This Diary is in response to the following diary by Brett Wilkins:
Obama is part of the problem. Ocasio-Cortez is part of the solution. For now.
First of all, Barack Obama was not a perfect President. I, myself, was critical of some of his actions. Yet, on his worse day, he was a million times better President than the Pathological Lying, Narcissistic, Treasonous Slimeball that currently occupies the Oval Office. He did an amazing job pulling us out of a terrible recession, and he did an amazing job giving us a national health care plan despite unbelievable resistance from the Republicans.
So, yesterday, Obama's office releases a list of about eighty names of Democrats that he supports, and some names are not on the list, and some people go nuts.
Listen, Obama’s own office said this was just a first draft, and keep in mind, since a lot of the Democratic primaries have not taken place, Obama is going to wait to see who wins in a lot of these races before he makes an endorsement. So, how about we wait until the primaries are over and see his final list before we rush to judgment? Obama did not endorse Beto either, and he’s running against (gag!) Ted Cruz, so, of course, Obama is not done with his endorsements.
Now, regarding candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: she seems like a wonderful person with a great personality who is loaded with energy and who worked her butt off to win the Democratic Primary in her congressional district. That is wonderful. I wish her much success in the future.
However, have you ever noticed how few Democratic-Socialists exist in Congress? There are not many of them. Basically, we currently have Senator Bernie Sanders, and soon we will have U.S. Representative Ocasio-Cortez. After the 2018 midterms, we may have a few more. There are 69 members of the House who are members of the Congressional Progressive Congress, but this is different from being a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Now, you might want to keep the following in mind. In general, Democratic-Socialists usually only win general elections in districts that are heavily weighted toward Democrats/Progressives. For example, in New York's 15th Congressional District, Where Ocasio-Cortez won, the ratio of Active Democrats to Active Republicans is 258,369 to 14,435. How many districts do you think are this lopsided in the Democrats favor?
Now, let’s look at Bernie Sander’s state of Vermont. From Wikipedia: Vermont was once a liberal Republican stronghold, having voted Republican in every election from 1856 to 1988 with the exception of 1964. Since 1992, the Democratic Party has carried the state in every election, most often by landslide margins.
In general, it is in environments like this, environments where Democrats always win that Democratic Socialists win. In environments where there is relative parity between Democrats and Republicans, Democrats are much more successful running more moderate, centrist, middle of the road candidates.
For example, Connor Lamb won in a district that had voted for Trump over Clinton by about 21 points. In order to climb this mountain, Connor Lamb did not run a Socialist campaign. He ran a pro-labor union campaign that capitalized on the large number of union members in his district. In other words, he made his campaign match the demographics of his district.
If we want to take back the House, and eventually the Senate, we should treat each political campaign separately, and we should allow the candidates to campaign in a way that will best assure a win. Blindly opposing centrist Democrats will only result in disaster.
Also, Hillary Clinton was an awesome candidate, and she won 3 million more votes than Donald Trump did. There were many things that hurt her in the 2016 election. I’ll say what I think would have made the difference for her in another diary.
Have A Nice Day. :)