Sunday, 8 November 2020

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Biden’s Win, House Losses, and What’s Next for the Left

quote [ The congresswoman said Joe Biden’s relationship with progressives would hinge on his actions. And she dismissed criticism from House moderates, calling some candidates who lost their races “sitting ducks.” ]

Lets's gooooooo!

They Are Trying To Silence AOC, Because Money Never Sleeps - The Daily Poster

Episode 17 - Bernie Would Have Won | Bad Faith on Patreon - Ignore the title, it's just a joke. Briahna Joy Gray and Virgil Texas do a really good breakdown on how the Biden Campaign affected downballot races and what needs to be done in the future.

Reveal
For months, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a good soldier for the Democratic Party and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as he sought to defeat President Trump.

But on Saturday, in a nearly hourlong interview shortly after President-elect Biden was declared the winner, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made clear the divisions within the party that animated the primary still exist. And she dismissed recent criticisms from some Democratic House members who have blamed the party’s left for costing them important seats. Some of the members who lost, she said, had made themselves “sitting ducks.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

We finally have a fuller understanding of the results. What’s your macro takeaway?

Well, I think the central one is that we aren’t in a free fall to hell anymore. But whether we’re going to pick ourselves up or not is the lingering question. We paused this precipitous descent. And the question is if and how we will build ourselves back up.

We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.

But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat.


To your first point, Democrats lost seats in an election where they were expected to gain them. Is that what you are ascribing to racism and white supremacy at the polls?

I think it’s going to be really important how the party deals with this internally, and whether the party is going to be honest about doing a real post-mortem and actually digging into why they lost. Because before we even had any data yet in a lot of these races, there was already finger-pointing that this was progressives’ fault and that this was the fault of the Movement for Black Lives.

I’ve already started looking into the actual functioning of these campaigns. And the thing is, I’ve been unseating Democrats for two years. I have been defeating D.C.C.C.-run campaigns for two years. That’s how I got to Congress. That’s how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That’s how Jamaal Bowman won. That’s how Cori Bush won. And so we know about extreme vulnerabilities in how Democrats run campaigns.

Some of this is criminal. It’s malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election. I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet.

And I’ve looked through a lot of these campaigns that lost, and the fact of the matter is if you’re not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. And not a single one of these campaigns were firing on all cylinders.

Well, Conor Lamb did win. So what are you saying: Investment in digital advertising and canvassing are a greater reason moderate Democrats lost than any progressive policy?

These folks are pointing toward Republican messaging that they feel killed them, right? But why were you so vulnerable to that attack?

If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone could be making ideological claims when they didn’t run a full-fledged campaign.

Our party isn’t even online, not in a real way that exhibits competence. And so, yeah, they were vulnerable to these messages, because they weren’t even on the mediums where these messages were most potent. Sure, you can point to the message, but they were also sitting ducks. They were sitting ducks.

There’s a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee. And there’s a reason that when he didn’t activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party — in and of itself — does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that.

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? They would laugh. And that’s what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.

Is there anything from Tuesday that surprised you? Or made you rethink your previously held views?

The share of white support for Trump. I thought the polling was off, but just seeing it, there was that feeling of realizing what work we have to do.

We need to do a lot of anti-racist, deep canvassing in this country. Because if we keep losing white shares and just allowing Facebook to radicalize more and more elements of white voters and the white electorate, there’s no amount of people of color and young people that you can turn out to offset that.

But the problem is that right now, I think a lot of Dem strategy is to avoid actually working through this. Just trying to avoid poking the bear. That’s their argument with defunding police, right? To not agitate racial resentment. I don’t think that is sustainable.

There’s a lot of magical thinking in Washington, that this is just about special people that kind of come down from on high. Year after year, we decline the idea that they did work and ran sophisticated operations in favor of the idea that they are magical, special people. I need people to take these goggles off and realize how we can do things better.

If you are the D.C.C.C., and you’re hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them. So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing.

The leadership and elements of the party — frankly, people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party — are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.

I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years. That’s also the damn thing of it. I’ve been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. 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.

So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. 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.

What is your expectation as to how open the Biden administration will be to the left? And what is the strategy in terms of moving it?

