AOC is on the extreme left, or what used to pass for extreme. So was Obama, but he hid it fairly successfully, especially when campaigning for his first time. AOC doesn’t have that option. In that respect she’s more like Bernie Sanders, because she’s been fairly straightforward about her extreme leftism. In 2016, Democrat higher-ups blocked Sanders from winning the nomination when it looked as though he had a chance to do so, using their superdelegates to favor Hillary because they thought Bernie the outright socialist could not win in the general.

Like Bernie, AOC can’t hide who she is, but I think the party calculus has changed. How far has the Overton Window moved in the ensuing years? The party may believe a socialist could win by 2028. After all, Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City.

But New York City isn’t the US, and a 3-way mayoral race isn’t a 2-way presidential race. So I don’t know about AOC and the nomination, but I strongly believe it could happen. And if it does happen, Democrats will be counting on some or all of the following:

(1) Fraud will pull them over the line.

(2) AOC has appeal to two groups. The first is leftists, especially young ones. The Democratic Party is loaded with those. The second is those people who will never, never ever vote for a Republican and think that any Democrat is better than any Republican. Those two groups together make up a not insignificant percentage of the electorate. Enough to win, if turnout is good and they are highly motivated? I don’t know.

(3) Who are the alternative candidates in the party who would be viable in the general and who yet could appeal to the base enough to win the primaries? No one comes to mind.

The funny thing is that I think one good candidate would be Fetterman, because he could appeal to the moderate middle in the general, and yet yellow dog Democrats would also hold their noses and vote for him if he was the nominee. But Democrats will never nominate him because the base hates him and considers him a traitor to the party.

Why am I even thinking about 2028 at this point? Well, it’s not all that far off. I also saw excerpts of an AOC interview recently and it seems to me that she’s positioning herself for a future run. Actually, it’s seemed that way to me almost from the moment she first burst on the scene.

An excerpt:

The people in that room love her.

The post AOC as a presidential candidate appeared first on The New Neo.

Or maybe especially if Biden had lost (I realize it’s not over till it’s over, but…):

“Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future,” the US representative [AOC] tweeted Friday afternoon.

“Yes, we are,” answered former Obama administration staffer Michael Simon, citing the Trump Accountability Project. “Every Administration staffer, campaign staffer, bundler, lawyer who represented them — everyone.”

On the website’s landing page, it urges urges that “[w]e must never forget those who helped further the Trump agenda,” adding that “the world should never forget those who, when faced with a decision, chose to put their money, their time, and their reputations behind separating children from their families, encouraging racism and anti-Semitism, and negligently causing the unnecessary loss of life and economic devastation from our country’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Note that Twitter seems to have no problem whatsoever with what AOC is calling for.

The post They are compiling their lists of Trump supporters appeared first on The New Neo.

But they chose to defend them in response to Trump. Why?

Although Pelosi had earlier pointed out that the Four were only four votes, she had to already have been well aware of how many members of the House were in solidarity with them. It doesn’t seem to have been a majority, as Wednesday’s “impeach Trump” vote failure amply demonstrates. So, what gives?

I’ve heard people say in explanation, “Bernie Sanders changed the party.” No he didn’t. He did well in 2016, much better than expected, but he didn’t change anything except perceptions. What he did do was to move the Overton Window way to the left, and the sky didn’t fall. So it became possible for a candidate to voice leftist beliefs and think that he/she still had a chance of support on a national level.

If Sanders had actually run in the general election of 2016 instead of Hillary, how would he have done? No one knows, although he polled quite well (so did she). It’s too late now for him to win the nomination in 2020, because he’s got fresher leftist competition, but the party is very afraid of losing his enormous bloc of leftist supporters—and that of AOC and the Four—by not defending the Four.

But still, Pelosi’s original calculus about this was different. Not too long ago she didn’t seem to think it was necessary to defend them much, and she seemed to believe that marginalizing them would be good. She must have known (or believed) that siding with the Four might cost the eventual Democratic nominee (and those Democrats running for Congressional seats) dearly in the general. A great many Democratic voters have gotten way more leftist than the general public seems to be ready to tolerate yet, despite decades of the Gramscian march that has helped swell the ranks of the left immeasurably, particularly among young people, so Pelosi knew a candidate must beware of appearing too leftist.

