Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressed Trump’s election win, urging Democrats to move past infighting and post-election rancor to focus on preparing for potential impacts of his presidency, such as tariffs, mass deportations, and censorship.
She criticized some Democrats for blaming the loss on “identity politics,” despite Trump’s campaign centering on white racial grievance and calls for white men to turn out. Ocasio-Cortez pointed to moderate voices like Reps. Tom Suozzi and Seth Moulton, who argued that supporting trans rights hurt Democrats, as misguided.
She encouraged people to engage in direct communication and join physical communities to combat despair and build resilience.
I do think a lot of liberals are spending far too much time trying to score cheap political points…That criticism actually extends to one of Ocasio-Cortez’s top allies in the Senate — Bernie Sanders — as well.
America is silly. Because of our first-past-the-post electoral system, we are a de facto two party state. As a result, Americans have come to believe that there are only two political or ideological possibilities: liberalism and conservativism. Therefore, everyone is either a liberal or a conservative, and everyone who isn’t a conservative must necessarily be a liberal, and vice versa.
I am not a conservative, but I am also not a liberal. I don’t agree with either ideology. Yes, generally, I might agree more with the liberals than the conservatives, but that doesn’t make me a liberal. It doesn’t even necessarily make me a liberal ally. Stop calling us liberals. We are not liberals, stop trying to make us part of your group. Stop with the, “hey, we’re all liberals, guys,” no, we’re not.
Bernie Sanders is not a liberal. If he were a liberal, he would be a part of the liberal, Democrat party. He is not, he’s an independent. He often joins with the liberals, because, again, the liberals are nearer to him than the only other party, the conservative Republicans, but he nonetheless remains an independent. Stop calling us liberals.
Martin Luther King Jr identified this roadblock some 60 years ago: The White Moderate.
Particularly salient point, 53% of white women just voted for Trump.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
[ I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. ]
Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.
I just wanted to highlight this statement. He’s absolutely right.
53% of white women just voted for Trump.
Well, I’m not distinguishing between myself and the liberals based on skin color, but ideology. Liberalism is not an ideology that is exclusive to people with light skin. There are plenty of liberals who have darker skin. There are also many people who are left of liberals who have lighter skin, myself included.
American political lexicon is stunted (probably deliberately). I volunteered my time and donated my money for Bernie’s campaign, and prefer to go by “progressive” since it hits the main points and has an actual caucus in Congress.
The conservatives I know call me a liberal (if they’re feeling nice), but they also know it’s not accurate, they’re just trying to sow chaos on the left.
I don’t really like progressive because some of the major figures of the progressive era a hundred years ago are people I’d like to keep a large distance from.
You’re talking about La Folette and Wheeler? I don’t remember anything they advocated for being too bad, but I haven’t looked at their proposed policies in a long time. Wouldn’t that be natural of a truly progressive movement, though? What was “progressive” one hundred years ago should hopefully be status quo, and what’s progressive now could scantly be imagined back then.
More like everybody was progressive at the time, from Teddy(a progressive conservative) to Wilson to Hoover. In the end it pretty much just meant liberal. I’m comfortable being a socialist and explaining it from there.
Next cycle she better be in the fucking primary.
Next cycle
Bless your heart.
While I do think she has gone against the grain of the broken system and would be a great choice, thinking another woman and especially a woman is color will win over the racist misogynistic US populace, I think you’ll be disappointed.
But who knows what will come of an actual fair primary if we even have elections in the future.
Obama won, with record turnout and vote count. Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, despite her severe unlikeability and controversial history.
While it is important to recognize the role that white supremacy and misogyny have, it has demonstrably not been a hard ceiling.
What if the US populace is not misogynistic. Perhaps Clinton and Harris were just bad candidates.
It’s always “it’s not all women, just not this woman” when it comes to presidential misogyny.
I think the best bet for getting a woman in the white house is to have a major TV show where a popular actress plays the president, and then have that actress run for president afterwards. Americans are so unimaginative that they probably need the visual example, and then some are probably stupid enough to think they’re voting for the incumbent.
To illustrate your point. Americans would vote for Oprah.
Dear gods no she gave us Dr Phil it’s the tv version of the clap
I didn’t say she would (or wouldn’t) be a good president. I’m just saying people would definitely vote for her.
I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just registering my horror early in case this happens. You know what they say, if you can’t be happy, you might as well be right.
It worked for donvict after he was given that GD game show - a whole lot of people think he’s a businessman, and a successful one at that.
Clinton still won the popular, and Harris had the background of inflation. I think if AOC had similar circumstances, she probably would have lost, too. Even though I would looooove to see her as President.
Now, maybe, if she runs after 4 years of donvict fucking all kinds of things up…hard to say. She’d probably be running against “JD” “Vance” who is a white guy, so…
I don’t think gender or color is as big a barrier than who the person is. IMO Harris was a better choice than Clinton, still a piss poor choice, not even close to someone I would choose to vote for. If I had a choice that is. Pick a woman of any color that has the fight in her and the policies and fortitude to follow through on an actual populist agenda; I think she would succeed.
