Cowardly establishment Democrats turn on Ocasio-Cortez

Republicans have done an embarrassingly poor job at making Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look bad.
Failing to slander her agenda, they've turned to personal attacks.
Alex Jones just took this to its logical idiotic conclusion.

Now the Democrats, after seeing the Republicans completely fail in their smears, have taken up the cause of shutting her up.

Frustrated Democratic lawmakers are offering Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez some advice: Cool it.
...
Some legislators are voicing concerns that Ocasio-Cortez appears set on using her newfound star power to attack Democrats from the left flank, threatening to divide the party — and undermine its chances at retaking the House — in a midterm election year when leaders are scrambling to form a united front against President Trump and Republicans.

The members are not mincing words, warning that Ocasio-Cortez is making enemies of soon-to-be colleagues even before she arrives on Capitol Hill, as she’s expected to do after November’s midterms.

“She’s carrying on and she ain’t gonna make friends that way,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.). “Joe conceded, wished her well, said he would support her … so she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.”

Asked if Ocasio-Cortez is, indeed, making enemies of fellow Democrats, Pascrell didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he said. “No doubt about it.”

I get the importance of interpersonal relationships, but AOC isn't saying that their moma is fat.
She's criticizing their policies, and if they can't handle that then they don't understand what politics is.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) offered a similar message, saying success in the 435-member House comes slowly — and hinges largely on the ability of lawmakers to forge constructive relationships with other members. Alienating more senior lawmakers within your own party, he warned, will only stifle the ability of Ocasio-Cortez to get anything done — even despite her newfound celebrity.

“Meteors fizz out,” Hastings said. “What she will learn in this institution is that it’s glacial to begin with, and therefore no matter how far you rise, that’s just how far you will ultimately get your comeuppance.”

He added: “You come up here and you’re going to be buddy-buddy with all the folks or you’re going to make them do certain things? Ain’t happening, OK?”

I'm sure she's heartbroken to hear that you won't endorse Medicare For All because AOC hurt your feelings.
Has anyone else noticed just how delicate and fragile Democratic politicians are?
GQ calls them Tea Cup Democrats.

Democrats have responded by absorbing and capitulating to Republicans’ twisted version of asymmetrical reality—one that demanded their own civility in the face of ever-mounting viciousness—backing themselves into an ever-smaller corner until those like Schumer have lowered themselves into a cowering crouch, whispering unity and civility to anyone who will listen. Old Democrats have been bringing a tea cup to a bar brawl because that bar was once a nice, civilized cafe, a real community center, 30 years ago—and they're scolding other Democrats for not holding their pinky fingers up when a bar stool flies across the joint.

While I'm sure that corruption has much more to do with the current state of the Democratic Party, I have to agree that cowardice plays a part as well. Democrats are both spineless at fighting Republicans, while wasting no time when it comes to scolding and denigrating their progressive base.

The Democratic leadership has taken the position that the problem is not their leadership, but their base. This despite the fact that under their civil, centrist, and careful stewardship, the Democratic party bled out 1,000 seats nationally over the past 10 years—in part because the party long ago stopped offering more bold solutions needed for their working class base in a country where 40 percent of Americans can’t cover a $400 emergency and student loan debt just hit $1.5 trillion.
...
Democrats forget that they can bend public opinion towards moral clarity and big ideas, with projects like the New Deal, gay marriage, and voting rights. Today, a phalanx of careful Democrats lose their shit anytime a single candidate dares to offer solutions that meet the severity of the challenges facing America today—a reflex that has been losing elections all over the country.

Nancy Pelosi and former Governor Michael Dukakis has also assured us that AOC's victory is not the playbook for the Democrats as long as they can prevent it.

Politics is all about language, and the GOP has dominated the language of the debate since the 80's.

Back in the Reagan years, the word “liberal” was made into a dirty word by Republicans. Most Democrats (the late Senator Ted Kennedy and a few other principled souls excluded) shed the term faster than you could say “sellout.”

Worse, in their supposed endeavor to be more attractive to the presumed American “mainstream,” the Democrats barely noticed that they effectively allowed Republicans to set the term of political reference.

While the GOP set out to define Democrats with words such as: traitor, decay, sick, greed, corruption, radical, permissive, bizarre, the Democrats ran so far away from liberal that they left liberal policies behind.
Then they kept running. They rebranded "liberal" to "progressive", and then center-right politicians like Clinton and Obama claimed that they were "progressive", which was/is a joke.

Now we have Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez calling themselves "socialists".
That too is a joke. They are nothing more than New Deal Democrats, so they are watering down the word in the same way that Hillary watered down "progressive" when she claimed to be one.

However, there are several good things to come out of this joke.

For one, we finally have some Democrats that aren't running away from a label. Even when their own party is stabbing them in the back. This doesn't allow Republicans to make them look weak.

Secondly, remember when Obama was "socialist"? Remember when Bill Clinton was "socialist"? How about when Carter was "socialist"?
Republicans have been using the word so carelessly, almost every Dem is a "socialist", that it has lost all meaning. The smear has long since left our world and our reality.
So when they accuse Sanders and AOC of being "socialists", it makes regular Americans think of Clinton and Obama, which simply won't scare anyone.

