Summary
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denied claims that she is secretly wealthy, stating she is worth less than $500,000 and doesn’t trade stocks or take corporate money.
Her financial disclosures show modest savings and student debt.
Some conservatives on X, despite opposing her politics, praised her perceived integrity.
Accusations of political corruption have surged online, partly fueled by Elon Musk.
I love AOC. I’d vote for her in a heartbeat in primary and general elections. Now, whether she makes it to the general depends on the DNC, and I have no faith that the political consultant/establishment class will let anything remotely progressive through. No money to be made.
I guess the only way forward would be to vote for her in the primaries to such a degree that the Dems have not choice but to confirm her through.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the internet manifest:
1- blame her for having millions due to kickbacks
2- when she proves that her net worth is less than 500K make fun of her for having too little money
There’s many things that expose the Right Wing Grift.
When AOC was first elected they mocked her for being a Bartender who “rose above her station”
What more proof do you need that the American Dream is bullshit
They call at that because you’d have to be asleep to believe it.
I mean if you take the internet as a monolith, you’ll find contradictions every where. Some people will hate A because of B, some people will hate A because of C, but either way A is getting hate for both B and C.
So either there are millions of people online with different opinions but the crowd looks the same, or there is one very, very busy troll who is running all the accounts.
~help I’m so tired they won’t give me a break to pee~
Because it’s ONE SIDED around here, just like Reddit… if a Republican said this EXACT same thing, they’d be crucified.
Median property value in DC is $705,000.
She’s likely living paycheck to paycheck as a sitting member of Congress. I like it.
Finally, some actual representation.
Shes so goddamn normal it’s jarring
The pot accuses a bottle of milk of looking black
AOC is a prodigious fundraiser with a significant national following. She might only have a half-million in the bank, but her name and her reputation are worth orders of magnitude more.
Conservatives have a hard time believing someone like that isn’t getting rich quick on $AOCCoin or LeftyBear merch offerings.
Gaslight
Obstruct
Project <-- we are here
Conservatives have a hard time believing someone like that isn’t getting rich quick on $AOCCoin or LeftyBear merch offerings.
Being dishonest you have a bigger selection of instruments to gain power. So politicians are more likely to be dishonest than the average person. And then a dishonest person would use the opportunity.
Anyway, cool for AOC to be honest, but unfortunately her views (specifically support of MMT) are a certain way to nuke the economy of the USA.
If we detach ourselves from the emotional part (suicides, hunger deaths), it may even be liberating, if USD as a currency takes a 10000x inflation in a year or so, while big businesses reliant on American system of connections grown by decades of stability die. US main capital is still human capital, competent people and their knowledge. No hyperinflation will kill that, if recovery is quick enough.
Except that’s not the way people like AOC promise.
Anyway, cool for AOC to be honest, but unfortunately her views (specifically support of MMT) are a certain way to nuke the economy of the USA.
The US economy gets nuked every 8-12 years thanks to private equity and boom-bust capital trends. MMT just moves the ball out of the hands of a cartel of hedge funds and into the hands of the US Treasury. I’ll happily agree that its not sufficient to solving the problem of malinvestment and industrial waste. But that’s precisely because its an extension of Keynesian-cum-Friedmanite monetary theory of economics. At some point, you have to take account of real assets, not just float around fictitious capital.
if USD as a currency takes a 10000x inflation in a year
You don’t get inflation like that under Eisenhower/Carter era tax laws. MMT, in practice, is still predicated on some degree of currency recapture. You’re just replacing credit elasticity through private lenders with spending elasticity through public spenders. “Here’s a $500k loan, build a house and pay me back at 6% APY” isn’t meaningfully different than “Here’s a $500k grant, built a house and your builders are going to pay me back 6% VAT”.
Except that’s not the way people like AOC promise.
AOC promises a large public investment in value-adding infrastructure. She’s just proposing direct payment rather than tax-incentivized private investment.
She’s just proposing
direct paymentactually investing in Americans rather thantax-incentivized private investmenttaking bribes to give all the public coffers to corpo goons.ftfy
The US economy gets nuked every 8-12 years
Reminds me of that Hashek quote about “sir, you’ve taken the pollen of my innocence” from a girl whose shoulder a boy touched.