So, what’s going on? One thing I noticed is that a possible turning point occurred when AOC played the race card against Pelosi herself, saying, “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.”

The initial reaction was for many fellow-Democrats to jump to Pelosi’s defense. Why, the very idea of using racism accusations as a tool like that! Shocking! Of course, it’s the favored tool against the right and Democrats have no problem with it when it’s used that way. But against Pelosi? Not done, except by the Four.

Initially it seemed that Pelosi had won that round, too. But it may nevertheless have struck some sort of fear in her (at least, that’s my theory), because it told her that the Four were going to strike back with every weapon at their disposal rather than give in. Pelosi well knows the potency of the race card with the Democratic voters; there is probably no worse charge. So she was wary.

Then, when Trump singled out the Four (without naming them, but he certainly was talking about at least one of them, Ilhan Omar), and did it in terms the left wanted to cast as irredeemably and vilely racist, Pelosi almost had to defend them or risk a racist accusation herself, and risk losing the votes of the racial groups on which the Democrats now depend for victory.

Pelosi may well end up tacking back and forth between supporting the Four and keeping them in check, for the rest of the 2020 election cycle.

[ADDENDUM: In addition, some House members from deep blue districts are probably afraid of being perceived as insufficiently leftist, and of being primaried by younger and more telegenic Justice Democrats. So they may desert Pelosi, as well. Is even Pelosi immune, in her own district, if she decides to run for re-election?]

The post So, why <i>have</i> the Democratic leaders defended the Gang of Four? appeared first on The New Neo.

Miller also may be somewhat immune from charges of racism or being anti-immigration, although hers is a “black face” that speaks with a voice that isn’t the sort of “black voice” that Ayanna Pressley wants to hear.

So meet Scherie Murray, a black woman born in Jamaica who came here at the age of nine:

The post A Republican who’s challenging AOC appeared first on The New Neo.

It didn’t take an amazing amount of prescience to write the post, because they were saying as much themselves. I’m not sure why not all that much attention was paid to their plan back then by the right, but it wasn’t compared to now.

I’m going to repost it here, with a few small edits.]

I don’t how far to the left Nancy Pelosi really is. Probably much further than she lets on. But my guess is that she’s not too happy about the radical wing of the Democratic Party, the one whose members stayed seated when President Trump said in his SOTU address that the US will never become a Socialist country.

They have a name, too: Justice Democrats. It’s the latest euphemism, I guess, because too much of the American public may have finally caught on to what “progressive” actually means. But who can be against progress and justice, right?

The Justice Democrats aren’t fooling around. And they’re not bothered by many of the considerations that dog their more moderate colleagues. The Justice Democrats (can we call them JDs for short?) must feel the time is right to lay at least a few of their cards on the table and to oppose the party members they call “radical conservatives.”

We know the name of the photogenic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but some of the others are quite obscure so far—and by “others” I include those behind her rise. From the article:

“I am talking about the radical conservatives in the Democratic Party,” said Saikat Chakrabarti [AOC’s chief of staff]. “That’s who we need to counter. It’s the same across any number of issues—pay-as-you-go, free college, ‘Medicare for all.’ These are all enormously popular in the party, but they don’t pass because of the radical conservatives who are holding the party hostage.”

Not long ago, this would have been an outlier position even among American liberals. Today, it’s the organizing principle of a newly empowered segment of the Democratic Party, one with a foothold in the new Congress…

Although it’s Ocasio-Cortez who gets all the headlines, she arguably wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place without the group Chakrabarti founded: Justice Democrats, a new, central player in the ongoing war for the soul of the Democratic Party. It was the Justice Democrats who recruited her in a quixotic campaign early on, providing a neophyte candidate with enough infrastructure to take down a party leader. And it is the Justice Democrats who see Ocasio-Cortez as just the opening act in an astonishingly ambitious plan to do nothing less than re-imagine liberal politics in America—and do it by whatever means necessary.