Unable to make Sanders and AOC look weak, and unable to scare anyone who isn't already on the right-wing with a label that they use against moderate conservatives, Republicans are forced to explain why this time the label of "socialism" is truly scary (as opposed to every other time they've used it).
But to do that they have to discuss actual issues, and that's where they have really screwed up.

Attacked on Fox for her brand of politics, she argues that “The fact that paying people enough to live is considered a ‘radical, far-left’ position says more about the current state of our nation’s politics than it does about mine.”

Republicans can't win this battle. However, establishment Democrats are more than capable of smothering their base and losing this war. They obviously would prefer to lose.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

at the ‘Party’ he’s been pandering for. They hate him. It was The Clinton Creature’s turn to reign (which is what they do these days) and everything was set for the grift snd the graft to continue.

These greedy old croaks and croakettes that lost those 1000 Democratic positions are going to try to hang on until buzzards are circling the Capital.Building.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

that's where both parties screw up. The democrats copied as much of the republican play book as they could. They went after the $, and the people that they're hitting up don't need the New Deal. They campaign on opposition to the republican agenda, abortion, religion, gay rights, equal rights, in ways that appeal to their donors....like what would Oprah feel good about. War, corporations, taxes, safety net, talk is cheap....maybe next year or the year after.

I know a lot of people have given up on Sanders. He did one thing that hurt Clinton badly. He made her defend herself in front of a national audience, and she had to go off script. She wounded herself by having to backtrack, obfuscate, agree whole cloth with some things she was on record as being against, her answers are blowin' in the polls. She showed who she was, and the more people saw, the less they liked her. Bernie was always Bernie, where boring and consistent turned into refreshing and candid.

This is why confronting, calling out, people like Pelosi and Schumer is important. The scene with Pelosi surrounded by police saying she was afraid when a Sanders supporter bounced a chair showed her up. They aren't used to being challenged and they can't help themselves from delivering overblown lectures and playing the wounded party. The more they say the less respect people have for them.

Something like 35,40% sit out elections (I know, I know) of people that don't see themselves being represented. Since Carter, elections have just been watching an endless game of musical chairs, and we're not players. Sanders showed that the disruption of the democrats playbook is possible, and maybe there is opportunity there.

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karl pearson's picture

@Snode n/t

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@Snode
I had always heard that electoral participation was only 60% of the 50% that actually bothered to register to vote. Anyone have the real figures?

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 they throw around voting age population, voter turn out, eligible voters as if they're all the same thing. All were 50 something %, so I kinda fudged it. I bet they did too.

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karl pearson's picture

I don't think many people are going to pay attention to what Michael Dukakis says. In the 1988 presidential election, Dukakis won 111 electoral votes, while allowing himself to be "swift-boated" before it was a verb. (Actually, Dukakis was "swift-tanked".) Democratic elites know they are in trouble because they had to cheat in order to install Hillary Clinton as the nominee. I hope their worrying keeps them up at night.

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Not Henry Kissinger's picture

@karl pearson

"Beware of Greeks wearing lifts."
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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

orlbucfan's picture

@karl pearson He's conveniently forgotten the way George the First and his Bush Crime Cabal massacred Dukakis's cred by lying out their white aZZes and snowing the rednecks/Raygun "Democrats." Talk about mangling American English. Centrist comes from center. The actual GOPUKE Lite/Centrists are not the center. Far from it. Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

JekyllnHyde's picture

@orlbucfan

One of the lasting images of the 1988 Presidential Campaign was a Saturday Night Live skit which featured a debate between Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis (played by Jon Lovitz, shown right) and his Republican opponent Vice President George H.W. Bush (played by Dana Carvey). As historical background, Dukakis had left the 1988 Democratic Convention that year in July with a 17% point lead over Bush in the Gallup Poll. It would not last very long. For the remaining weeks of the summer, his overconfident campaign made a fatal mistake by taking the highly rational and moral ground, deciding not to respond to personal and racist attacks by the Bush Campaign. That disgraceful campaign (remember Willie Horton?) by many Republican operatives like Lee Atwater was eerily reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s "Southern Strategy" from two decades earlier.

As the SNL “debate” progressed, Dukakis got increasingly frustrated by softball questions lobbed at Bush — whose inane answers added to Dukakis being flustered by them — whereas he (Dukakis) had to answer really tough questions about his “technocratic” and detached style of leadership. At one point during the exchange, Dukakis responds to a Bush answer, one in which Bush proved that English was always a second language for the Bush Family and one which made no sense, by muttering to himself, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.”

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

detroitmechworks's picture

The Dems are certainly doing their part to make her seem like an edgy martyr that defies the establishment and really supports the people.

/snark

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

Hillary Dems like Pascrell and Hastings don't like the messaging Obama Dems are using to con Progressives back into the fold.

Not that I mind Progressive messaging at least now getting more coverage, but no one should be under any delusions about whose ambitions that messaging serves.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

arendt's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger

This is the game Bill Clinton was a master of: you don't want the people attacking me to win, do you? Pay no attention to my backers, just look at who is attacking me.

