US "The Squad" Megathread - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Talib Derangement Syndrome

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I honestly only know about American politics from what I read on the Internet but since we all love shitting on leftists I figured we'd get a kick out of this. Also it's trending on Twitter so you know it's important.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...irect=on&noredirect=on&utm_term=.960552c9ba53

NEW YORK — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old political novice running on a low budget and an unabashedly liberal platform, upset longtime U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley on Tuesday in the Democratic congressional primary in New York.

The surprise victory by the community organizer in a district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens came after an energetic, grassroots campaign that mustered more than enough support in a low-turnout race that many had expected to be an easy win for Crowley, a member of the Democratic House leadership.

“The community is ready for a movement of economic and social justice. That is what we tried to deliver,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who has never held elected office and whose candidacy attracted only modest media attention.

She told The Associated Press after her victory that she didn’t have enough money to do polling in the race, but felt in her gut that her message had a chance to connect.

“I live in this community. I organized in this community. I felt the absence of the incumbent. I knew he didn’t have a strong presence,” she said.

Crowley has been in Congress since 1999 and hadn’t faced an opponent in a primary election since 2004, when Ocasio-Cortez was just a teenager. He was considered a candidate to become the next House speaker if Democrats win the majority.

“It’s not about me,” Crowley, 56, told his supporters at a campaign party following his loss. “It’s about America. I want nothing but the best for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I want her to be victorious.”

He later played guitar with a band at the election night gathering, and dedicated the first song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” to Ocasio-Cortez.

Crowley represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, where he is also the leader of the Queens Democratic party.

Ocasio-Cortez was outspent by an 18-1 margin during her race but won the endorsement of some influential groups on the party’s far left, including MoveOn, as well as the actress Cynthia Nixon, who is running for governor. She defeated Crowley by 15 percentage points.

Born in the Bronx to a mother from Puerto Rico and a father who died in 2008, Ocasio-Cortez said she decided to challenge Crowley to push a more progressive stance on economic and other issues.

She attended Boston University, where she earned degrees in economics and international relations, and also spent time working in the office of the late U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy.

After graduating, she returned to the Bronx where she became a community organizer. In the 2016 presidential campaign she worked for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Among her issues is expanding the Medicare program to people of all ages and abolishing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. She recently went to Tornillo, Texas, to protest against policies that have separated parents from their children at the southern U.S. border.

Ocasio-Cortez gained some internet attention for a campaign video called “The Courage to Change,” a two-minute spot for which she wrote the script and featured footage from her own home.

Crowley is chair of the House Democratic Caucus, the fourth-highest ranking position in Democratic leadership in that chamber of Congress.

His loss drew the attention of President Donald Trump.

“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!” he tweeted.

The Republican candidate for the office, Anthony Pappas, is running unopposed and had no primary. Pappas teaches economics at St. John’s University.
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She was a Bernie campaigner, is supported by BLM, and wants to abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Also this was in a solid-blue Congressional District so you know she's a shoo-in for next Congress.

But hey, we did get to see Trump laugh at Crowley on Twitter.
 
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mindlessobserver said:
Replacing their platform with racial and gender communism is not a good thing though. I would be all for the Democrats to be an actual Democratic Socialist party that have been a more European thing, but when they combine it with these weird identity politics I cannot really get on board. Particular since my particular race and gender is slated for the gulag according to them.
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Bro she's talking about affordable rent and draining the swamp, not screeching tumblr shit. This is what democrats should have been campaigning on instead of alienating everyone but blue-haired coastal elites by sucking wall street cocks and letting Hillary Clinton choke the life out of them.

 
I think there's unlikely to be a big blue wave, I can't see it, especially with things going so well for the Republicans, and the Reps now wheeling out attack ads that just ping back the words of notable Democrat leaning people, or nutjobs like Senator Waters.

Even in a midterm, shit plays nationally and much like the UK Council Elections they're seen as a bell weather about how well a sitting President is actually doing.
 
mindlessobserver said:
Replacing their platform with racial and gender communism is not a good thing though. I would be all for the Democrats to be an actual Democratic Socialist party that have been a more European thing, but when they combine it with these weird identity politics I cannot really get on board. Particular since my particular race and gender is slated for the gulag according to them.
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I just want both parties to be made up of civilized humans again, instead of frothing lunatics. We need some big event to give all of the spoiled children that are all of the generations from the boomers on a big spanking. The Cold War ended and everyone just became a shrieking harpy. You can't even cross party lines voting all that much, because when you are choosing between equally shitty candidates you might as well stick with the one who is on a platform you agree with marginally more.

We need a real enemy again, not just a comedy one.
 
All politics is local anyway. I am not enamored by the Democrats this year but my current rep is a Democrat and I still plan to vote for him again. But that is not really at issue. The Democrats need to convince people to unseat Republican incumbents this election cycle. Merely reelecting their existing ballot card won't cut the mustard. The only way to do that is to convince the people who voted Republican in 2016 to change their vote in 2018 or at the very least not show up to the polls.

I have seen very little effort expended by the DNC towards doing the necessary voter outreach. They are just assuming this vote will fall into their lap in november. It's the same unforced error that resulted in the Trump win.
 
mindlessobserver said:
... The Democrats need to convince people to unseat Republican incumbents this election cycle. Merely reelecting their existing ballot card won't cut the mustard. The only way to do that is to convince the people who voted Republican in 2016 to change their vote in 2018 or at the very least not show up to the polls.

