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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez |
There are three – at least three – Democratic Parties. One is the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and – yeah – Andrew Yang. The second is the party of Joe Biden and all those who call themselves moderate or centrist or center-left. The third is the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). But let’s not forget – Trump’s favorite president, the first Democratic president – Andrew Jackson.
You would not be alone if you thought that either AOC or Sanders are crazy, or full-on socialists. But nothing could be further from the truth. Addressing the crazy part first, watch a few random videos (YouTube. Sorry, it is impossible to list only one) of AOC or Sanders. The only “crazy” you can take away from either is that AOC is way too powerful, cocksure, and smart for a young Latina woman, and Sanders is too old and cranky, and angry, to be talking about revolution. Listen to what they say, watch AOC do her job!, listen to Sanders lay out a vision for America. They’re not crazy, they are not socialists or Communists, they’re idealistic and smart. Most folks’ opinion of either is based on never seeing them perform on their own turf; mostly, they are seen through the eyes of a Fox News commentator.
Why should Democrats take AOC and Sanders seriously? Why are they important? You should look at their election results!
In 2018, AOC unseated her primary opponent in New York's 14th Congressional District, Democratic Caucus Chair (way high up the party leadership chain) Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, 57.1% to 42.5%! In the general election, she whipped her Republican opponent 78% to 14%! In her 2020 primary, she beat back a “real challenger” opponent 72.6% to 19.5%! She will whip her Republican opponent in November by 65% - 35% at least (actual, 68.7 - 30.5%)! Democrats ignore this powerhouse to their peril. She is not a fluke.
Sanders began his political career losing a heap of elections in the 1970’s. He was elected mayor of Burlington, VT four times in the 1980’s, as an independent with a Republican and a Democrat running against him. He ran for Congress in 1988 (lost, again), 1990 (56.0%), 1992 (57.8%), 1994 (49.9%), 1996 (55.2%), 1998 (63.4%!), 2000 (69.2%!), 2002 (64.2%!) and 2004 (76.2%!), every time as an independent with a Republican and a Democrat running against him! He ran for the Senate – as an independent of course – in 2006 (65.4%!), 2012 (71.1%!), and 2018 (67.3%!), with no Democratic opposition (best not be embarrassed by an independent with massive state-wide support). He nearly upset the Democratic party’s heiress apparent (HRC) in his run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016 (polls at the time showed him doing better than Clinton against Trump; that seems to have counted for nothing). By 2020, his time had passed, he was just too damned old! And cranky!
What do AOC and Sanders have in common that so separates them from the Democratic herd? Voters TRUST them. AOC knocked on doors all through her district. Everyone knew her, personally. And she laid out a platform that was a throwback to the days of FDR: government should help people who need help (and in case you haven’t noticed, more and more jobs are being permanently lost to cheap foreign labor – and especially to computers). As to Sanders, over time he has spoken mano a mano to every voter in the state, and it is really hard to refuse your vote to a man who has been eyeball to eyeball with you for five to ten minutes. Vermont will continue to re-elect him – with drop-dead pluralities – until he drops dead. And what AOC and Sanders said on the campaign trail, they continue to work for. Because they stand for something! People will give you their vote even if they believe different things – if they trust you. New York's 14th District and the state of Vermont are not THAT liberal; but they know a genuine article when they see one. NOTHING is more important in politics than trust, NOTHING. Not incumbency, not money, NOTHING!
AOC brings one more thing to the table that has all but died among Democrats. She fights, she picks fights, she messages, and she fights! You would not be wrong to compare her to Trump in this regard. Democrats lost their mojo somewhere between Vietnam and President Reagan. Democrats who don’t follow AOC’s lead are fools; they need not be in lockstep with her agenda, but they need to know what they stand for, and they need to fight for it! AOC, Sanders, and Warren share an old-fashioned liberal / progressive agenda. On issues, liberal Democrats represent the majority of Americans. On ISSUES! Most Democrats in Congress quietly represent themselves as “I am not a Republican.” Long-term this is not a winning strategy. Message to Joe Biden: Joe, ya hear me? You need to get out there and fight!