Anyway, maybe you’re right.
Anyway, cool for AOC to be honest, but unfortunately her views (specifically support of MMT) are a certain way to nuke the economy of the USA.
I didn’t realize it was that part of the circus where conservative centrists clowns do a bit for us to laugh at them for.
Neither did I, turns out that yes and you are the clown. Why - because you’ve used a long comment for the sole purpose of “friend-or-foe” determination. I dunno how to call people doing that. If all this was incomprehensible for you - I’m not a conservative.
Im not the clown wasting their breath attacking one of the only politicians who is actually resisting the fascist takeover and destruction of the US government literally happening as you rant emptily about “inveitable” eventualities of AOC’s policies.
You could not pick a better moment to demonstrate how fundamentally unserious your politics are in this context.
Wake the fuck up and realize who your actual enemies are, you dangerous fool.
It feels like all the people here criticizing her for fantastical or illogical reasons (usually a mixture of both) are just envious of her.
They would all also get hilariously demolished by her on a debate about policy and political strategy.
…which honestly it never gets old for me watching progressive leaders like her dress down people like this to their face.
Comfortable but not extravagantly wealthy from
bribeslobbying. I’m okay with this.Honestly 500k net in the DC area is low if anything.
It’s probably low in any metro area in 2025, sadly.
That’s because she’s actually trying to help people, and you don’t get rich helping people.
Well obviously you do. Or she isnt trying to help people. She admitted to having hundreds of thousands of dollars
You have no idea what you’re talking about. 500k in assets is like a decent house that you’re still making payments on, a couple cars, and some 401k savings. People like that are not the problem. That lifestyle should be the base level for every single American, imo.
Ikr? My mom is worth that probably but we barely making it.
It should be, but it isn’t. You’re out of touch with what most people have.
It seems like you may be conflating having ~$500k net worth with being rich, which may not have been your intent, but it seemed that way based on context. I think what the other responder is getting at is that AOC is not rich. She may have a house, a car, and some retirement saved up. All of those are assets, but they do not translate into the kind of liquidity that many other American politicians have.
She was working class before she entered into politics, and some would argue that she still is based on her work and advocacy. I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing your of anything, or putting words in your mouth, because that’s not my intent; I just want to point out a common belief held by a lot of Americans. Lumping someone in with the rich and then holding them in contempt merely because that person is richer than you is exactly the kind of us-versus-them mentality the ruling class wants us to have.
She is rich. There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich. There is something wrong with being a lawmaker who is so out of touch with poor people that you dont realize your own privileges
There is something wrong with being a lawmaker who is so out of touch with poor people that you dont realize your own privileges
What are you basing this on? Did you personally speak with AOC?
In the article she said she has hundreds of thousands of dollars and also said she’s not rich
Edit: she didn’t say she’s not rich. She said she’s not a millionaire
Can you explain why you think she is out of touch with poor people? I’m genuinely curious, because you may know something about her that I don’t, and if she’s as secretly two-faced as Sinema and Manchin, or has done something to actively denigrate or undermine the working class, I want to be informed.
I understand that most poor people feel overlooked, ignored, and exploited by the rich, and that’s because that is exactly what they do–but their greatest trick is to make us think that it’s not their fault that we are poor. Please look again to the last sentence of my reply: Holding someone in contempt merely because they are richer than you is exactly what the billionaires want you to do, because it distracts and redirects anger away from them, and is just another tool they use to make the working class fight amongst themselves.
She isnt richer than me. I have more money than she does.
I dont care if someone has money. That doesn’t make you a bad person. The issue is that she isnt aware how rich she is. That’s out of touch with reality.
Sure, but your claim rests on a specific definition of what rich is. The notion that her gross assets, not liquidity, are such that she is in not of the working class (her assets produce enough wealth to live upon) glosses over the obscene wealth, corruption, and hoarding that the purpose of the conversation is trying to convey. “Yeah, but other Americans are poorer” is whataboutism in the face of someone interested in adresssing wealth disparity.
If you’re surrounded by people who are millionaires and that becomes your definition of “rich” then you’ve become so out of touch with reality.
