-Democrat House threatens to stymie Trump's agenda and could lead to the investigation of his administration. But, all told, he didn't do so badly.

In midterm elections, a president's party loses a handful of seats. For former President Barack Obama, midterm elections in 2010 and 2014 were catastrophic compared to Trump's moderate losses.

In 2010, Obama lost 63 House seats. Even if every House race undecided at time of publication gets called for the Democrats, Trump will have lost about half as many seats as Obama did during his first midterm.

In 2014, Obama lost just 13 House seats, but he lost them in a House already packed with Republicans. In the end, Democrats held just 188 seats to 247 for Republicans. Additionally, in 2014, Obama lost the Senate.

Trump managed to keep his hold of the Senate, where the Republican majority may even increase. Republicans in this midterm benefited from having only nine seats up for grabs in the senate, compared to 26 for Democrats and the Independents who caucus with them.

Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have hurt Senate Democrats' ability to campaign by skipping the customary senatorial recess in August.

But however Trump and the Republicans did it, they managed to hold up pretty well. Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats in 1994 during his first midterm.

George W. Bush stands as the only recent example of a president gaining seats after his first midterm in 2002, directly in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. Even then, Bush gained just eight House seats and two in the Senate.

"Last night the Republican party defied history to expand our Senate majority while significantly beating expectations in the House,' Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday.

It undoubtedly sounds odd for Trump to call the loss of around 30 House seats a "Big Victory," as he already has on Twitter. But, given the historical context of midterm elections, the victory here may be in that he suffered a smaller than expected loss.



postscriptum:

Why did the Dems regain the house in 2018 and made deep southern states competitive, even with a massively gerrymandered congressional districts?
Answer, because they offered the electorate a clear choice from Trump and the republicans.

Everybody loves Barack Hussein Obama II . Yea, yea, nice guy, great family, charming. However
remember, he lost the House in 2010 due to his turning to the so called moderates instead of the progressivism he campaigned on ( letting the banks and those that wrecked the economy off of the hook).

When are the so called moderates (i.e. republican lite) going to learn. People are tired of Republicates!
 

01fixer

Star
Platinum Member
AOC renews public feud with Pelosi





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© Provided by MediaDC: Washington Newspaper Publishing Company, Inc.


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez snapped at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for criticizing her and a few other left-wing Democrats, renewing a war of words between a rising liberal star and a veteran congressional leader.

"That public 'whatever' is called public sentiment. And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country," the New York Democrat said Saturday about Pelosi after the New York Democrat said Ocasio-Cortez and her inner circle of liberal freshman Democrats were just "four people."

"I find it strange when members act as though social media isn’t important. They set millions of dollars on fire to run TV ads so people can see their message. I haven’t dialed for dollars *once* this year, & have more time to do my actual job. Yet we’d rather campaign like it’s 2008," Ocasio-Cortez added.

In a New York Times interview published Saturday, Pelosi dismissed the influence of Ocasio'Cortez's "Squad," which includes Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

This is the latest flare-up between the two Democrats. In April, Pelosi dismissed Ocasio-Cortez fellow left-wing members of the party as insignificant to the larger Democratic caucus.

“That’s like five people,” the California Democrat told Lesley Stahl. After Stahl pushed back saying the "progressive" movement in the party was larger, Pelosi said she considers herself a progressive.

“Well, the progressive — I'm a progressive. Yeah,” Pelosi said.

Ocasio-Cortez has pushed Pelosi to support liberal policies like her Green New Deal and the push for impeaching President Trump. She has also been quick to criticize if the speaker over gestures of bipartisanship.

In June, Ocasio-Cortez condemned Pelosi for approving a vote on a bipartisan border funding relief bill. "Hell no," she said. "That’s an abdication of power we should refuse to accept. They will keep hurting kids if we do."



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...c-feud-with-pelosi/ar-AADXeom?ocid=spartanntp

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=======================================================

P.S.

Children, Children . . .

Harris-Biden, AOC-Pelosi, and anybody else.