I think we’ve had enough of the “we hope we might be able to give you the change that you mandated but we’re not really gonna try and if you point that out FUCK YOU!” candidate the dems always push on us.
She doesn’t need to win over the racists. If there’s anything we can learn from the last few election cycles is that you win elections by convincing your existing base to go out and vote, and to do that you need to give them something to believe in and something to vote for.
I think AOC would absolutely kill that.
I certainly can’t prove this and it may be me being optimistic but I don’t buy the “it’s just misogyny” claim. Clinton and Harris represent the two furthest right candidates that have ever run for president on the Dem side and I think their spectacular failures owe more to that than anything else.
Okay, this notion is just incorrect. Harris, during her time as senator, was one of the most left leaning senators out of all Democrats. Her votes almost completely aligned with Bernie Sanders.
Was misogyny THE reason Harris loss, probably not; but it definitely played a meaningful role. During the campaign race, there were a lot of information being pushed to American citizens. It was up to us to process the information and choose what to believe and what to throw away. Post-election, we are learning that people were judging Harris based on false premises. Americans were willing to believe a lot of bullshit about Harris, whereas Trump got the opposite treatment: Americans willingfully ignored terrible truths about Trump. I think misogyny played a role in defining this difference in how we treated information regarding each candidates.
Senator Harris would have been a far better candidate than Presidential Hopeful Harris.
I was initially accepting that she had a chance at winning precisely because of her liberal senate career… unfortunately whether because she changed genuinely or because dumbass political consultants told her to shift strategy she ended up taking a hard right turn during the campaign. Maybe it didn’t help that Walz was so obviously more progressive than her. Maybe Russian interference really did amplify pro-Palestinian voices. Who knows.
I genuinely believe Warren and AoC would out perform the shitshow Harris delivered.
Maybe it didn’t help that Walz was so obviously more progressive than her.
I will say that picking him was a stroke of genius, though. Any chance of getting an AOC/Walz ticket? Or a Walz/AOC ticket?
That’s the whole point of the primary. To find out. We had no primary for Harris.
Or Biden really.
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Democrats once again focused on taking the high road after losing one of the most consequential elections in history. I mean I like AOC but calling for people not to be hostile or divisive towards voters who believe in dragging immigrants from their homes, putting them in camps, and then deporting them to their potential deaths is just not it.
You can call for unity all you want to but you won’t ever hear those same words from the mouths of republicans.
You can call for unity all you want to but you won’t ever hear those same words from the mouths of republicans
Yeah we do, when they lose, and only then. And even then, they’re fucking lying about wanting it at all, they think it’s weakness (literally a conservative belief)
Guys guys, I know the country is getting taken over by criminal fascist scumbags, but let’s please tone it down online.
Let’s keep it friendly and civil while the MAGA police is dragging you out of your apartment because you made fun of the orange emperor
She needs to go Independant and start a new party. It’s time.
A new party would do nothing with our current voting system.
What does that preparation look like? Ocasio-Cortez said she’s still taking a moment to process her plan. But she said she’ll personally be “doing a lot more direct communication” — i.e., methods other than social media, which can be overrun with unverified claims and outright propaganda.
“I think I’ll be planning on using my email list to give a lot more thorough and specific things about what’s on my mind and how to prepare for things,” she said. And she encouraged her followers to get out of their online bubbles:
I was going to point out that nobody reads those, but then I realized I’m a fucking weirdo who blocks all that shit with extreme prejudice. So maybe it’ll work because normal people apparently read every email they get in detail.
Most people I know either obsessively filter and delete junk like this so their inbox is always empty, or they have 30k emails, all unread, and this’ll just go in the pile.
I am definitely the former. Having an unread email in my inbox drives me nuts. So I basically never sign up for email newsletters.
I unsubscribed from all my newsletters and subscribed to them through RSS where I could. That way I don’t have to be bothered unless i specifically want to read any updates!
I used to do RSS but I would forget about looking at the feed for so long that there wasn’t much of a point unfortunately.
I will never vote for a democrat who opposes trans rights. I’ll encourage my friends not to as well. They want these stupid games they can have the prizes that come with
So now it’s racist for white men to vote? Unless they vote for who AOC approves of? It’s BS like this that lost you the election. Elitist snob.
Holy hell, i love this response, but one question: do you really think they’ll understand if they actually go read that? The comprehension is sorta lacking.
That’s not even remotely what she’s saying
Lol. AOC is pretty much the opposite of elitist.
I mean, the misogynist elitist right wing were trying to “put her in her place” by constantly mocking the fact that she worked as a bartender.
Talk about elitist.
AOC actually did quite well in her election.
I mean, sure as shit was racist to vote for a racist platform.
So now it’s racist for white men to vote?
Most white men vote for racists, so…
The old anyone that votes different than i do is evil position. This is why you lost.
Wow, what a strong figure!