There is a difference between someone with hundreds of thousands of dollars of net worth and someone with billions. Both are fucking rich.
The middle class is so far gone in the US that people like you have difficulty remembering what it looks like.
Your idea of a middle class is about as fictional as the idea of the American Dream.
If you can get bankrupted by an illness, you’re not rich.
Yup and I can say by experience that even making 180K at a fortune 500 company, that makes you still not rich when medical shit goes south.
By that definition, nobody is rich. You can spend 200 billion dollars trying to fight cancer and still die.
There was a study a while back asking Republican House members how they defined “middle class”.
$450,000.
https://www.newsweek.com/tax-cuts-republicans-middle-class-trump-701094
Keep that in mind when you hear people throwing around “middle class tax cuts”.
Where are you from that you think hundreds of thousands of dollars in the US is “wealth”?
Do you know that 500k in the US doesn’t even get you a nice house? You need literally around 2 mil saved up JUST TO RETIRE BEFORE 70.
She is helping people in that she serves her constituency, she is a representative, nobody expects her to donate her money to anyone, but she does raise money in fundraisers all the time. She helps more people than most of her peers in congress. These fundraisers do NOT make you money, you may have some very backwards ideas about how money works in politics. Even the right respects AOC to an unusual degree, like they do Bernie Sanders. At least about policy and messaging. They care more about people than party.
It’s clear he didn’t read the article, but it’s necessary to point out she doesn’t even 500k- it is assets, which means she’s as far down the hole as the rest of us.
I mean… 200K-300K-ish can get you a
livablesurvivable place in an okay part of Philly… like there is no “drug dealers” in my area, its not lile “the wire”, its not Baltimore, it just… “Okay” not good, not bad.(15 years ago it was like 100K to 200K). I’ve never heard a gunshot in 15 years living here (or maybe I did and though it was fireworks, who knows). My mom got robbed once. That’s it. Its not a terrible place to live. I mean, I haven’t died, so… 🤷♂️But yea, there are places (like NYC) that’s unlivable, housing in NYC is just insane, its why we had to move out of NYC. (Brooklyn btw)
With that amount of money she could not stop working now and live comfortably off of her funds for the rest of her life in the US. She is not rich.
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Damn man, learn to read an article.
Americans are obligated to save individually for retirement and tax-incentivized to stockpile appreciating assets in personal trusts, in anticipation of becoming too old to work.
It is not that unusual at all for a 30-something professional earning a six-figure salary to set aside 10-20% of that in savings. I suppose you can argue Congresscritters are overpaid and therefore anyone in a federally elected office is de facto not trying to help people. But then you’ve got a problem with how we handle retirement, not with how AOC handles her politics.
Obligated? Most people have to wipe out their retirement funds when they get sick or have to bury their parents
Yes, that’s what they meant by “obligated.”
Our system as it currently exists forces, or “obligates,” people to have large rainy day funds.
Man I miss when we had pensions. Wish we had more unions.
The trick is taking them away slowly enough that every new generation of workers doesn’t even know what they’re missing.
Line must go up, after all.
What’s that, we’re being outpaced on a global scale such that our under-educated workers will soon no longer be able to rely on “We speak English without an accent?”
That’s a problem for after I’m dead, so I’m not worried about it!
Yeah, I really hope the younger generation gets their shit together and do what my generation couldn’t.
Man tried once at my software/engineering place, did not get very far at all unfortunately.
Very few people have this
Right, so you’re just confrontationally agreeing with UnderpantsWeevil and me.
Honestly this is comedy gold,
The politician you are most interested in talking about in this moment, right now with this future quickly unfolding, with respect to scamming the american people… is AOC???
ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha I hope I choke on my popcorn while laughing bitterly so I don’t have to live through the stupidest possible future for my country
This is an article about AOC. Dont play whataboutism
Why do you hate women?
wow bro, just because you think women are objects doesn’t mean you hate them.
like by that logic are you saying I hate my car?
(i mean I do hate owning a car, seperate discussion tho)
I objectify women because I love them why can’t all the women making fun of me respect that.
...
/s
oh look there is a tiny little violin in here for jd too!
Too bad she doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of MILLIONS of dollars or she could really help the little guy like Musk and his administration.