I don’t know how open they’ll be. And it’s not a personal thing. It’s just, the history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grass roots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.

I think the transition period is going to indicate whether the administration is taking a more open and collaborative approach, or whether they’re taking a kind of icing-out approach. Because Obama’s transition set a trajectory for 2010 and some of our House losses. It was a lot of those transition decisions — and who was put in positions of leadership — that really informed, unsurprisingly, the strategy of governance.

What if the administration is hostile? If they take the John Kasich view of who Joe Biden should be? What do you do?

Well, I’d be bummed, because we’re going to lose. And that’s just what it is. These transition appointments, they send a signal. They tell a story of who the administration credits with this victory. And so it’s going be really hard after immigrant youth activists helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It’s going to be really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her district.

It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout.

If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is.

You are diagnosing national trends. You’re maybe the most famous voice on the left currently. What can we expect from you in the next four years?

I don’t know. I think I’ll have probably more answers as we get through transition, and to the next term. How the party responds will very much inform my approach and what I think is going to be necessary.

The last two years have been pretty hostile. Externally, we’ve been winning. Externally, there’s been a ton of support, but internally, it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive.

Is the party ready to, like, sit down and work together and figure out how we’re going to use the assets from everyone at the party? Or are they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach? And that’s going to inform what I do.

Is there a universe in which they’re hostile enough that we’re talking about a Senate run in a couple years?

I genuinely don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to be in politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.

Really? Why?

It’s the incoming. It’s the stress. It’s the violence. It’s the lack of support from your own party. It’s your own party thinking you’re the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you’re bad because you actually append your name to your opinion.

I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke. That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.

But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.
[SFW] [politics] [+4 Informative]
[by steele@8:58pmGMT]

Comments

rylex said @ 9:13pm GMT on 8th Nov [Score:3 Underrated]
totally hit the nail on the head. as much as i dislike AOC, she and I agree on this one. dems have lost touch with their progressives
steele said @ 10:08pm GMT on 8th Nov [Score:1 Insightful]
"Lost touch" kind of implies that it's involuntary though. Maybe "use, dispose, and despise their progressives"?
rylex said @ 12:55am GMT on 9th Nov
pretty sure it is involuntary. conservative morals dont jibe with progressive

old people need to die off already, and their ideals with them
snowfox said @ 2:10am GMT on 9th Nov
This is an unending cycle. Every generation is always the worst one yet according to the elderly, and all the anti-progressive oppression will always go away when the elderly die according to the young.

I see too many people younger than I am who are even more regressive than the elderly regressives to believe that time and the icy grip of death will solve our problems.

The reality is that we have disparate groups in our population who want different things. Assuming everyone in your demographic is like you and you'd get what you want if not for everyone else is naïve at best.
hellboy said @ 6:50am GMT on 9th Nov
That's part of what she's saying: you have to make the case, you can't just disguise or abandon your principles for fear of offending people.
damnit said[1] @ 12:25am GMT on 9th Nov
The Dems have been playing the “let’s work together and meet in the middle” strategy for so long to “get votes” from the right and Republicans keep moving the needle further right on their own terms.

Most of congress are morally Republicans. Establishment Republicans just don’t want anyone tied to the Democrat party to get any policy out the door.

So Romney had to eat his own words and abandon his baby (Romneycare, which is Obamacare).
snowfox said[1] @ 2:18am GMT on 9th Nov
But, when we dig in our heels and refuse to compromise, do we get our way? We're supposed to be creating wedge compromises that allow us to slowly take what we want before the Republicans can stop us.

Obamacare was a good example. They used Romneycare against the GOP to pass something that wedged the door open. That compromise was never meant to be our final result. It got the burner turned on so we could slowly boil the frog. We got close. People were arriving at the conclusion on their own that it would be better if this system were single payer or regulated in such a way that the free market had to offer a specific product for a specific price. People were talking about how it would cost us less in taxes to buy the pharma companies outright than to keep paying their prices.

We cannot force revelations and epiphanies. We have to enable people to have them. They have to feel it's their idea and their choice, that we created something that's good but poorly executed and they could improve it.

