AOC, Pelosi, Obama, and the race card
AOC is drawing some criticism from other Democrats:
Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) unloaded on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday for “using the race card” after Ocasio-Cortez accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of being racially insensitive.
Clay, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, fumed at Ocasio-Cortez and the group of progressive lawmakers that includes Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.).
“What a weak argument, because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. That’s unbelievable to me,” Clay said. “I could care less. I could really care less. I agree with the Speaker. Four people, four votes out of 240 people, who cares.”
In an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of singling out newly elected women of color.
Pelosi had previously been dismissive of the four freshman female lawmakers, saying that despite their large presence on social media, they only account for four votes in the Democratic caucus.
“It shows you how weak their argument is when they have to resort and direct racist accusations toward Speaker Pelosi … it’s very disappointing to me,” Clay said.
Here’s what AOC had said about Pelosi:
…[O]ver the past week, it’s remarks that Pelosi herself made that appears to have angered a group of four lawmakers — shorthandedly referred to on Capitol Hill as a “the squad” — which includes Ocasio-Cortez.
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday.
“But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
So, we’ve got continuing trouble in the Democratic Party, and Clay and others want to position themselves on the Pelosi side because Pelosi is still far more powerful than challenger AOC. They also know or believe they know that the ultra-progressive wing is unlikely to win many votes for Democrats in 2020, and they see that wing as a threat.
Perhaps there are even some principles involved here. Perhaps Clay and others condemned the repeated and near-ubiquitous use of the race card against the right during the Obama years, directed at anyone who criticized Obama for any reason whatsoever. If so, I missed it. Criticize Obama, and you were called racist. I chronicled this at the time it was happening, for example here, here, and here.
Did Representative Clay speak out against Obama for this, or call his accusations “weak” or “disappointing”? I certainly can’t find such a pronouncement, and I would be astounded if they exist. And Lacy’s been in office since 2001 (the Wiki entry for him that I just linked is worth reading, by the way, in terms of this section, including his interactions with Steve Cohen), so he certainly had the opportunity to call Obama on it during his entire presidency.
AOC is nothing if not arrogant, bold, and unafraid. Pelosi doesn’t scare her, nor does the Democratic phalanx defending the Speaker. If AOC were playing the race card against Republicans, it would be business as usual and no Democrat would bat an eye at her tactics. But attacking a Democrat in the exact same way—particularly a powerful Democrat such as Pelosi—probably makes them all feel potentially threatened.
However, AOC is not the first to use the race card attack on fellow-Democrats. The Obama-supporting wing of the Party did it before her, as William Jacobson pointed out way back when:
During the [2008] campaign, Obama supporters successfully ended scrutiny of Obama’s overstated opposition to the Iraq war by accusing Bill Clinton of racism for calling Obama’s narrative a “fairy tale.” False accusations of racism also were used against Hillary supporter Geraldine Ferraro and against John McCain in order to frame the political debate.
And then of course we have Kamala Harris’ move on Joe Biden during the last debate, in which she said she didn’t think he was a racist and then immediately accused him of being in bed with anti-busing racists.
AOC is 29 years old. She was about seventeen years old when Obama began running for president, and she has been shaped by the political climate of the Obama years. To her, it’s probably almost a reflexive reaction to accuse her accusers of racism or imply that they are racists, whether they be Republicans or Democrats.
[NOTE: Take a look at Trump’s agile rejoinder:
“I think [Ocasio] Cortez is being very disrespectful to somebody who’s been there a long time. I deal with Nancy Pelosi a lot and we go back and forth and it’s fine, but I think that a group of people is being very disrespectful to her and you know what? I don’t think that Nancy can let that go on,” Trump said before departing the White House on Friday. “She is not a racist. Okay? She is not a racist. For them to call her a racist is a disgrace.”
As Ace points out in the linked post:
…[T]his proves Nancy Pelosi is a racist, right? That’s how it works. David Duke endorsed Donald Trump, which means, somehow, that Donald Trump also endorses David Duke by the Principle of Implied Reciprocal Endorsement.
This means that Nancy Pelosi must also endorse Donald Trump, and must reciprocally believe that Trump is not a racist.
By the Transitive Property, this means also that Nancy Pelosi endorses David Duke.