It's a Big "Diverse" Tent.
The Constituency is not monolithic!

Positions and Counter-Positions,
All have to be Heard and Considered.


But, Don't Fuck this up!


.
since we all know the power of social media, how hard would it be for both of them to poll their followers and anyone listening to see where people stand. Either with the old school Democrats or with the progressives trying make a change.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
since we all know the power of social media, how hard would it be for both of them to poll their followers and anyone listening to see where people stand. Either with the old school Democrats or with the progressives trying make a change.

No doubt both are popular in their respective congressional districts. Both represent deep Blue districts.
Pelosi's problem is that not only does she represent on of the wealthiest districts in the US, as Speaker, she has to navigate the disparate views of all the Democrats in congress.

I don't know how scientific social media polls are. Not all voters are on social media. Social media would tend to skew toward younger, more liberal voters.

To me it is obvious the trends since 2008 have pointed toward a change in the Democratic Party. And even those that are frustrated with the Republican Party that either left the party or call themselve Independents want a more populous agenda.

Voters chose President Obama, because they wanted a change. He moved away from the perceived progressivism he campaigned on in 2008 and lost the House in 2010. The Republicans fielded just about the most status quo candidate you could find in 2012, Mitt Romney and lost again. In 2016, the Democrats fielded their version of the status quo candidate and lost. In 2018, voters saw that Trump was just the same old candidate whose priorities are the wealthy. The Democrats regained the house and turned many swing districts Blue.

Pelosi needs to understand, if you want to motivate base Democratic voters that came out for Obama, but not Hillary, she needs to keep arms length from the likes of the so called Problem Solvers and center right Dems. They are not the future of the Democratic Party.
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Centrist Democrats and republicans are more afraid of the "left" Democrats than racist and misogynist Trump! Telling!
 

MCP

International
International Member
'Go back home': Trump aims racist attack at Ocasio-Cortez and other congresswomen

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/14/trump-squad-tlaib-omar-pressley-ocasio-cortez


Rashida Tlaib reacts during testimony as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley comfort her during a House hearing on the Trump administration’s child separation policy. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA
Donald Trump used racist language to attack “the Squad” on Sunday, saying four progressive Democrats who have clashed with party leaders should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”.

“You can’t leave fast enough,” he added.
Trump did not name his targets but the members of “the Squad” are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts; Rashida Tlaib of Michigan; and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Only Omar, who is from Somalia, was not born in America. Pressley is African American, Tlaib was born to Palestinian immigrants and Ocasio-Cortez comes from a New York-Puerto Rican family.
Tlaib responded by saying Trump “needs to be impeached”.
Ocasio-Cortez said “the country I ‘come from’, and the country we all swear to, is the United States”. Omar called Trump “the worst, most corrupt and inept president we have ever seen”. Pressley said: “This is what racism looks like. We are what democracy looks like.”

Bernie Sanders was among others who called the attack racist. “When I call the president a racist,” the Vermont senator wrote, “this is what I’m talking about”.
Justin Amash, a Michigan congressman who left the Republican party over his opposition to Trump, called the remarks “racist and disgusting”.
Trump responded to the outcry on Twitter on Sunday evening, saying it was “sad to see the Democrats sticking up for people who speak so badly of our country”.


Earlier Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: “If Trump shouted the same thing at a Muslim woman wearing hijab in a Walmart, he might be arrested.”
/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/jul/05/donald-trump-firings-resignations-white-house-full-list-latest
The Squad’s run-in with House speaker Nancy Pelosi, initially over the humanitarian crisis at the southern border and including her reluctance to begin impeachment proceedings, has filled column inches. Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Post Pelosi was being “outright disrespectful” with “the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color”.

On Friday Trump defended Pelosi, saying: “She is not a racist.”