People on SE believe they can force their views on the unwilling, but you guys couldn't even force them on one person - me - who mostly agrees with you. So what makes you think that battering ram strategy will work on the country?
hellboy said @ 7:02am GMT on 9th Nov
When we do compromise, do we get our way? The dynamic that keeps happening over and over again is the Democrats run, they say that progressives have to vote for them because the Republicans are a nightmare, the progressives compromise and support the Democrats, the Democrats either lose the election and blame the progressives, or win the election and blame the progressives and instead compromise with the Republicans they just beat. In no case do the progressives get what they want, they always have to compromise to appease the centrists. And the Democrats wonder why it's so hard to get progressives to vote for them.
snowfox said @ 10:24am GMT on 9th Nov
Yes. Progress has, without a doubt, happened. We had to chisel away it. It was protests but it was also finding the right court cases to set up a conclusion people would stop if they saw coming. The first step is being able to even compromise with eachother. I remember when the left on SE was unified. Those days are long over. I'm open to compromise, but not with other people who aren't. That is the key. You do not negotiate with terrorists. Any group willing to make consessions, willing to work with you, is one you can slowly work to your advantage.
tom the fish said @ 1:23am GMT on 9th Nov [Score:2 Underrated]
“Meet me in the middle,” says the unjust man.

You take a step toward him. He takes a step back.

“Meet me in the middle,” says the unjust man.
Mikhail_16 said @ 8:32pm GMT on 9th Nov [Score:1 Underrated]
I really wish I could mod this up. This is nail on the head with the last 20ish (or even 30ish) years of US politics, regardless of who's labeled as unjust.
snowfox said @ 3:22am GMT on 11th Nov
I agree with you. Don't negotiate with terrorists.

There is a part of the GOP that still has a real intent to govern and believes in infrastructure. Infrastructure bills used to be the bipartisan buffers between more contentious issues.

Refusing to compromise isn't something we should do on either side of the aisle. The ideal is for both parties to exclude those who can't work with others. Those who are willing and able to negotiate, even if they don't agree on all issues, can get something done. We know there are sane people on the right. Trump forced them to out themselves as much as he enabled the Nazis to step into the light. Now that they've seen how bad it can get, it's the best possible time to create alliances.

So the answer is not for the left to stop negotiating, but to stop negotiating with those unwilling to compromise. Obstructionist governance should not be a goal and should be condemned no matter who does it.

I think our biggest challenge on this front is to amend rules that make obstruction and a government that refuses to govern impossible. If we could do that, the benefits would be far-reaching.

This is not as progressive as what I want, ultimately, but it is a path forward, a path where we shut doors behind us to create better circumstances for improvement.
hellboy said @ 6:49am GMT on 9th Nov [Score:1 Underrated]
AOC is the most talented and inspiring politician in 50 years and she's dead on here.

(Obama was a nobody at her age. Ardern might be close, but she doesn't have to work as hard.)
snowfox said @ 9:18pm GMT on 9th Nov
I'm not surprised. Elizabeth Warren and Jill Stein were both trotted out as women SEers would vote for, but not Hillary Clinton. Stein was Russian interference and she was an anti-vaxxer. People were just naming female politicians. As long as AOC was proof a "progressive" man wasn't sexist or racist, and as long as she was a Bernie supporter, she was beloved. But pursue real power or have her own opinions? Suddenly, they hate her, just like Warren. By the time she runs for a higher office, the same people who said they would vote for her will have a litany of complaints against her. Meanwhile, their preferred white male candidate remains without fault.

The pattern has been established. I'll amend my views on that when something different happens.
hellboy said @ 5:41am GMT on 14th Nov
I voted for Bernie in 2016 and still like him; I've also sent money to AOC (and Omar and other female candidates), voted for Warren in 2020, and am looking forward to voting for AOC at some point down the road for president (hopefully after she's been governor or senator). So something different has already happened.
coffeejoejava said @ 10:52pm GMT on 11th Nov [Score:-2]
filtered comment under your threshold
yunnaf said @ 9:06am GMT on 10th Nov
Two party system is too limiting. It's undemocratic.
coffeejoejava said @ 10:50pm GMT on 11th Nov [Score:-2]
filtered comment under your threshold

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