They’re so concerned about profittering they support a guy that was giving millions directly from China, took millions in goverment funds by making secret service stay in his hotels and charging them 1000x the rate of any other guest. This guy’s will pay their life down for the biggest kleptocrat in US history, but yeah AOC needs to be monitored.
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Accusations of political corruption have surged online, partly fueled by Elon Musk.
Lol, says the guy who’s currently at the top of corrupting world-politics…
AKA, every accusation is a confession
There is one group of people who both share the ire of most people and deserve it: The ultra rich.
I’ve had rednecks tell me they disagreed with Bernie on a lot but they liked how he hated billionaires. Ben Shapiro’s gaggle of yes-men gave him grief for criticizing Luigi.
If votes count for anything anymore a smart, effective political party would be able to capitalize on this universal hatred.
Sadly, we have the Democrats.
Can we all please notice how under capitalism, you can refer to people being ‘worth’ a dollar amount? Money is something you have, it says nothing about who you are. I’m fine with having an amount of wealth, but your worth is not measured in dollars, that’s fucked
I get what you’re saying. But the term is generally used to clarify that the amount quoted reflects the person’s assets and their value, and not just their liquid cash. Which a lot of people in this thread seem to not understand. I agree we should probably use a different term for that, but for now it works as easy short hand for “this is is how much this person owns in assets and liquid cash combined.”
I might be wrong on this, but I think the term also includes income into the account, like how much someone brings in per year. And it might also subtract debt, though I’m not sure of either of those.
Just in case anyone is curious- It’s assets minus liabilities, so income is not directly included, but debt does get subtracted.
I can agree with both comments here. It can be a useful to talk about, but the name of it is icky, especially if you’re tying your worth as a person to it (which definitely happens).
I agree we should probably use a different term for that,
That’s literally all I said. I know what it means
AOC feels like the only hope America has at any improvement.
I’m glad it seems that many democrats are quitting their Gatekeeping bullshit with AOC.
So frustrating to see people so concerned about the perception of some strawman caricature the right manufacture for our best fighters that we turn on our own. If it wasn’t obvious, they attack her so relentlessly because they fear her and know her potential more some of our own.
Nancy Pelosi dedicated the month before Trump was inaugurated to ensuring AOC, a spoiler leftist in a sea of her crony neoliberals, didn’t get an oversight committee seat.
Neoliberals Democrats hate actual leftwing politicians far more than they hate their fascist opposition party. Makes sense, Fascists and neoliberals have the same bosses and take the same bribe checks.
Nuh-uh! DNC only takes money from the GoOd billionaires.
A thought I had a few days ago,
The left is all about inclusivity and forgiveness unless you’ve made any amount of mispropriety, then it’s a race to drop you as quick as possible.
The right is all about being held accountable for your transgressions, law and order, you do the crime you pay the time, but they have 0 cares about their leaders being held accountable.
I feel like each party is the watchdog for the others politicians, and the left is way too accepting of the right wings transgressions, while the right wing hammers the left as quick and hard as possible (except we just do it to ourselves!)
I agree with you, except the Democrats are only “left” when compared to Republicans. The USA has a conservative party and a fascist one.
I’m more moderate and have always respected AOC, but thought she was too extreme to make a good president. I genuinely believe that the president should be someone who wants to build coalitions and steer the country towards a better future without allowing it to fracture. I still believe that, but I recognize now that my way of thinking can’t win elections in this modern era of politics. Now is the time for a firebrand - someone who would rather lose than compromise. I would still be worried about civil war if AOC became president, but I’m already worried about that now, so no point in holding it against her.
AOC can build coalitions. She even wrote legislation with Ted Cruz. She only stopped working with him after he effectively tried to have her killed on January 6th.
The irony here is AOC is the one who can build meaningful coalitions you haven’t even realized are possible yet.
The working class is the largest player in this game and she speaks directly to the working class of all stripes.
Moderate neoliberal DINOs speak only to capitalists. That’s why they lost their old base who all went to the right.
I think compromise can only work, if the the other guy thought they could lose it all if things went terribly. Compromising ahead of time says “We both get something, no matter what.” Which in turn removes the fear of loss.
