This www.nytimes.com/… no holds barred interview with AOC (summarized in The Guardian www.theguardian.com/… for those without a NY Times subscription) confronts us with the question of the competence of the current Democratic Party leadership. It is an urgent question because control of the Senate is immediately at stake. But ultimately the consequences for the world’s future are also at stake.
After having to listen to 4 hours of Joe Scarborough and Claire Mccaskill yesterday with their infuriating, condescending understanding of the Progressive wing as a source of energy and votes but not as a source for serious policy ideas, I am reeling from their cluelessness. AOC’s confrontation of these fools needs to be taken seriously. This election was won despite these centrist people, not because of them. To allow them to be be the central voice of the party is foolish and perilous.
To quote AOC, “If the party believes after 94% of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organisers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organised Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic party is the John Kasich won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is.”
When asked about her central takeaway from the election she said,
“Well, I think the central one is that we aren’t in a freefall to hell anymore...”
But more importantly, when asked about what surprised her in the results she said, “The share of white support for Trump. I thought the polling was off, but just seeing it, there was that feeling of realising what work we have to do.” I thinks that the DNC will never solve this problem with centrism which, all evidence to the contrary, the party leaders refuse to acknowledge.
So while we has slowed the free fall to hell, without leadership from progressives who viscerally understand the real source of our decay, the ride to hell will eventually pick up steam again. Not saying that it will be easy to figure out how to message progressive ideas when conservatives and centrist control the language of the discussion with boogie man terms such as “socialism”. But it must be done, and it must begin immediately.
Just to be clear… I think that Biden was an excellent candidate. I also do not think that Bernie would have done well at this place in time.
What I am concerned about is progressive policies that need to be delivered and defended in a winning way. We don’t have time for incrementalism on such huge issues like health care and climate change anymore. These issues need to be pried away from the trap of “isms” and discussed in terms of their existential importance. We have to persuade and show unequivocally the failure of centerism in dealing with these things, not with an air of purity and superiority, but in terms of the absolute necessity of progressive solutions.
Read Tom Franks article in The Guardian - www.theguardian.com/...
Here is a salient quote from it:
“Biden can’t take us back to the happy assumptions of the centrist era even if he wants to, because so many of its celebrated policy achievements lie in ruins. Not even Paul Krugman enthuses about Nafta-style trade agreements any longer. Bill Clinton’s welfare reform initiative was in fact a capitulation to racist tropes and brought about an explosion in extreme poverty. The great prison crackdown of 1994 was another step in cementing the New Jim Crow. And the biggest shortcoming of Obama’s Affordable Care Act – leaving people’s health insurance tied to their employer – has become painfully obvious in this era of mass unemployment and mass infection.”
This is my concern, and I think it is what AOC is getting at, albeit without the eloquence of Frank.