Odd how the establishment is perfectly fine with this, but rails hysterically against OcasioThe attacks against Alexandria Ocasio are coming in hot and heavy from a very freaked out establishment worried that their power is being challenged my someone with two much color, two few years, two little fealty to "the system" and too wedded to ideas that, if enacted, would do far more than Trump even meant about draining any swamps. And yesterday, straight from an especially vile swamp, reappears Lloyd Green, an especially repulsive opposition research slime bag from George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign. Green was always a Lee Atwater wannabe. Green was part of the team that portrayed George Dukakis as an out-of-touch liberal elite. Green and his team put together the infamous and disgustingly racist Willie Horton ad. And now Green is back, helping lead the change against Alexandria.Desperate to fill up space, The Hill gave some of it to this especially unsavory swamp creature-- and without even mentioning the Willie Horton ad-- to soak its readers in his crocodile tears. "Democrats," he wrote, "can kiss swing voters bye with progressive candidates." He then proceeds to join establishment hacks from both parties in attacking Alexandria. He was certainly right about one thing: her ability to defeat the most corrupt Democrat in the House, Wall Street puppet Joe Crowley was a "convulsion." He described her as "an unvarnished leftist. Think of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, just younger and ungrizzled, and she does not bother to hide it." No she doesn't. Perhaps Green should ask himself why polls consistently show that Bernie Sanders is the single most beloved political leader in America while showing the Mitch McConnell is the most loathed."Clintonian neo-liberalism and triangulation just got belted with a left hook to the jaw," he wrote, "and the national party’s poohbahs are looking dazed and confused." Is there anyone other than "the national party’s poohbahs" and the Beltway lobbyists and donor class that leach off them who isn't happy about that? Lloyd Green... this Lloyd Green:
Ocasio-Cortez calls for single-payer healthcare, the abolition of ICE, and free college for all. Forget about the underlying arithmetic and how to pay for all of it-- which is either requires sky-high taxation or flat-out sorcery. Rather, this is a cultural manifesto, a cry for open borders, and a demand for one ginormous nausea-inducing free lunch.
Let Stephanie Kelton, among other things, a Bernie Kelton economic advisor, explain how to talk about these things:Unlike Lloyd Green-- very much unlike Lloyd Green, Oklahoma Berniecrat and congressional run-off candidate Tom Guild was celebrating Ocasio's big win this week. "I’m very proud to run in Oklahoma while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez savors her huge and stunning victory over the corrupt old guard in New York. She is making politics relevant in the Empire State just like Bernie did in his presidential run in 2016. Day care is essential for families across America, an affordable college education is necessary to achieve success for millions of Americans who choose to pursue higher education. If the American economy can’t produce jobs paying a living wage, the government has to lend a helping hand. Alexandria was heavily outspent, but her humble upbringing and hard work on the campaign trail overcame those handicaps. I hope she has a long and productive run in the U.S. House and hope I’m fortunate enough to serve as her colleague on Capitol Hill." It's going to take people like Alexandria Ocasio, Tom Guild, Randy Bryce, Kaniela Ing, Kara Eastman, Rashida Tlaib, Jess King, etc, to move the conversation-- and the country-- forward, not a bunch of old white conservatives from the two establishment parties.Did you see Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece this week, Pundits and politicians are playing point-and-shriek with the new Democratic Socialist contagion?Another one-- albeit smarter-- than Lloyd is Steve Schmidt. Drawing a blank? Taibbi:
Steve Schmidt-- ex-Dick Cheney aide, new liberal hero and not at all the guy who helped unleash the modern far right by inviting Sarah Palin onto a presidential ticket-- had a few things to say in the wake of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking win over long-serving Democrat Joe Crowley.Schmidt told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle that the result was a boon to Donald Trump."What Trump is doing is radicalizing American politics," the conservative strategist continued. "And he is a beneficiary the more radical politics becomes."Schmidt pooh-poohed the Ocasio-Cortez platform of a government jobs program, free day care and free college education, among other things. These things can't be paid for, he insisted. Therefore, the Ocasio-Cortez brand of politics is inherently dishonest."When we have dishonest progressivism and we have dishonest Trumpism," the former Karl Rove devotee went on, "an alienated middle… surrenders."Many others agreed."Oh, please, she just promised everyone a bunch of free stuff," noted Ben Ritz, director of the Progressive Policy Institute, an offshoot of the old Democratic Leadership Council."Democrats need to choose: Are they the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or the party of Michael Bloomberg?" asked Business Insider columnist Daniella Greenbaum.Bloomberg is best known as a Republican mayor, although he's apparently thinking of running for president as a Democrat-- hence Greenbaum's fork-in-the-road thesis. The columnist argued we should, of course, take the billionaire-plutocrat turn.Greenbaum went on:"That kind of rich-oppressor versus poor-oppressed framework might work in New York's 14th Congressional district, but it is sure to fail on a national level."First of all, so what? If that kind of message works for the 14th congressional district, isn't that why you'd want a person bearing that message representing the 14th congressional district? This is exactly the purpose of representative democracy, allowing local populations to have an idiosyncratic voice in a larger debate.Secondly, why is poor-vs-rich messaging "sure to fail" on a national level?Despite extensive efforts to rehabilitate their reputations, Wall Street billionaires are unpopular more or less everywhere in the United States outside maybe Nobu Downtown...The concept of a financial-transactions tax in particular has polled well in at least four different surveys since the 2008 crash. And both Republicans and Democrats tell pollsters they believe Wall Street has too much power.There have been lots of other swipes, both subtle and not, at Ocasio-Cortez in recent days. Headlines often left out her name or used dismissive descriptors like "young challenger" or "Democratic Socialist."The Washington Times, representing the loony-right section of the media, chimed in with Reefer Madness-level hysteria: "Ocasio-Cortez, New York's Socialist Congressional Contender, An Enemy of America."Then there was Nancy Pelosi, who last year famously said that voters "don't want a new direction." Pelosi made sure to point out that the results in the 14th mean only that voters "made a choice in one district," so "let's not get carried away." Pelosi is often a trenchant inside-baseball observer of the political scene, but her continual inability to sense or understand the dramatic shifts going on in the electorate are beginning to sound like the famous "Stay calm, this is not happening" routine by Monty Python great Terry Jones, who played an aristocrat smiling as his kingdom disappeared underwater.A common theme in most of the backlash against Ocasio-Cortez is this idea that allowing the "fringe" inside the tent will lead to total chaos and alienate the great "middle" that supposedly decides elections. It's incredible that leaders in both parties still seem to believe in this concept.They don’t seem to realize that the vast changes ushered in by decades of economic catastrophes-- the disappearance of the manufacturing economy and the busting of two giant speculative bubbles, among other things-- has left America, and most western democracies for that matter, as top-heavy nations run by increasingly small groups of wealthy political and business leaders, surrounded by massive disenfranchised populations with little or negative net worth....[V]oters are making different choices because they've concluded that the "accomplished" politicians were the ones hustling them. What else are people supposed to think, when they hear long-serving elected officials somberly insisting that we can't afford health care or higher education just days after a bill boosting our already unnecessarily massive defense budget by $82 billion passed 85-10 in the Senate?If we can afford to spend more than the next 10 countries combined on defense, why can't we afford higher education? Really? Who's hustling whom?