To ignore the Clinton/Obama gang war inside the DP is to miss most of the action.

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orlbucfan's picture

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

CB's picture

something different from the Bamboozler-in-Chief ?

@gjohnsit

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@CB
He knows what he's done, and he isn't ashamed.

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snoopydawg's picture

@gjohnsit

how wealthy the elites have gotten. Good grief. His disconnect of how he had the chance to keep that from happening. Yep. Violence is down all over the globe. Sheesh. Guess those mass shootings didn't really happen or the cops aren't killing people with no consequences.

Trump is his biggest legacy.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

when he was a hillbot he was insufferable.

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304
I think any decent output by Colbert is temporary. At least until the 2020 campaign starts up.

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arendt's picture

@gjohnsit

I'm pretty smart, but I had to focus like mad to parse his shtick on the Colbert Report. You had to really think to figure out what part of the caricature was there for humor and what part was there for grounding in wingnutistan.

I've met other people like him, people who could argue both sides of an issue so convincingly that you didn't know what they believed in, if anything at all. That kind of detachment borders on sociopathy - the dangerous kind that wears "The Mask of Sanity" very well indeed.

Itopped watching Colbert after they gave away the Daily Show to that nothingburger from South Africa. I suspect John Stewart was made an offer he couldn't refuse to walk away from TDS, where he made a lot of people seriously uncomfortable. OTOH, Colbert stepped up to the Late Show. To me, it says Colbert is willing to play the game, Stewart was not.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@arendt

And I didn’t like Don Rickles.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

WoodsDweller's picture

I increasingly feel that it wasn't Republicans that pulled Democrats to the right, it was the donor class that pushed the Democrats to the right and the Republicans kept running further to the right to maintain enough distance to create the illusion of two competing teams. Donors push, Democrats get pushed, Republicans go flying.
Schumer in particular is an embarrassment. I wonder if there is any hope of installing a new minority (or hopefully majority) leader after the election. We need an LBJ to fight for us, and I don't know if there is a single Democratic senator that qualifies. The donors wouldn't be happy.
I've said this before and it isn't popular, but the way to accomplish change in a two party system is to do what the Tea Party did. We need a caucus in the House that will vote as a block, and that caucus has to be big enough to prevent the Democrats from having a majority without their support. Yes, I'm assuming the Democrats retake the House this election. There's about 30 people in the Tea Party caucus now, I think. It depends on the size of the Democratic majority, but as few as a dozen might be enough.
So, no, AOC doesn't need to be friends with the DINOs, she has to have a dozen or two progressives she's tight with. As a freshman she probably isn't the one to be doing the negotiations with the Party leadership on behalf of the caucus. As a politician with at least current star power she's going out to help elect other Democrats, and THAT's how you make friends, at least if they win.
All I'm hearing from the above quotes is "now that you won, you need to forget about the voters and conform". Let's hope she doesn't.
Kyle shows Alex Jones clips now and then. Alex is getting worse all the time. I'm wondering how much is performance art running out of ways to shock people and how much is a brain tumor.
I think the reason "socialist" isn't working as a smear anymore is that the propaganda machine abandoned it. During the cold war everyone was taught to set their hair on fire and run around screaming when you said "socialist". That propaganda effort shifted over to "Moslem" and "terrorist". People who have grown up after the cold war (aka the 40 and under crowd) just think "socialism" is just a word. Tell me about your policy goals and we'll see if there's a way to accomplish them.
I was watching Majority Report and he was talking about how there was a propaganda meme about "secret socialism" and how AOC and Bernie being upfront negates it. It wasn't that socialism was secret, the propaganda was that liberalism was secretly socialist and you should set your hair on fire about that as well.
Eventually the right will come up with something more effective than "Soshalizm skeery", but I expect they'll keep pushing that button for a while and wonder why it doesn't work.
And of course "the right" in that sentence also refers to 80% of Democrats.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

@WoodsDweller not enough power to take over, but the ability to jam up the apparatus of government made everyone have to play their game instead of leaderships. Everything they did sucked, but it was breathtaking to watch.

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CB's picture

@Snode
to be used as useful idiots, then flushed after they were no longer required. Other brands come to mind.

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@CB
The Teaparty was completely fake, just a bunch of Koch politicians who had been trained to read their given talking points in a way that hijacked any serious discussion of what was wrong with their policies.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

@Timmethy2.0 promoting it, back when they had some serious wingnuttery on the air.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@Timmethy2.0

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@CB but they got flushed when they slipped the leash a few times, or else they'd still be useful. The spectacle of gumming up the works over their stupid little tantrums...... Why hadn't anyone in congress done the same for something worthwhile?

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WaterLily's picture

It's a feature, not a bug.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@WaterLily

7A5ABC6C-78DC-4F95-BF8C-F87F0386FC72.jpeg

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

WaterLily's picture

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Big Al's picture

democrats names and a PD next to the progressive democrats names so people can tell the difference.

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lotlizard's picture

How long before Trump-hating Democrats, whether progressive or establishment, are going to start acting as if they and the Koch brothers are natural allies and on the same side?

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