On the Democratic Party: what was Perez thinking?
You’d think that even if he thought it, he wouldn’t say it.
I’m referring to the statement of DNC chair Tom Perez that socialist Ocasio-Cortez represents “the future” of the Democratic Party.
Now, it’s possible that Perez—who has tilted left for many years—is a closet socialist, and that was what sparked his remark. Hey, maybe the entire Democratic Party is composed of closet socialists. But my real question is, whether Perez (or the Party in general) believes in socialism or not, why would he think it a good idea to say so? Why let the cat out of the bag, as it were?
In other words, why would he think this a winning strategy? Surely he’s aware that Ocasio-Cortez’s win was in a primary in a district with an atypical demographic and an election with extremely low turnout, against a fellow Democrat with low popular appeal. Does he think the future of the Party is to run increasingly leftist radical candidates in safely true-blue enclaves of large liberal cities? That won’t be getting the Party very far.
Does Perez (the child of legal Dominican immigrants, a doctor and the daughter of a diplomat) believe that the Democrats’ encouragement of illegal immigration and then amnesty and eventual citizenship will change the makeup of the US so much that it will soon resemble Ocasio-Cortez’s district?
Does he think the only thing that matters is that candidates like Ocasio-Cortez are young and telegenic, and that’s enough?
Does he think the Party’s only path to victory is to energize younger, more radical voters to come to the polls?
Did he think hardly anyone on the other side would even pay attention to what he said?
In contrast to Perez, Alan Dershowitz begs to differ. Of course, Dershowitz is not the chair of the Party. In fact, he’s being shunned, a prelude perhaps to being drummed out (as Joe Lieberman was):
Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said Tuesday he won’t let radicals like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders steal the spirit of the Democratic Party and doubled-down on his attack on fellow liberals who “shunned” him at Martha’s Vineyard.
“I won’t let the Democrats steal my party from me. I want to regain the center,” Dershowitz told WABC Radio’s “Curtis and Cosby” show, noting that he will remain a Democrat as “as long as there’s some chance the Democratic Party can return to normalcy.”
“I want to make sure that the radical Left, the woman who got elected in the Bronx and Queens to Congress on the Democratic ticket, that they and Sanders and others don’t represent the Democratic Party,” he continued, referring to socialist Ocasio-Cortez who pulled off a shock victory last week against incumbent Democratic Rep. Joseph Crowley.
“I want a fight within the Democratic Party to restore it to the days when it was a great centrist party, when it united people rather than divided people,” he added.
I think Dershowitz is fighting a losing battle.
No surprise there. Perez is to the left of Ellison.
(Without the rather embarrassing—at least for some—Farrakhan baggage; though if things become sufficiently insane, that connection might prove advantageous for the former Congressman from the Great State of Minnesota.)
Yes, folks, the future of the Democratic Party of the USA!!
Obama and his merrye band (with able assistance from Bernie) have, if the trajectory continues, effectively Corbynized it.
Should make for an interesting future.
Policy wise, there is little that Mr Dershowitz and I agree, but he is an honorable man. He has principles, he doesn’t violate them to be popular. He will defend those he disagrees with those principles, knowing that without solid and unwavering principles, civilization will wither and die.
It has seemed that the center Mr. Dersowitz wants to claim isn’t there anymore. Or if it is the DNC has clearly forgotten about those people. Joe Lieberman says hello.
I think Perez said it because he believes it. Because that’s the fundamental change Obama was speaking of.
I’m referring to the statement of DNC chair Tom Perez that socialist Ocasio-Cortez represents “the future” of the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-Cortez , though born in the Bronx, spent most of her childhood in upscale Westchester. She has spent the last 5 years or so in the Bronx of her birth.
In one sense, Ocasio-Cortez not only represents the future, but also the present of the Democratic: the alliance of the gentry (Westchester) with the proles ( Bronx). 🙂
Recall that the 2 towns in Connecticut where Hillary’s vote percent was the greatest compared to Obama in 2012- 18% more for Hillary- were New Caanan and Darien, the 2nd and 3rd richest towns in the state. Overall, Hillary fell about 5% behind Obama in Connecticut. Which makes New Caanan and Darien outliers not just for wealth.
Back in 1998 Warren Beatty directed and starred in a political film, “Bulworth,” in which Senator Bulworth (D-CA) (played by Beatty) decides for complicated reasons to commit suicide by hitman. But before the lights go out, he chooses to reveal his authentic youthful radical politics — belied by his later, centrist, Clinton-style triangulations.