This is a bad quality in a politician, as it excuses sleeping at the wheel. There is no fire under their ass to keep them awake.
What is this gatekeeping about AOC?
So of course Pelosi shafts her at every turn.
Take a peep into Jeff Jackson, NC AG. Hoping for big things out of him.
Just looked him up and he looks shit.
AOC is great because she is outspoken and holds actual left wing values compared to 99.9% of her party.
This clown seems like a Kamala-lite with his boasting on his law enforcement and military service history.
He’s one of the few checks that is actively trying to to regain balance to this shit show. Do not discount a lawyer at the state level.
There’s a difference between offering opposition to outright fascism, and being the hope of the future of a political party. The bar is so low right now that I’m happy whenever I hear of someone pushing back in any amount, but AOCs passion and unrelenting sense of justice is fucking inspiring.
We would need 60 of her in the senate, or literally anybody else on the blue team, for America to have any hope. Otherwise Republicans will filibuster any spec of salvation.
Which is why, for now, the Democrats need to be pulling all the tactics McConnell demonstrated for them under Obama.
FILIBUSTER EVERYTHING.
This is not the time for Democrats to be the Party of smooth-running government.
Use those loopholes the Right-stealers gave themselves in the rules. The only thing they should be voting for is bills that entangle, delay, or reject Trump’s blitzkrieg.
And if they have to talk across the aisle, it should be to remind them that if they hand the Power of the Purse over now, they’ll never get it back and they’ll lose all their value to lobbyists, all their stock-market prescience, all their importance back home.
That’s the fun part, the Republicans in Congress are hardly even attempting to pass any laws. All they’re doing is appointments, which can’t be filibustered as of 2013, except for SCOTUS which can’t be filibustered as of 2017.
All they have to do now is not stop Trump and they win, because Congress is in charge of reigning him in.
You cannot filibuster against doing nothing.
What do you mean, “can’t be filibustered?” You fucking shout to drown out the person trying to conduct the vote, and you don’t stop until you and every other non-fascist have been forcibly removed.
I know you were talking about an old timey filibuster and not the modern one.
But for anyone curious, Certain spending bills — bills that deal with spending, revenue, and the debt ceiling — only require a simple majority. There’s a bunch of rules about what can be in the bills and how many times a year you can use reconciliation (once for each of the three topics per year). Basically, no policy changes; just the basic budget stuff allowed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_Congress)
Not that rules matter in DC anymore. Congress is apparently letting Elon Musk handle appropriations and if Republicans don’t care about the Constitution (or even their own personal power), I doubt like they’ll be worried about following Senate procedure.
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Obstruction of Congress is a Felony, that is why all the rules are laid out for who gets to speak at what time. Anything outside what is explicitly allowed, believe it or not, straight to jail.
Now if they can get the Capitol Police on their side for a little while that would by them time until the National Guard shows up, but then what?
You say that as if legal vs. illegal matters at this point.
sorry for the duplicate comment, the page crashed while I was submitting it so I redid it lol
Legal only matters based on enforcement, and Republicans are in charge of enforcement, so it’s a real conundrum. Feel free to try if you want, though.
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She needs to just start her own party.
I hope that we can also get a younger white male progressive to work along side her. Not because I think they’d be better, but it might help draw emotionally fragile men who can’t accept a woman in charge. Also, it would mean another progressive reaching the masses, which is always good.
A lot of men are sick of being told they’re emotionally fragile for not wanting to be accused of thoughtcrime. Both sides are responsible for this situation and it doesn’t help to attack the base you’re seeking support from. Dems and you need to learn this.
You seem emotionally fragile.
They are emotinally fragile if they are unable to self reflect even a small amount and see that everyone else is told worse on a daily.
I’m also a Jasmine Crockett from Texas fan.
A millionaire lawyer who
was named as co-chair of the 2024 Harris-Walz campaign and is currently a part of the Democratic Congressional Progressive Caucus.
While giving her husband huge security contracts and buying houses in Hawaii?
Hard pass
Go on you valiant crusader.
Continue to shit on anyone who isn’t perfect,
Please let us know when you find the correct candidate.
I did, it was AOC. I said so up above.