Anyone with a little imagination or curiosity has stared into the future and glimpsed the Brave New World of Robots. That is to say, machine intelligence that can do your job better, quicker, and cheaper than you, no matter what your job is, even surgeon or lawyer, given enough time. When will your skills be taken over by a machine? Is the Apocalypse now? No. In a hundred years? Maybe. “Progress” happens over time. But only Andrew Yang has had the guts (and the “smarts”?) to address the problem, even if his fix (a “universal basic income”) is a bit simple-minded. And Yang is a Democrat. Democrats (and Republicans!) to come need to think long and hard what to do about the inevitable. Before it happens.
Our most recent Democratic presidents have all been called socialists and liberals and progressives. None of them ("always trying to get along" Obama, Arkansas Bill Clinton, Georgia Jimmy Carter) deserved those labels. Same for Joe Biden, not a liberal. The last liberal Democratic presidents were LBJ and FDR (sorry, JFK was no liberal). President Obama was called "the most socialist president" in American history. If you never paid attention in grade school American history class, maybe you could buy that slur. "Obamacare was a government takeover of our health care system." Wow! Socialized medicine is a government takeover. Under socialized medicine, doctors are government employees, hospitals are government facilities, drug companies are public entities, you get the picture. Obamacare left doctors in private practice, left private hospitals private, left Big Pharma charging the prices they charge, and left the health care insurance business happier and more profitable than it had ever been. Government takeover? My point here is "don't ever assume that any politician is telling you the truth." Especially Republicans telling you that Democrats are Communists. Politicians count on your remaining ignorant, and that is your doing, not theirs.
Presidents aside, moderate – or centrist – Democrats is what we have seen for decades. Soul-less creatures who have won elections by declaring, “I am not a Republican; I care.” The psychic rewards of that mantra have not been enough to inspire two generations of would-be Democrats to run for local or state-wide office. Look at a nation-wide map of the United States – colored red and blue, county by county – and we live in a red country. 95% maybe 98% of the land mass of the country is red. Democrats have lost their mojo. Learning from AOC and Sanders is a good way to find it again.
A quick aside. Paul Wellstone (look him up) knew what he stood for. And he knew how to talk to people, and he loved to talk with people. And he was a fighter. He called himself a “liberal” years after "liberal" had become a dirty word (for many). He’d have been president had he and his family not been killed in a plane crash in the early Bush II years.
FDR was handed a Great Depression. Millions of Americans had lost their jobs, a thousand at a time, during a Hoover presidency that believed in the free market rebounding by itself. It didn’t. For nearly four years, it just kept getting worse. FDR saw the problem – joblessness – so he created jobs! And men went back to work. Individuals were rescued from the Great Depression – from joblessness – thousands at a time. Then, in an 85% isolationist America, he prepared us (silently) for an inevitable world war. Twenty-four hours after Pearl Harbor, war sentiment reversed itself and we were 85% in favor of war. Because of FDR, we were ready for it. FDR was not so much a liberal or a socialist; he saw a problem, and an obvious fix, and he worked to achieve that fix. Social programs that we all take for granted were born in FDR’s years. Republicans want to undo them, but they dare not name their names. They are called “the third rail of politics.” Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, like that. No one wants to repeal them. Some don't like paying for them.
Andrew Jackson was the first Democratic president, the first (small d) democratic president. He was a man of the people. All the presidents who went before him were American-style aristocrats. He literally threw open the doors of the White House to the people at the beginning of his first term; any man could walk in and grab a hunk of cheese! This is the essence of the Democratic Party. Democrats are, in theory, the Party of the People. They have forgotten this, from time to time.
People enter politics for only a few reasons. Power, fame, wealth, or a vision, a mission, a dream. Those who seek power are quickly disabused when they discover that they are the servants of their true masters, Big Money. Fame? Is finding your name on a list of tens of thousands of others who have won an election or two satisfying? Wealth? There are thousands of ways to make a fortune with much less effort and much less grief. As to the other words – visions, missions, dreams – all of them are about bigger things than oneself. If you were a voter, if you had a chance to vote for a dreamer and not just someone in it for himself, surely you get my point. And these words apply totally equally to Democrats and Republicans, and even more to third parties like the Libertarians and the Greens.
Politics is a noble business. Except when it is pure filth. Like now.
Addendum: Friday, 09/30/2022
It's two years later and a Democrat is getting the message and not a moment too soon. It's Governor Gavin Newson of the great state of California. Watch him talk here.
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