Within its parameters “Bulworth” is a good movie. It also reveals much of the Democratic mindset … until now. Many Democrats really are socialist, but they pragmatically have kept that quiet.
In 2013 Obama, according to the NY Times, had mentioned privately his desire to go “Bulworth.” And with his “phone and a pen” he did.
I believe Perez is sincere. He, like many of the Democratic leadership, is going Bulworth.
I support Perez and these Democrats. Let it all hang out! Be yourselves! Be socialist! Go Bulworth!
American voters can then make a real choice between authentic positions.
I understand (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see Cicero and Neo’s dialogue under the Yankee Doodle Dandy post) why so many Jews are leftists. What I don’t understand is why so many Minnesotans are leftists?!
But my real question is, whether Perez (or the Party in general) believes in socialism or not, why would he think it a good idea to say so? Why let the cat out of the bag, as it were?
neo: Good question! IMO Perez et al. believe Trump is such a nightmare that voters are similarly outraged and will follow the Perez/Ocasio-Ortez lead.
They believe they can come from behind on their moral authority as they did with civil rights and the Vietnam War.
Also, I think they are desperate. If Trump manages a second term, that is the end of the Democratic Party as they know it.
“…so many Minnesotans…”
Because of the large number of mostly impoverished, hard-working Scandinavian immigrants (from Norway and Sweden, for the most part, I believe), who arrived with visions of the better life for all men and women of all social classes that socialism would inevitably bring forth…
(I wonder if the Somalis will be able to make a dent in that particular mindset.)
As for “fighting a losing battle”, Dershowitz just might pull it off if enough essentially decent Democrats become thoroughly disgusted with the antics of the Party of the Future.
(Remember: these decent Dems don’t necessarily have to switch their votes to GOP; all they have to do is decide NOT to vote—which (speculation alert) is what might have given Ocasio-Cortez her rather bizarre victory.)
Now that Dershowitz will not be going to all those parties, he’ll have a lot more time (social creature that he is) to pound home his basic point: the absolute need to respect, and FOLLOW, the Constitution no matter who’s in office.
No, I wouldn’t count Dershowitz out.
I’m not sure, strategically, why Democrats would consider veering drastically leftward off the map into “Here Be Monsters” territory is going to help them get more votes. Was there a great mass of lefty radicals who were previously not voting, or voting for third-party candidates?
It’s not as if that strategy is going to draw centrists much less anyone who voted for Trump the last time.
“I’m referring to the statement of DNC chair Tom Perez that socialist Ocasio-Cortez represents “the future” of the Democratic Party.” neo
A moment of careless honesty. Holding on to the Sanders block is critical for the dems to remain viable. Especially as white millenials are leaving the democrat party ala #WalkAway. Well spoken Black conservatives are having an impact.
The Pew Research Center reports that,
“Also, I think they are desperate. If Trump manages a second term, that is the end of the Democratic Party as they know it.” huxley
I think not but hope you’re right.
He said it because he believes it and because in the ‘movie’ he’s running in his head it makes sense. In that movie, Trump is a threat to democracy that the majority will realize soon and the people who voted for Obama but then misguidedly voted for Trump will return another Obama socialist (we all knew it even if he was more careful than Perez) to the presidency and reverse these horrible attacks on the global march towards justice. He and socialism are on the right side of history and that bending thing will eventually bend Trump out of power.
Geoffrey Britain- “we’ll spoken black conservatives are having an impact”.
You should check out the senate race here in Michigan. John James is a charismatic young African-American conservative pro-life Christian, running in the Republican primary to unseat Debbie Stabenau, a boring Democat who’s held the seat for 40+ years.
John is a West Point graduate, an Apache helicopter pilot with over 400+ combat missions In Iraq, came home to get a graduate degree in business, and then became CEO of his family business. I attended one of his rallies recently, dragging along a “moderate” neighbor who came back so impressed that he put up a yard sign.
The only problem is that John’s opponent in the Republican primary is a wealthy venture capitalist in his 60’s who’s been running nonstop attack adds against John. If John somehow wins it should be an interesting Senate race here in the fall. John’s website is:
Johnjamesforsenate.com
huxley Says:
July 5th, 2018 at 4:36 pm
…
I believe Perez is sincere. He, like many of the Democratic leadership, is going Bulworth.
I support Perez and these Democrats. Let it all hang out! Be yourselves! Be socialist! Go Bulworth!
American voters can then make a real choice between authentic positions.
* * *
I support real choices – which is what Trump v. Clinton represented, only she wasn’t willing to go full Bulworth — because she probably only sees socialism as a useful prop for her private brand of crony capitalism.