The last thing anyone needs right now is more of the same Democrats who never walk the walk, we need more AOCs.
I mean let’s be honest with ourselves: Anyone who had any relation with the braindead mess that was the Walz-Harris campaign should be instantly made out of consideration.
Walz seemed like a pretty decent choice and I liked him a bit. Is there something I’m not realizing about him?
I’m talking more about the absolutely moronic way the campaign was run than the candidates themselves. Harris and Walz themselves were salvageable (sans Gaza, they were genuinely hopeless there) but anyone who was involved in actually running the campaign and deciding the platform is either braindead or a corporate stooge and either way shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near future elections.
Also to answer your question Walz is the “Israel has a right to expand its borders” guy.
Always Israel lurking in the background. Not sure how I missed that one.
For texas, that’s a step in the right direction lol.
333 upvotes and i’m the only one downvoting… We are on lemmy a decentralized and open source platform. Do you really feel this person who use X and meta, who gets featured daily on mass media and who is a member of the red and blue party is ever going to make an actual improvement? The hope for america is that people wake up and realize how hard they are getting fooled by the government.
Lemmy is small mastodon is a little bigger but still absolutely tiny compared to those other social media platforms. The politicians should be where their base is which is twitter and the meta platforms.
she’s the real deal, but i fear she’s been too vilified by the diaper and his cult, and the far-right wastes of humanity that broadcast all the bullshit that enable him, to make successful run for the white house.
Any effective progressive is going to be vilified. They will be attacked from all sides, and all of their dirty laundry will be made public. Every flaw, every misstep, every gaff, all of it will be blown out of proportion by the machine they threaten.
They should embrace it. Point out that they are NOT the old guard, and point out the hypocrisy. Trump is a literal rapist. Get the poor women who got molested onto billboards, church sermons, ask musicians to make songs about how crappy Trump is.
The passivity of the Geronocrats is why they lost the respect of people.
Bernie knew this, to his credit, and made a point to repeat it often, but people weren’t hearing it.
And Trump hasn’t been vilified?
Vilification doesn’t matter, getting people to turn up matters.
I think if we don’t start WW3 and nuke the planet she’s gonna be the first woman president in the US
The DNC would murder her if she broke through their primary defenses and got close enough.
They’re fine with losing, the pendulum is part of the grift, what they aren’t fine with is losing their half of that bipartisan oligarch gravy train. Our capitalists don’t bribe both parties to have those parties stand against economic metastasis at all human cost.
We can have affirmation ribbons and be sucked dry by the oligarchs, or we can have scapegoating and be sucked dry by the oligarchs, that is the extent of our “freedom.” Reagan and Kemp saw to that by getting their former opposition on the take.
Serious talk. When are people going to start calling them DINOs. Democrats In Name Only from the Jurassic period.
You think Trump took over the RNC because the old guard liked him?? No he built on the backs of the tea party.
Bernie and the squad were the lefts tea party. What they need now is a charismatic leader to build on it and kick the DINOs out by force.
The DNC is not that powerful. We outnumber them. Stop forgetting we outnumber them.
I call the old guard Geronocrats myself. They are old, tired, and very much uninspired. Far as I can tell, Bernie is the only ancient congress critter who is worthy of being called a leader.
Just look at the bill Hakeem Jeffries is trying to pass: to make raiding the US treasury illegal. WTF do we need a new laws for that?
I think this needs to be the strategy for sure. The progressives on the left need to start looking for truly progressive candidates to challenge each established Dem that is up for grabs in the 2026 primaries. Our real fight for democracy is no longer in the general election, it’s in the primaries. If we can’t change the Democratic Party then our only choices are a quick or a slow death
Now would be a great time to just put the democratic party out of its misery. Looking around the party, we can be comforted that at least it will go peacefully, in its sleep. Let’s at least see if we can get a fresh new party out of all this shit.
That would be the golden lining from this whole damn mess - political reforms that make the spirit of the Constitution have genuine power, and a rebalancing of the scales. People like Musk should be extinguished, never to return from that dark cesspit known as capitalism.
Slave mentality is an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Good thing I don’t have that.
If I did, I’d help protect the system when the molitovs start flying at it like a good house slave, I hope to assist when it isn’t just me, as that would just be suicide by cop.