In tweets on Sunday, the president wrote that it was “so interesting to see ‘progressive’ Democrat congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/14/trump-squad-tlaib-omar-pressley-ocasio-cortez#img-2
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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and came to the US in the 1990s. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters


“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime[-]infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough.
“I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
Pelosi responded by saying Trump had shown that his plan to “Make America Great Again” had “always been about making America white again”.
Kamala Harris said Trump’s comments were “absolutely racist and un-American.”
The presidential trolling may have been meant as a distraction from immigration raids due in major cities on Sunday.

It was far from the first time Trump had been accused of holding racist views. He launched his political career with false claims that Barack Obama was not born in the US and his presidential campaign with the claim many Mexicans were “rapists”. Last year, during a White House meeting, he wondered why the US was admitting migrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador and several African nations.
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, was asked if Trump’s tweets “feed into this impression that the president is racist and is pushing a racist agenda”.

Cuccinelli said the tweets were examples of “rhetoric for the presidential race”.

All the congresswomen have emerged as key voices in a Democratic party split over how to beat Trump at the polls.
Omar was born in Somalia and came to the US at 12 after a spell in a refugee camp. Elected to Congress in November as one of its first two Muslim women, she has emerged as a hate figure among Fox News hosts and Trump’s hard-right support.
Tlaib, the other Muslim woman in Congress, was born in Detroit. Pressley was born in Cincinnati. Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York.
Trump has regularly attacked Omar and ridiculed Ocasio-Cortez, although a new book does contain expressions seemingly denoting respect for the New Yorker.
Democratic debate continues. On Sunday the Texas congressman Lloyd Doggett said on Twitter Trump’s attack was “racism pure and simple” but perhaps unwittingly echoed attacks on Pelosi when he said the president “fears the power of these strong, effective, American women of color”.
Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press Pelosi was being “a little bit” too tough on the Squad and said: “You cannot ignore the young people of this country, who are passionate about economic and racial and social and environmental justice.”

Read more

The New Mexico congressman Ben Ray Luján stuck up for the speaker, telling Fox News Sunday that “as a person of color, as the highest-ranking Hispanic in Congress, I can tell you that Nancy Pelosi has lifted up my voice to make sure that I’ve had opportunities and to make sure my voice has been heard, as well.”
At Netroots in Philadelphia on Saturday, Tlaib said that in politics, “you have to be unapologetically you”. She made an impression that way in January, telling supporters: “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”
On Sunday, Tlaib was the first to respond.

“Want a response to a lawless [and] complete failure of a president?” she wrote. “He is the crisis. His dangerous ideology is the crisis. He needs to be impeached.”

Omar, Pressley and Ocasio-Cortez followed, the last with a lengthy rebuke.

“You are angry,” she wrote, “because you don’t believe in an America where I represent New York 14, where the good people of Minnesota elected [Omar], where [Tlaib] fights for Michigan families, where [Pressley] champions little girls in Boston.
“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.”
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Trump goes all in on racism. Where is Mr. don't create a Democratic firing squad on denouncing the racism the media, republicans and the centrists are giving than what Pelosi and the freshman members of congress are saying?
 
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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Remember the centrists say the the new congress members are petulant children and should just shut up.

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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”



- Franklin D. Roosevelt 1936



source: Vox

Conservative media’s war on AOC is hammering her poll numbers

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s national poll numbers are pretty bad — and conservative media attacks appear to be a key reason why.



Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the social media star and self-identified democratic socialist, is fairly unpopular around the country.

A Quinnipiac poll released on Thursday morning found that 23 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the member of Congress, while 36 percent had an unfavorable view — a -13 overall approval rating. Thirty-eight percent hadn’t heard enough about her to have an informed opinion.

This new poll isn’t a one-off finding. Three prior surveys — one in January from Morning Consult, one in February from Fox, and a third in mid-March from Gallup — all found that more Americans had negative views of AOC than had positive ones. This might surprise a lot of Democrats, who see all of her viral clips and impressive performances in congressional hearings and assume she’s a popular rising star.