That’s how the Geometry of Racism works, at least for Republicans.]
You’re right, Neo, that in her adult life she’s heard this line so often she thinks it’s okay.
What is darkly amusing is that Ocasio-Cortez is not a “woman of color” by any definitions that used to hold. Puerto Ricans are overwhelmingly of Spanish ancestry. The unfortunate indigenous tribes mostly died of European diseases, and very few Africans were imported to the island because it was not suitable for plantations, unlike Hispaniola or Jamaica. Tlaib is also not “of color,” being an Arab-American, not particularly dark-skinned, like Linda Sarsour, who also claims to be “of color.”
You had better pray that AOC self-destructs soon. In 6 years she will be old enough to run for president, and she has persuasive power (Scott Adams rates her high in that regard).
No matter what happens, she will be a force of the dark side to recon with for the rest of the 21st century.
We are now a country in which demonstrators will deface our flag and replace it with the flag of another country. Thank you MSM and “educational” establishment.
“They also know or believe they know that the ultra-progressive wing is unlikely to win many votes for Democrats in 2020, and they see that wing as a threat.” neo
The ultra-progressive wing may be unlikely to win many votes for Democrats in 2020 but how about in the democrat primaries?
As we’ve all observed, the democrat party is moving ever more leftward in its radicalism. Arguably, it’s the base as well as the leadership that is becoming ever more radicalized. If that in fact is so, then the Pelosi wing of the democrat party are politically, “dead men walking”…
The question then becomes how long till they’re ousted from dominance of the party?
Ironically, if the dem’s extreme radicalism results in Trump’s reelection, I think it certain that the radicals will insist that result to be the failure of the Pelosi wing to act effectively against Trump and the dems will go off the cliff into blatant treason.
In fact it’s already begun; “Anti-ICE Protesters Deface American Flag, Raise Mexican Flag over Colorado Processing Center”
https://pjmedia.com/trending/anti-ice-protesters-deface-american-flag-raise-mexican-flag-at-colorado-processing-center/
We live in euphemistic times.
Diversity (i.e. color judgment), including racism, breeds adversity.
MAGA is “old hat” (ar ar)
The best hat to wear now is
MOBA
M ake
O ccasio-Cortez
B artend
A gain…
MOBA
😉
This seems very peripherally related…
Democrat Congresswoman Secretly Sending Staff To Mexico To Coach Migrants How To Beat System, Report Says
https://www.dailywire.com/news/49204/democrat-congresswoman-secretly-sending-staff-ryan-saavedra
If this isn’t illegal and cause for being impeached, I don’t know what is.
Political considerations aside, is there any doubt that all or nearly all of the congressional democrats support, at least in principle, that Congresswoman actions?
A quote in a Wash. Post article from the guy who recruited AOC to run for office — “AOC’s Chief of Change: Saikat Chakrabarti isn’t just running her office. He’s guiding a movement.”
I wonder if Mr. Clay will revisit his statements regarding “race card” as indication of weak factual arguments the next time a member of his caucus pulls it out of his sleeve. Or, saints preserve us, he tosses onto the felt.
The democrats keep forgetting the rule of holes. Dig on!
I don’t think AOC and her cabal care that much now about appealing to the general populace. The first step for them is the takeover of the Democratic party. In this they follow the established strategy of the Jacobins and Bolsheviks before them. The goal is not to seduce or talk us into anything: the goal is to impose their will on us all whether we like it or not.
Ann:
Don’t want to brag (oh, maybe a little), but I was way ahead of the curve and the WaPo on that. Please see this post from February 2019.
miklos:
I believe you are correct: AOC and company don’t care about that. Their war is primarily for control of the Democratic Party (as the link I put in my comment above this one to Ann discusses).
But Pelosi and the other fellow Democrats AOC is waging war on care. They care, because they want to control the legislature (and the presidency) in 2020.
You do the biggest, most badass thing you possibly can — and that’s going to excite people, and then they’re going to go vote. Because the reality is, our problem isn’t that more people are voting Republican than Democrat — our problem is most people who would vote Democrat aren’t voting.
–Saikat Chakrabarti (via Ann)
It depends on the most badass thing. You can get out ahead of your skis, as the saying goes.
