AOC and Socialists: We’re Not To Blame For Weak Dem Congressional Showing, Will Push Party Left

AOC and Socialists: We’re Not To Blame For Weak Dem Congressional Showing, Will Push Party Left

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her fellow socialists are already preparing for war with both the Democrat establishment and a potential Biden administration.

Their goal has always been to pull Biden as far left as they could, and they succeeded, one would think, beyond expectations with his quiet embrace of everything from ‘free’ community college to eliminating Right to Work, from creating a “public option” to repackaging the Green New Deal  as “build back better.”

But they are not happy to be called out by moderate Democrats with the reality-based observation that running on “Medicare for All, defund the police, [and] socialized medicine” hurt them downticket.

The Guardian reports:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticised the Democratic party for incompetence in a no-holds-barred, post-election interview with the New York Times, warning that if the Biden administration does not put progressives in top positions, the party would lose big in the 2022 midterm elections.

. . . . Ocasio-Cortez and her closest allies in Congress – a four-woman group known as “the squad” who all won reelection last week – toed the party line while calling on grassroots activists to boost Biden and Democrats down-ticket.

The truce is over. The failure of the party to operate an online strategy “in a real way that exhibits competence”, Ocasio-Cortez told the Times, made it hypocritical for the party to advance criticism of progressive messaging.

“If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: ‘This is moderates’ fault. This is because you didn’t let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all.’ And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election?” Ocasio-Cortez said. “They would laugh. And that’s what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.”

Interesting that Black Lives Matter, now toxic to voters on both the left and the right, has become “the Movement for Black Lives.”  Same violent Marxist group, different name (no one will ever catch on, they seem to imagine).

AOC goes on to claim that “progressivism” is not politically “toxic” and that every single progressive who ran on Medicare for All won their election.  She fails to grasp that they did so in progressive districts and that Republicans picked up House seats by running against it.

The Guardian continues:

“So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy,” she said. “And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for all is not the enemy. This isn’t even just about winning an argument. It’s that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they’re just setting up their own obsolescence.”

Appearing on CNN later in the day, Ocasio-Cortez said: “Progressives have assets to offer the party that the party has not yet fully leaned into… Every single swing seat member that co-sponsored Medicare for All won their re-election, and so the conversation is a little bit deeper than saying anything progressive is toxic.”

Considering this is coming from someone whose district, Nancy Pelosi once said, a “glass of water with a (D) on it” could win, it’s not surprising that AOC doesn’t understand the concerns of her Democrat House colleagues who are not wallowing in districts steeped in fantasies of a Marxist utopia.

So the whole “progressivism is bad” argument just doesn’t have any compelling evidence that I’ve seen.

When it comes to “Defund” & “Socialism” attacks, people need to realize these are racial resentment attacks. You’re not gonna make that go away. You can make it less effective.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 6, 2020

But that was always Bernie’s riff, too, everyone in American would just love his socialist cum communist dream if only he shouted about it loudly enough.

AOC warns Biden that his transition team picks will signal who he credits for his win and that she will be watching carefully.

Slate reports:

In one of the most surprising portions of the interview, an evidently exasperated Ocasio-Cortez revealed that most swing state Democrats rejected her offer of help in their campaigns. “I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help,” she said. “And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss.” Although it wasn’t included in the interview, Herndon tweeted that Ocasio-Cortez did name the five on the record, but it was cut for space: Jahana Hayes from Connecticut; Katie Porter, TJ Cox, and Mike Levin from California; and Peter DeFazio from Oregon.

. . . . In a not-so-subtle warning to Biden, Ocasio-Cortez said that the first appointments he unveils will make it clear whether his administration will take demands of progressives seriously. “These transition appointments, they send a signal,” she said. “They tell a story of who the administration credits with this victory.”

While AOC hasn’t yet called for outright leftist opposition to a potential Biden administration, Bernie-supporting communist website Jacobin is saying just that.

It’s good that Donald Trump lost. But the Left now needs to pivot immediately to opposition to the Joe Biden administration. https://t.co/fNg9sbUvFV

— Jacobin (@jacobinmag) November 8, 2020

I’ll spare you much of their weird throwback communist ranting, but here’s a portion of their argument for shifting their #Resistance from President Trump to Biden:

The end of the Trump era is a good thing. As my friend and comrade David Griscom likes to put it, “This is a show whose second season you don’t want to see.” Donald Trump appointed hard-core union busters to the National Labor Relations Board and a parade of Federalist Society ghouls to the federal judiciary. . . .

. . . . The incoming Joe Biden administration doesn’t deserve an ounce of credit for having the right intentions or a day of progressives patiently waiting to see how it acts before pivoting to a posture of opposition.

This might seem wildly overstated. A quick glance at the Biden/Harris campaign website shows that the president-elect wants to make community colleges tuition-free, create a public option to compete with private health insurance companies, and allow workers to unionize through a simple and easy card check process, which would boost labor’s membership and power.

Socialists have good reasons to criticize the inadequacy of these proposals.

. . . . We certainly can’t afford to hold off on attacking the incoming administration on the belief that Biden wants the things we want and he’s trying his best.

You can read the whole thing here.

That’s the way of the radical leftist socialists, though, from Bernie to Jacobin to AOC to the rest of the Squad and progressive caucus: they don’t consider—or care—what American voters want, including the 70 million Americans who voted for Trump and those Americans who elected moderate Democrats to represent them in Congress.

For AOC and her ilk, it’s all about them, what they want, what they demand, and how they will force it on the entire nation . . . whether we like it not.

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