So what’s going on? Ocasio-Cortez herself has a preferred explanation — that she’s been vilified on Fox News and in other conservative outlets, and they’ve driven her national approval rating down. If this theory is right, then you’d expect her negative favorables to be driven almost entirely by Republicans detesting her and everyone else not being as familiar with her.

And that appears to be exactly what is happening.

How conservative media is dragging down AOC’s poll numbers
If you look at the detailed breakdown of the latest poll, from Quinnipiac, you’ll see that Ocasio-Cortez is viewed extremely favorably among Democrats: 47 percent view her favorably and 7 percent view her unfavorably. By contrast, she’s viewed overwhelmingly unfavorably among Republicans: A scant 2 percent view her favorably while 74 percent view her unfavorably.

The most striking partisan gap is how many people in each party are familiar with her.

A large number of Democrats — 44 percent — haven’t heard enough about her to have an opinion. A much smaller percentage of Republicans — 23 percent — can say the same. AOC is simply better known among Republicans than Democrats, and this is driving her unfavorables up.

There are a number of reasons why this could be the case. Her overall political message is pretty polarizing, and it’s not surprising that this would turn off Republicans especially. But disproportionate attention to her in conservative media seems to be a major part of the story.

The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump analyzed Fox News segments between January 1 and February 15 of this year, comparing the number of segments mentioning AOC to those focusing on at least one of the Democratic 2020 presidential candidates. It turns out she got more coverage on Fox than any candidate save one, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is also a right-wing boogeyman. Ocasio-Cortez got significantly more Fox News coverage than fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

It’s astonishing that a Democratic backbencher could get this much attention and get so famous at the beginning of her first term. It’s a testament to how much of a phenomenon she is on the Democratic left — and how much the right seems to both hate and fear her.

In an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick, AOC characterized all the media attention as exhausting and borderline dangerous.

“I’ve got a full-time job in Congress and then I moonlight as America’s greatest villain, or as the new hope. And it’s pretty tiring,” she said. “This ravenous hysteria — it’s really getting to a level that is kind of out of control.”
 

thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
According to the right wing and centrist media, AOC is terribly unpopular.

source: Reuters


U.S. Representative Ocasio-Cortez raised $1.2 million in second quarter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been in the middle of a controversy that includes House Democratic leadership and President Donald Trump, raised $1.2 million for her re-election in the second quarter, an impressive haul for a freshman lawmaker.

The bulk of Ocasio-Cortez’s fundraising came in donations of less than $200 - an indication that she is successfully raising money online from grassroots supporters.

At the end of June, the Democratic New York congresswoman had $1.4 million in cash, according to disclosures her re-election campaign filed on Monday. That was a sharp uptick for Ocasio-Cortez, who raised $2.1 million for her entire first election campaign.

Ocasio-Cortez’s fundraising haul leaves her well positioned ahead of when she is likely to run for re-election in 2020. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives serve two-year terms.

By comparison, Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the House Democratic caucus and also of New York, raised about $845,000 for his re-election bid in the same period. He had $2.2 million in cash at the end of the quarter.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, a Republican of Louisiana who is one of the chamber’s most prolific fundraisers, raised $1.4 million in the first quarter of the year.

Ocasio-Cortez raised more than some Democrats currently running for president, including former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and U.S. Representative Tim Ryan.

She has been sparring with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the chamber’s response to detention centers on the border housing migrant children. Ocasio-Cortez has argued that Pelosi has not done enough to push back against the Republican president’s policies.

On Sunday, Trump injected himself in the middle of the dispute, drawing a barrage of criticism when he wrote on Twitter that Ocasio-Cortez and three other minority woman lawmakers, known in Congress as “the squad,” should go back to “the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

All four of the first-term House members are U.S. citizens, and all but one were born in the United States.

Ocasio-Cortez accused Trump of trying to sow division. “Weak minds and leaders challenge loyalty to our country in order to avoid challenging and debating the policy,” she said.
 