This isn’t class war, this is 50 years of class occupation and counting. Peaceful positive change has been made impossible here on multiple levels by the owners. I put my hope in the other thing, as that’s the only rational place left to put it.
I hope so, but she’s going to have to get through at least another four years, probably more, of being ratted and feathered by Republicans, and somehow still look clean
I still contend that was the real problem with Hillary Clinton. Not that she was a poor candidate or hade some questionable decisions but that Repugnants spent years throwing shit at her so she looked like a mess. She was at least as good as a candidate as anyone else and many of the objections were manufactured
I honestly think the problem with Hillary had less to do with her as a person and more with the fact that it felt like she was being forced on folks. I am not as educated on all the shenanigans the DNC pulled to get her to be the nominee over Bernie, but I know that for a lot of folks it felt like the DNC just did what they obviously keep doing and gave the job to the person they deemed “deserved it” for their own internal bs reasons, while ignoring the constituents they claim to represent. Her nomination felt like a precursor to Harris being nominated without a primary. I think that’s also where a lot of disillusionment comes from on the left, the dem party just doesn’t seem to have any desire to even pretend that they care about their constituents
Hillary has been groomed since her early thirties to be the DNC’s precious darling. Living in mansions, waited on by servants.
AOC has been working real jobs trying to stay alive like most Americans have to.
The difference is that AOC is doing what politicians are supposed to do and establishing an identity for herself that would allow her to connect with voters. Clinton, on the other hand, presented herself as a blank slate and then whined when her enemies filled that slate in.
Clinton had a problem with her public image for years before 2016 and resolutely refused to do anything about it, instead just blaming others at every turn. That attitude shows that she would have been a shitty President. Better than Trump, of course (there are few people who wouldn’t be) but still shitty by any objective measure.
All true but I thought she would have been an effective president, due to focussing on organization, negotiations, influence, and that she was generally for the same platform as bill, so I’d generally agree with it (but with obvious caveats). She would have gotten things done, but in a democratic way instead of a fascist way, and those things would align with the generic Democrat platform
Don’t kid yourself. She’ll be the next Bernie.
I sure hope so, she’s got what it takes.
Unless the republicans field a multiple rapist convict again. Then it’s a tossup and a guaranteed L, if there’s a war somewhere the genocide people can get behind.
I hope that AOC has a security detail, a go bag and plan, and an ideal state to reside in. It is my expectation for Yarvin’s Cabel to try to capture or assasinate her at some point, since she is one of the few major lightning rods to be the president of a Free America. We will need great people to organize the defense of our people against the fascist agenda.
Bernie, AOC, others, stay safe and strong. 🖖
I’m not in the know. What is “Yarvin’s Cabel”?
That is the name that I have given to the authors of Project 2025. It is basically a playbook on how to take over America and to dismantle democracy. Curtis Yarvin is likely the leader of the bunch in a ideological sense. If Trump and Elon is disposed, it would be problematic if Yarvin and his friends didn’t get caught in the net. We have to make a point that America’s takeover was a planned group effort.
Project 2025 - Mandate for Leadership, PDF at the Internet Archive
Thank you, kind Internet stranger!
I think regardless of whether you are Republican or a Democrat, AOC is probably the closest to what a representative should be. Now whether you agree with her or not is a different discussion entirely, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. She’s just the only one that actually seems to give a shit about who she represents. Whereas both for Republicans and Democrats the vast majority of our “representation” are crotchety and corrupt old people that don’t give a shit anymore.
She’s just the only one that actually seems to give a shit about who she represents. Whereas both for Republicans and Democrats the vast majority of our “representation”
While I agree with almost everything you said, there’s really no good reason to make a statement like that and leave Bernie in with the “vast majority” group. 🙂
The man has walked the walk for a very long time. (Yes he’s too old to run for office now, but he deserves his due!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders#Political_activism
I saw a recent interview Bernie did with AOC and I learned that she got into politics specifically because she was inspired by Bernie during his presidential run in 2016. Thats something I didn’t realize and it explains a lot why we feel a lot of the same energy from them.
That’s a pretty interesting thing to know, thanks for mentioning it!