But Trump seems to have meant what he said and said what he meant, and his voters are happy, although not quite 100 percent — yet.
(see this for how the left tries to keep spinning the winning)
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/cnn_turns_a_trump_joke_into_fakenews.html
“So, remember, I used to say about the vets – and I wasn’t a great student of the vets, but I’d read where the vets would be online for 13 days, 18 days, three weeks, seven days. And they’d start off, and they wouldn’t be in bad shape. And sometimes it would take so long before seeing a doctor that they would be terminally ill. Things that could have been taken care of.
And I said, without knowing anything – I thought it was the most brilliant policy I’ve ever heard. I said, “Why don’t they just go to a doctor, local, that’s looking for the business, that would be a very good doctor. We’ll specify certain great doctors. Go to a doctor. Be taken care of. And we will pay the bill, and it will be much less expensive, and you’ll be all set, right?” Right?
And I thought that was so brilliant. I said, “Oh, I am so smart. I am the smartest person.” My uncle was a great professor at MIT for 40 years. Can you believe? Forty years. I said, “But I’m smarter than him. I’m smarter than anybody.”
And you know what? I’ll tell you. I came in, and I said that to a group of people that are professionals and have been working with the vets for a long time. They said, “Yeah, we know about that. We’ve been trying to get it for 30 years. We couldn’t get it approved.” So, I was so disappointed, because I thought it was my idea. But I’ll tell you what I was good at. [Laughter]
I was good at getting it done. We got it done. I signed it. That’s what I was good at. I got it done. We got it done. They’d been trying to get it done for 40 years. I was so disappointed. I thought it was my idea. That’s the only problem. I thought it was my idea.
Walter Russell Meade said that the Democratic party has succeeded in so far as they have NOT seen their party as an onramp for socialism. That was generally true from FDR up to Obama. In the end it was that he was a Red Diaper baby that defined his presidency and bent the ‘Arc of History’ to that unspeakable ‘man in the White House’ – as Republicans once referred to FDR.
The Ocasio-Cortez win is a pretty slim reed to rest the future of the Democrat Party on.
According to one report I read, only 22,000 people out of the 700,000 eligible to vote, voted in that election.
Her win seems to me to be an aberration, not a trend.
Ocasio-Cortez is young and pretty, and she’s mastered the right buzzwords. The impression I’ve gotten is that she’s not very smart. She’ll probably be a flash in the pan.
Socialism is only going to sell itself to stupid and greedy people. It’s going to need an extraordinary salesman to reach Middle America. At this point, it doesn’t have one.
Outside of immigrants to the U.S. from the countries of the former U.S.S.R., East Germany, Cuba, China, North Vietnam, and current day Venezuela, few people here in the U.S. have had any actual “on the ground” experience with Socialism. And let’s call it by it’s right name, Communism.
Then, of course, there is the problem of general historical ignorance, apparently of the great majority of the American electorate–especially the younger members of that electorate–almost none of whom have been taught what “Socialism” really brings in the way of destructiveness and poverty, nor had any real “on the ground ” experience of Socialism.
So, with our heavily Leftist dominated schools churning out mostly highly propagandized K-12 and college graduates–who are largely (and deliberately made so) deficient in historical knowledge, thinking skills, rhetoric, reading, writing, math, philosophy, foreign languages, and geography–selling them the idea of just how egalitarian and humane, how forward looking and “progressive,” just how great Socialism is, is not a very hard sell, as many of those who supposedly “educate” them give Socialism glowing reviews.
Present the actual history of how Socialism has played out in the countries mentioned above, and wrecked every one of them–at a horrific price in human misery and human lives, and you are met with the tired excuse that these countries were not practicing “real” Socialism, and that if real Socialism were put into place–say, here in the U.S.–the results would be totally different and far more benign; eventually a Heaven on Earth, in fact.
Lo and behold, perhaps Democratic Socialism’s foremost and most well known representative, Harvard Professor Cornell West–from his ranting, the quality of his argument, and his presentation–his schtik–a pretty poor example of a Harvard Prof.–was on Tucker Carlson’s show the other night, and presented exactly the same argument when asked to present an example of which country Socialism had been a success in.
Said West–Socialism has never truly been implemented.
Those in power–the forces of oppression–have always attacked any attempt to implement Socialism, and strangled it in it’s crib.
So, it’s never really had a chance to be fully implemented (with the implication that, if it were, equality, fairness, peace, and compassion would reign, there would be no haves and have nots, no want, every man and woman would have their “dignity,” and we’d have Paradise on Earth).