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thoughtone

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
You would think that Negrocons would be tired of being used as rethuglican props!



source: Fox News Channel

Ocasio-Cortez gets new 2020
challenger: a Republican
immigrant from Jamaica


ff370650-Scherie_Murray.png

Republican Scherie Murray is launching a campaign Wednesday for the New York congressional seat held by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.


EXCLUSIVE -- Scherie Murray, a New York businesswoman who immigrated from Jamaica as a child and is active in state Republican politics, is launching a campaign Wednesday for the congressional seat held by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Fox News has learned.

In a phone interview, Murray, 38, confirmed her intention to run for the New York congressional seat as a Republican.

“There is a crisis in Queens, and it’s called AOC,” Murray told Fox News. “And instead of focusing on us, she’s focusing on being famous. Mainly rolling back progress and authoring the job-killing Green New Deal and killing the Amazon New York deal.”

Murray, who was born in Jamaica and moved to the United States when she was 9, is officially launching her campaign Wednesday with an introductory video that takes sharp jabs at the 29-year-old Ocasio-Cortez.

“Your representative in Washington chooses self-promotion over service, conflict over constituents, resistance over assistance," Murray said in the video. "Queens and the Bronx needs someone who will create jobs instead of turning them away."

Asked about Ocasio-Cortez’s brand of Democratic socialism, Murray said, “I think it’s far, far to the left and it is not connecting with everyday Americans.”

As for "Medicare-for-all," which Ocasio-Cortez has embraced, the Republican said: “Medicare-for-all, I think a lot of people are happy with their current health insurance.” And on the Green New Deal, the left-wing proposal to address climate change pushed by Ocasio-Ortez, she said: “We know that it certainly will kill jobs.”

Murray joins four other Republicans who have filed to run for the seat: former police officer John Cummings, medical journalist Ruth Papazian, construction contractor Miguel Hernandez and entrepreneur Antoine Tucker.

No Democrats have yet announced a primary challenge to Ocasio-Cortez, though there's been speculation that establishment Democrats could rally behind a primary challenger. Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world in 2018 by defeating longtime Rep. Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary.

Whichever Republican candidate emerges from the primary field will face a steep uphill climb in the overwhelmingly Democratic district. But Murray and others are looking to paint Ocasio-Cortez as more of a celebrity than a lawmaker, while stressing their ability to work across party lines.

Murray's new campaign video, which doesn’t mention President Trump or the Republican Party, portrays Murray as a bridge-builder. She is a former state committeewoman of the New York State Republican Party.

Asked during the interview if she considers herself a Trump supporter, she said “yes.” She said she is in the process of talking with national Republicans about her campaign, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, a prominent black Republican in Congress.

She expressed disgust over the recent spat between Trump and Ocasio-Cortez and her allies. Trump has taken heat for telling Ocasio-Cortez and other minority progressives to "go back" to where they came from – provoking accusations from Democrats that Trump's comments are racist.

“I think it’s disgusting, to be quite honest,” Murray said of the controversy, without specifying which part of it disgusts her. “I think we are missing the point of why we’re elected to public office: to legislate on policy, to deliver results to those kitchen table issues that are affecting everyday Americans.”

Murray later clarified her thoughts on the back-and-forth, saying of Trump's tweet, "Is that how I would have worded it? No. Do I think the president is a racist? No." She added, "But I want to get back to the core of why we’re even talking about this – there is a crisis at our border."

Murray, who grew up in Southeast Queens and worked for the city’s Jamaica Bus Depot as a teenager, founded a television production and advertising company called The Esemel Group in 2004. She said her business generated employment for minorities in New York City. She said she no longer works for the company and is now a full-time mother.

The GOP primary will take place in June 2020.

Winning a general election in New York’s 14th congressional district would be a long shot for any Republican: In 2018, Ocasio-Cortez’s GOP opponent, Anthony Pappas, won just 14 percent of the vote.

But Murray still insists a Republican could win – even in a Democratic-controlled district – because of dissatisfaction with Ocasio-Cortez.

“A Republican can win the district,” she said. “There is an absolute path to victory when you look at a general election campaign.”
 
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