My bad. Wasn’t trying to throw Bernie aside. He’s fantastic as well.
All good, I wasn’t throwing shade on you just wanting to put in a word for the Bern. 🙂
I say run him anyways - he can be the token ‘old white dude’, with AOC as his vice. If he kicks the bucket or finds that he is breaking down, he can pass the baton. Otherwise, we get an extra four years of progress for each term he runs. If dementia is a concern, just write a public contract under what terms he is out of the running.
Something like “We know I am getting old. AOC has my right of attorney for determining my mental state.”
No argument from me, but I have a suspicion that being old is going to be a third rail politically during the next general election, assuming we get one and that it resembles being a free and valid election in any way.
Most Americans want progressive policies, they’re just convinced from Cold War propaganda that progressivism/socialism is always the opposite of good.
Bernie stopped running for president after the DNC told him to. He’s proven he doesn’t have what it takes to stand for his principles in a presidential run.
I loved Bernie, even donated to him twice, but he’s a coward and only does lip service these days.
Bernie was ratfucked out of the nomination, no doubt. What happened in West Virginia, for example, where he won all counties and they lied about it, was insane.
But… you cannot blame him or call him a coward for doing the right thing. At some point he saw the writing was on the wall. They were coronating Hillary no matter what. The next president would either be Hillary or Trump. Bernie put country before himself and stood aside. He didn’t make Trump’s path to victory any easier, and actively did his best to prevent a dangerous man from rising to power. None of that makes him a coward, it makes him a leader. A mensch.
Him running as a real leftest canidate after they tried to suppress him would have been the right thing, and him not choosing that path set us down the path we’re on today.
There were a lot of Bernie voters who refused to vote for Hillary after that. The DNC lost the progressive vote for their actions in 2016.
You mean him running as a third party candidate? That’s a guaranteed loss under the current electoral system. He would’ve siphoned votes from both sides, but more from Hillary and delivered Trump an electoral college and popular vote victory. The left would’ve been demonised even more than they already were and AOC/The Squad would never have been elected to congress in 2018. Under First Past the Post, the only option for a populist progressive candidate is to do what Trump did. Take the party over from inside out. Going third party is just a fantasy.
Yeah you’re right, he made the right choice bending the knee to the Neoliberals because then the Neoliberals wouldn’t have been able to beat Trump.
Because Hillary beat Trump after the Neoliberals suppressed the Progressives in 2016, right? I forgot, can you remind me who won?
There was 0% chance a third party candidate was winning in 2016, Bernie or not. There was about a 50% chance of Hillary winning.
Also, viewing this as ‘bending the knee’ is so juvenile. Bernie knows who he is and has advocated for progressive values for longer than most of us have been alive. He made a calculated decision to do what had the highest chance of defeating Trump. It’s not his fault that Hillary and the Democratic machine are completely inept
Bernie stopped running for president after the DNC told him to.
What do you mean by this?
I suppose they are referring to 2016.
I mean that’s objective, observable reality. It’s history.
The DNC pressured him to drop out for Hillary in 2015 after they didn’t like the attention he was getting. The emails came out and the head of the DNC resigned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/23/us/politics/dnc-emails-sanders-clinton.html
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
Everyone could clearly see the DNC rigged the primary against him, and then forced him to drop out when he started beating their neolib canidate despite running 7 other progressives against him in the primary. (This is how Elizabeth Warren became well known, the DNC pulled her into the primary to siphon votes from Bernie, the first progressive they ever let primary with them.)
His time has unfortunately passed to be president
Right, I’m aware of the general history and not debating any of it. What I meant was the democrat establishment back-stabbed his campaign both times, but it sounded like you were blaming him for it.
If it were me I would have posted the DNC’s emails on twitter (back when it was twitter) and used the momentum to take over the DNC and fuck up the oligarch controlled duopoly.
A progressive with balls would have done that. Instead they called him old and screamed about him getting Trump elected (he was elected anyway) and then Bernie said ok and dropped out.
I hear you, but Bernie was in what, his mid-70s, and had pretty much always played by the book as far as I know. Even though I was somewhat disappointed in him after having not only given money but also canvassed for him, several times, I didn’t really expect him to go scorched-earth.