McGovern and his movement captured the Democratic nomination in 1972 but sailed off the edge of the earth for non-base voters. McGovern suffered one of the worst electoral wipeouts in our history. He lost every state except Massachusetts.
Arguably the problem was McGovern — a decent, patriotic American, not a revolutionary with no scruples.
I have trouble believing the majority of Americans want what the Democrats are offering these days, however much Americans may dislike the Donald.
Kate,
Great point on the WOC comment. I am waiting for people to stop calling Kamala black. Kamala is like her mom, Asian Indian.
In the end, the term racist has no weight anymore. My child goes to high school at a very culturally diverse school Down Under and they make jokes about the term. In this part of the world it is not a forced diversity, it just is. Although there are discussions of race, it is not as mean, insulting and constant. People get along and still laugh.
Neo, I still vote in the USA, but you are what I read, because you make the most sense.
JHC…point of personal privilege please…Where in Oz are you?
‘Cos us expats always need more friends. 😉
I would also argue that Pelosi, no stranger to internecine warfare, cares immensely about the lost legislatures & statehouses across the US under 0. How many thousand lost seats in 50 states? So when the 4 horse-butts of the apocalypse raise hell they damage the brand nationally and risk some of those blue state blues spreading.
I think shikat is off his rockers. Never say never, but there have been communists and socialist’s before him who have failed badly. Do these people look at what is happening in Europe lately between the yellow vests and elections?
I understand what he is talking about regarding the devide in San Francisco, but when you have millions in your pockets and you are a large part of the problem, no one trusts you. And when your goal is not to provide ‘right now’ for the have nots, you are clueless. He has had a lucky, privilege existence and lives in a bubble.
There will be a backlash.
I shudder to think what form it might take.
On the other hand, maybe sanity (all things being relative) will be able to endure, at least in the U.S., where one might hope that a sense of proportion, decency and fair play will, along with good-natured determination, carry the day…. Well, one can hope.
John G,
I am across the ditch in Kiwi land. ?
So JHC, are you tuned into the match at Lord’s this morning?
Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s chief of staff, has made the news lately and not in a good way, but a very useful way.
“The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” [Chakrabarti] said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”
“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/07/10/feature/how-saikat-chakrabarti-became-aocs-chief-of-change
Excuse the multiple comments. I was trying to debug why my response was getting caught in the spam filter.
Apparently the troublesome bit was a line containing the word “p o k e r.”
My point was that Chakrabarti a hard-left ideologue and he just blew the climate change movement’s cover that they are only trying to fix an environmental crisis and save humanity.
Conservatives have long viewed climate change as a trojan horse for the whole left-wing agenda. Chakrabarti just admitted this is so.
Chakrabarti is the “brains,” if you will, behind AOC. He is a dangerous fool behind another dangerous fool. Keep an eye on him.
Steve Hayward, Power line: Democrats Start To Worry
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/07/democrats-start-to-worry.php
Hayward quotes a number of pieces, among them a WaPo story: “Rahm Emanuel, formerly the chief of staff for President Barack Obama, chastised [AOC chief of staff] Chakrabarti in a follow-up column by Dowd on Saturday, calling him a “snot-nosed punk.”
Ah…the other land Down Under…;-) A lovely spot to call home if the earthquakes don’t get you. Long way from regional NSW.
My condolences on the Cricket…
I think the ladies the Democratic Party, trying to make bigger noises to trump administration especially when it comes to illegal immigrants.
Let see the face from this show and you understand the fake feels and the looks of those bunch……..
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/4CD3/production/_107876691_4ea0077a-da8e-45c0-a9f8-db17941bfa4a.jpg
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-48971608/ocasio-cortez-and-tlaib-s-testimony-on-detained-migrants
AOC is the millennial left personified: a shrieking brat with a superficial (at best) understanding of economics and history, no original ideas, no intriguing arguments and no eloquence in speaking. What she has is an Id sensibility and an inexhaustible drive to spew all of her immature, supercilious tirades throughout social media.
Alas, for most progressive millennials, this is more than enough.
The President played this little incident well. Very well.
Race fatigue has set in across the land. Race obsession is viewed as a malignant pestilence. SJWs and David Duke inspire the same exact revulsion because they are all of a kind.