I have seen very little effort expended by the DNC towards doing the necessary voter outreach. ...
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What? What are you talking about? I get lots of outreach from the DNC all the time. They say stuff like "You're a nazi if you support trump" and "You're a nazi if you don't disown trump supporters". Oh and "You're a rapist, sexist, and racist because you're a white man, but we'll overlook your disability if you renounce your own identity."

I mean... how do you not get swayed by that kind of sweet talk?
 
Corbin Dallas Multipass said:
What? What are you talking about? I get lots of outreach from the DNC all the time. They say stuff like "You're a nazi if you support trump" and "You're a nazi if you don't disown trump supporters". Oh and "You're a rapist, sexist, and racist because you're a white man, but we'll overlook your disability if you renounce your own identity."

I mean... how do you not get swayed by that kind of sweet talk?
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The response to this is your words reek of white fragility.
 
There will be no Blue Wave. That was never in the cards. The network prognosticators are spouting “political fact” that has no basis in actual reality. The infamous “the Presidents Party always loses seats in the off year!”... yeah, except when it doesn’t. The rules assume normal historic patterns, which don’t really apply following political black swan events. By any measure it looks like House and Senate will remain very very stable. My gut call is Dem’s gain 6 House seats, lose 2 Senate seats. With an outside chance of 10 and 5.

This one will be fascinating. They may have just handed a deep blue seat to the GOP, depending on how much name recognition the GOP candidate has. Yeah the district is typically solid blue. But it’s not a radical progressive blue. The Queens portion is a heavily elderly heavily Jewish/Catholic area. They may be classically Dem. But they won’t react well to a Socialist Anti Semite. The first thing this chick did on winning was to be seen partying with a anti black anti Semite racist. Not generally a good look for Queens. It may help in the Bronx, but Queens is where the voters will show up in November.
 
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RodgerDodger said:
There will be no Blue Wave. That was never in the cards. The network prognosticators are spouting “political fact” that has no basis in actual reality. The infamous “the Presidents Party always loses seats in the off year!”... yeah, except when it doesn’t. The rules assume normal historic patterns, which don’t really apply following political black swan events. By any measure it looks like House and Senate will remain very very stable. My gut call is Dem’s gain 6 House seats, lose 2 Senate seats. With an outside chance of 10 and 5.

This one will be fascinating. They may have just handed a deep blue seat to the GOP, depending on how much name recognition the GOP candidate has. Yeah the district is typically solid blue. But it’s not a radical progressive blue. The Queens portion is a heavily elderly heavily Jewish/Catholic area. They may be classically Dem. But they won’t react well to a Socialist Anti Semite. The first thing this chick did on winning was to be seen partying with a anti black anti Semite racist. Not generally a good look for Queens. It may help in the Bronx, but Queens is where the voters will show up in November.
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Newt Gingrich provided a road map for a wave with the Contract With America. It kind of got off the rails, but the important stuff (first 100 days list) pretty much fell into place and it was good stuff in terms of ethics (i.e. Congress isn't exempt from Social Security). You just mimic that. You get good reforms that way by front loading them, people can understand what you're going to do. Waves based on tantrums never work.

If they hadn't reeeeeed against the contract so hard at the time a blue (a real one, courting working class people like the Ds used to try and represent) version would go over massively right now if it was sane and sober.
 
Fagnasty said:
This is a good thing. The democrats need to shed their neolib corporatism to have any chance of competing against the republicans. "The exact same thing as them but with empty progressive platitudes" is a garbage platform.
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Socialism is fucking retarded but you're unironically correct. Differentiation is something the Democrats sorely lack. "Republicans, but with more gibs and immigrants" is not a sustainable platform.
 
xxXDxx said:
Socialism is fucking exceptional but you're unironically correct. Differentiation is something the Democrats sorely lack. "Republicans, but with more gibs and immigrants" is not a sustainable platform.
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As a Republican I resent that comparison. We offer just as many gibs as any other party these days. The dems just toss gibs to slightly different people.
 
The Dems are a neoliberal paid-to-lose party with zero ideas other than being "not Republicans" and howling about idpol shit no one cares about. They deserve to die out and be replaced with something far more effective. Hinestly, if a lot of the DemSoc crowd ditched the histrionic SJW shit and focused on direct, easy to understand universal programs like single-payer, jobs programs to put undereployed people back to work, and investment in new infrastructure/energy production they would win like crazy.

A huge amount of blue collar Republicans are actually to the left of their party on economics, and the average Democrat is to the left of the DNC on economics and to the right of them on social issues. Literally everyone wants to put the corporate neolibs of both parties in a noose.

Edit: apparently, she included a universal jobs program as part of her campaign, which if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, means that able-bodied dindus, troons, and NEETs would now have no excuse for collecting gibs for sitting on their ass, or leaching off family/GoFundMe. Unemployed people drain the economy even without welfare gibs, at least now we can make them dig ditches or file paperwork to collect their checks.
 
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The blue wave is coming, you'd have to be deliberately burying your head in the sand to not see it at this point. We'll just have to see how much of a wave it ends up being. And this lady too will be elected, no matter how out of step with mainstream politics she is, due to the political makeup of her district. Its more Democratic than Alabama is Republican, and they very nearly voted in a known child molester.

Thats all just part and parcel of the way America's districts are made up. Since cities are almost always overwhelmingly Democratic, their congressional districts are too, while Republican districts will almost always be 30 to 40 percent Democratic. Most of the country being under Republican gerrymanders only exacerbates that fact. And beyond that, since so many of those districts are gerrymandered, when things get bad enough for Republicans in that particular state their districts will all start becoming vulnerable at once, while Democrats would always have a core base of surviving urban seats that would vote for Satan if he had a D next to his name.
 
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