If that requires knocking out well-known elected officials and replacing them with more radical newcomers, so be it. And if it ends up ripping apart the Democratic Party in the process—well, that might be the idea.

“There is going to be a war within the party. We are going to lean into it,” said Waleed Shahid, the group’s spokesman.

Here’s an article by Shahid that maps out the plan in more detail, published in the leftist periodical Nation. This group means business. I suggest you read it.

Will they overplay their hand? I hope so, but I am not the least bit sure that will be the case. The ground has been prepared for them in so many ways, particularly the Gramscian march through education.

The post The Justice Democrats are just following their own game plan appeared first on The New Neo.

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.]

The post AOC, Pelosi, Obama, and the race card appeared first on The New Neo.

AOC is a rabble rouser and a demagogue. She may be ignorant about a particular fact or she may actually know the truth and be blatantly lying about it. But either way, she is a smooth operator who knows exactly what she’s aiming for in terms of effect. She has many admirers who are simpatico with her inflammatory rhetoric and cheer her on.

Recently AOC got a lot of criticism (and attention, which she almost certainly has as a goal) for the following remarks of hers:

In her social-media remarks, the freshman congresswoman said she wants to talk to those “who are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something.”

“The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it,” she continued.

Ocasio-Cortez warned, “We are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency.”

“I don’t use those words lightly,” she continued. “I don’t use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it’s very difficult to say that.”

Well, I guess the US has long been fascist, then, including during the administration of President Obama, because detention centers have been in operation prior to Trump and under the previous president. And I suppose we’d have to include as “fascists” the victorious allies over the Nazis in World War II, with their postwar displaced person camps:

Displaced persons camps in post-World War II Europe were established in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and for the former inmates of the Nazi German concentration camps. A “displaced persons camp” is a temporary facility for displaced persons, whether refugees or internally displaced persons. Two years after the end of World War II in Europe, some 850,000 people lived in displaced persons camps across Europe, among them Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Yugoslavs, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians and Czechoslovaks.

At the end of the Second World War, at least 11 million people had been displaced from their home countries, with about seven million in Allied-occupied Germany. These included former prisoners of war, released slave laborers, and both non-Jewish and Jewish concentration-camp survivors. The Allies categorized the refugees as “displaced persons” (DPs) and assigned the responsibility for their care to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).

These camps were an enormous undertaking and involved an enormous number of people, and it took a long while—commonly longer than people are held in a detention center in the US—to sort it out.

And I suppose that all the countries of Europe and Asia and Africa that hold refugees in camps are fascists as well.

In fact, everyone except AOC and her supporters are probably fascists.

AOC later pointed out to her critics that she didn’t say present-day camps were like “death camps” during WWII, and she didn’t. But of course she knows that most people are unaware of the distinction between WWII work/labor camps and death camps, and she’s aware that death camps are what is conjured up by the phrase “concentration camps” and the words “fascist” as well as the phrase “never again” (which refers to the Holocaust).

What AOC may or may not know is what the Nazi concentration camps (or labor or work camps) of WWII (as opposed to the death camps) were actually like. They were usually a form of death camp, too. Although the Nazis had various ways of treating different populations within these camps, some were mistreated more than others. But the basic idea of a Nazi concentration/work/labor camp was to work people to death and then replace them with others, who would in turn be worked to death. That’s different than gassing people outright on arrival, to be sure. But it’s horrific, vicious, and evil nonetheless (you can find more information and links here).

And those camps bear no resemblance whatsoever to detention centers for illegal immigrants to this country, and it’s obscene to say it does. Just for starters, those in our camps have only to return to their countries of origin and they’re perfectly free. They are kept under conditions that would seem almost paradisaical to those in Nazi work camps.

Unlike those people who think AOC is merely ignorant, I believe that AOC knows at least something of the truth and would prefer to lie for political reasons. I can’t prove that—maybe she really is a fool rather than a knave. But that’s been my impression.

[NOTE: And for those who would defend AOC by saying that concentration camps originated during the Boer War, that couldn’t be more irrelevant. AOC was clearly referring to WWII with the words “fascist” and the phrase “never again.”]

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