Hello, world, from Millennial Democrats! We hope it finds you well.
Earlier today, a debate was held between a few of our members, which led to a consensus decision. Some asked if I would clarify the organization’s reasons for refusing to support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as there are certainly many people on the left who, to put it mildly, do not agree with that decision.
First off, it’s important to point out how critical it is that Democrats be able to agree to disagree. We are not socialists, this is not groupthink. Dissent is welcome, even encouraged. Our position is that AOC is part of a faction, a movement, and a base of people who have been a disaster for the Democratic Party, and we fully invite opposition dialogue on the subject. Come armed with facts and not slanders, and we will debate you any time at any place.
Just make sure you know how to be a good loser.
AOC is the latest chapter in an ongoing saga, where the right has done all it can to empower and incite the socialists because they know it will make things harder for us. They want Ocasio-Cortez to be the face of our Party more than anything. She and Bernie are helping them to make of us a Goldstein, in the 1984 scenario. In order to keep the White House next year, Trump has to present an enemy to the public even worse than him, and the spectre of socialism as exhibited by the Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists of America gives him exactly that.
Ocasio-Cortez plays into this at every turn.
Take the Green New Deal, for example. She proudly tweeted that she and her friends threw it together over the course of a weekend, as though that were a good thing. It’s an unrealistic dreamer’s errand and a wish list, and the price tag on it has all the conservatives licking their chops.
There are those who accuse us of hostility to AOC based on her taking out of Joe Crowley, who undoubtedly was one of our best guys, and who genuinely will be missed. This is not the case, however; we are Democrats, and we support democracy. We bid our condolences and farewells to Joe and moved on. At this time, Millennial Democrats wrote Ocasio-Cortez an article of welcome and sincere congratulation, asking her to reconsider her stance on some things and drop the socialist aspect of her philosophy.
As for the environmental changes proposed as part of the Green New Deal, we fully support those aspects of the bill. Nancy Pelosi made that clear when amending the bill. Her version is the one that mainstream Democrats like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have gone on to indicate some support for, not AOC’s.
Former Vice-President Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change science. Our side has been fighting for this since long before AOC, or any other Millennial Democrat was even born. Our opposition to the bill has less than nothing to do with that, although most of us rightly are grateful to and venerate our elders in the baby boomer generation.
We’re not for doing things sloppy. There are very serious legislative flaws in that plan. It was not well crafted, and the crafters were completely ill-prepared. They got in trouble right away because of that FAQ that went around last week, talking about the people “unwilling to work”, et cetera.
At any rate, the problems are much more foundationally serious than an unvetted fact sheet. Expert Mike Pesca weighed in, pointing out very few environmental experts consider the targets laid out in the plan to be attainable in any way. Climate change experts have called for zeroing out emissions in the power sector by 2050, while the Green New Deal proposes doing so by 2030.
On what basis does it maintain the time frame can be accelerated by two-thirds? It does not say.
What Ocasio-Cortez and her friends have actually done is to confuse the issue further, make the true adherents of climate change look bad, and make it harder for the professionals responsible to get the actual progress made, which is the problem with her entire organization, modeled after Bernie Sanders from the start. AOC sadly didn’t just used to work for JD and DSA, she is very much a part of them now, and is in fact their greatest asset.
Because of that fact, she is also the greatest Republican asset, which is one more eerie way in which the interests of the far left and alt-right coincide. Their attacks on her are likely part of their usual cunning political strategy; they know booing her is an easy way to make the left embrace her, which in chess terminology is like eating a poisoned pawn, because of what an insanely atrocious idea signing on behind the original Green New Deal would be.
Why else would Mitch McConnell allow a vote on something he knows will never pass, like the Green New Deal, except to be able to tar and feather anyone who goes for it as a socialist wingnut who gets up at three in the afternoon?
In Ocasio-Cortez, in the few very loud members of our generation that have been hoodwinked into supporting this truly evil and invasive form of government, the Republicans now have a walking personification of all they have been fighting with their money to create: a just accusation that Democrats are socialists, and that to support us is to personally become the vector of socialism. It’s George McGovern all over again.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan situation provides a vivid example of how big disaster socialism can be. At the end of the SOTU speech, Trump did what he’s going to be doing a lot- pointing to Bernie Sanders in silence, looking horrified, waiting for the people to become so disgusted they can’t take it and vote against their interests. Policy be damned, they will say. Look at that blue clown suit. I would rather burn than have that guy as my president.
The claim that we Democrats are going to turn America into a Venezuelan socialist hellscape looks like something new, but as every reader of this blog will be aware, they’ve been laying the groundwork for it for the last several years. Contrary to Trump’s new narrative, the Democratic Party has never embraced Bernie Sanders. We do share some policies, but he goes too far with them and makes them look ridiculous. Now he’s got AOC there with him, screaming for seventy percent income tax rates on the rich and protesting Nancy Pelosi over climate change.
Wonderful.
We had hoped to like AOC. We wrote good things about her in the beginning, even though she entered all our lives by doing something no Republican could have done in getting rid of Joe Crowley, a twenty-year veteran whose help was sorely needed. We sucked it up and congratulated her, and wished her the best in working with us to create a better future for America.
Since then, however, things have declined sorely and rapidly.
Why did she go protest Nancy Pelosi about climate change, when a bill was already on the table? Why not go protest the Republicans? Who knows, but it’s certainly convenient for them that she didn’t.
Then during the #TrumpShutdown, she also lied about her reasons for going so far as to vote with the Republicans for keeping our government closed, citing “funding for ICE” as the reason why she’d made a “tough, nuanced call” on the issue, even though ICE funding is covered by the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS funding wasn’t even discussed in the bill.
Her reasons for stabbing her own in the back remain totally obscure- and unfortunate.
The future strategy on the part of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Justice Democrats will be to use the popularity of AOC as a springboard of sorts, a mobile platform from which to position themselves to bump off even more good Democrats and spread their insurgency- and the unrealistic platform it brings along with it, so toxic in the extreme to the long term survival of the party.
In short, the whole radical left wing of the party is acting kind of like a handicap does on a racehorce right now by constantly ripping it up, dragging it down, and dampening its enthusiasm, to the ultimate benefit of Donald Trump. Millennial Democrats has been designed and built toward the purpose of countering that strategy and bringing love and life back to the center of our Party. To closely paraphrase what famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats once wrote in his riveting poem The Second Coming, things fall apart, if the center cannot hold.
In closing on the AOC topic, one of our contributors may have said it best of all earlier this evening- par for the course on that person’s batting record.
Believe me, Democrats, we’ve got the best people on the job!
“For me, it is the fact she has voted with the Republican Party against the Democratic Party, and I like Democratic legislators that vote with us and not against us.”
Why is this asking so much out of someone whom we supposedly share an agenda with?
Perhaps it makes the most sense from the standpoint of what Vladimir Lenin once said- “The best way to control the opposition, is to lead it ourselves.” Everything Ocasio-Cortez does makes perfect sense from the standpoint that she’s doing what revolutionary socialism calls for- cooperating with any group around, no matter how terrible their ideology, in order to topple a regime that both sides have found restrictive.
At any rate, this is our position, and I have given it my best. I hope I have argued for it well. Either way, it is not necessary that we all agree on everything; in a big-tent organization such as the Democratic Party, it’s pretty unlikely anyway. All we do ask is that when that is the case, we express our dissenter’s opinion with respect instead of vitriol and that we agree to disagree for the good of the country and the cause. If that’s good enough for you neo-progressives, it’s good enough for us Millennial Democrats. Have a good night, and thank you for taking the time to hear us out!
The falcon can still hear the falconer, at least for tonight.
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