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.

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.
 
The same thing happened with Cory Booker about a decade ago. Democrats love hyping “new” talent but they quickly get saddled with baggage. Obama was an exception because he ran two years after being elected. AOC has until 2024 at a minimum, plenty of time to fuck up and do all kinds of un-woke things.
 
I hate to agree with anyhing AOC says or even contextualize it, but technically there are instances where the government is basically giving money to billionaires.

The easiest example is Jeff Bezos (CEO/Owner of Amazon.com) who makes $27,000,000 a day.

However, a huge number of his employees (warehouse workers, order pickers, forktruck drivers, call center people) that number in the tens of thousands are paid so little in urban areas that they qualify and use welfare/SNAP/government assistance in those areas. The money that Bezos saves in not paying his employees is made up by the government and he personally keeps the difference, so in essence you are giving money indirectly to Jeff Bezos (if you live in Seattle or an area with a large Amazon fuffilment center).

This is on top of his company getting huge tax breaks/stipends/write offs for opening large job centers in specific areas (for example, Amazon will recieve $1,500,000,000 in incentives from the state of NY for their "second headquarters" being located there, plus other incentives and a fair amount of those NY workers will be on SNAP/welfare/whatever as a very small portion of the expected 50,000 jobs will be high level executives AND they're getting another $500,000,000 from Virginia as well).

Corporate welfare really does need to end but it's unlikely as some of this money makes it way back to the politicians and a common sense person would realize that if you taxed Jeff Bezos at 70% (over 10mil, which he would make in 10 hours on Jan 1st) instead of whatever bracket he is at (30%?) that Jeff Bezos would simply move to a place that doesn't tax him as hard (in reality or on paper), which means America is getting 0% of a higher number instead of 30% of a lower number. It also means that it's less likely he would create jobs here when Amazon is international and where the corporate headquarters is located is largely immaterial for them.

But it is a real problem, her solution is just insane.
>Implying that's what she meant.
 
WoW she got named to the House Oversight Committee as well today.

A 1st term'er who got less then 80K votes in a 1 million pop district is now on the major committee of the house.
Well, looks like I was wildly optimistic in my assessment of what establishment Democrats would do. They're myopic enough to actually be grooming her for leadership roles and for the limelight to be on her. Why can they not do a single fucking thing right? They should be shoving her in worthless subcommittees ostensibly under the guise of 'getting her more experience,' while still paying lip service to her being the next big thing for the party. This is fucking basic Beltway 101 tier shit, yet somehow the Democrats keep consistently finding new and exciting ways to completely cock up shit that should be common goddamn sense for people that have been on The Hill that long.
 
Huh... so they are really putting her on the fast track for big things. I would have thought the Democrat establishment try to keep her out of trouble for a term or two until she can learn the ropes and how Congressional politicking really works, but I guess they are deciding her type is the way of the future.

She's an effective tool to get Dems to show up at the polls in 2020. Make no mistake, and I say this as a person who votes pretty much 80% - 90% Dem, the establishment will leave her on the altar of sacrifice as soon as she is no longer useful to them. Hilary, Pelosi, et al, would bury her ass politically if it meant even a chance at getting one of their establishment candidates elected.
 
She's an effective tool to get Dems to show up at the polls in 2020. Make no mistake, and I say this as a person who votes pretty much 80% - 90% Dem, the establishment will leave her on the altar of sacrifice as soon as she is no longer useful to them. Hilary, Pelosi, et al, would bury her ass politically if it meant even a chance at getting one of their establishment candidates elected.

I'm not sure where that comes from - she got 17,000 votes in a district with 700,000 people in it, barely beating the incumbent who didn't really think that he had to campaign all that hard in his primary - in a district where half of the people are also Hispanic and in a district that is one of the most Democrat favored of all congressional districts.

She isn't driving massive votes, she essentially stole a race from a guy who maybe should have campaigned or taken her a bit more seriously and didn't do it by all that much.
 
I'm not sure where that comes from - she got 17,000 votes in a district with 700,000 people in it, barely beating the incumbent who didn't really think that he had to campaign all that hard in his primary - in a district where half of the people are also Hispanic and in a district that is one of the most Democrat favored of all congressional districts.

She isn't driving massive votes, she essentially stole a race from a guy who maybe should have campaigned or taken her a bit more seriously and didn't do it by all that much.

She is massively popular on social media. Massively.
 
Huh... so they are really putting her on the fast track for big things. I would have thought the Democrat establishment try to keep her out of trouble for a term or two until she can learn the ropes and how Congressional politicking really works, but I guess they are deciding her type is the way of the future.

Oh never fear. Pelosi will stick a knife in the little witch in short order. She hasn't been introduced to the realities of her low status yet.
 
She is massively popular on social media. Massively.
You realize that given the demographics of most social media platforms, being popular on social media is not in and of itself an indicator of potential electoral success, right?
 
Sure. But it means she's reaching people.

It will last until they realize she’s reaching inside their pockets. Many of her internet supporters are kids and privileged college lefties who haven’t done a day’s worth of work in their lives. They don’t yet know what if feels like to bust your ass for a year, only to see half your money go away to pay for Shaniqua’s kids.

There’s a good reason people shift right with age and experience. There are only so many times you can watch the fruit of your hard labor be pillaged and squandered.
 
So was Uganadan Knuckles.

And Hillary Clinton.

However, there is a succinct difference (for AOC and Clinton both) between people's effort in hitting "like/retweet/whatever" on social media for them vs how many people registered and voted for them in an election.

Donald Trump should have been a real harsh lesson for Democrats in that "retweets don't count as electoral votes" and if not just Donald Trump all of the special elections and expensive elections they lost (Beto O'Rorke comes to mind).

I think it's a bad strategy and I think she's a bad candidate and if nothing else highlights how shallow the Democrat candidate pool really is.
 
The problem isn’t that the pool is shallow, it’s just they can’t be seen backing another white guy. There’s several presidential Democrats but are white with a penis. So now it’s a bunch of c listers like Kamala Harris who should beat Trump but likely won’t because they have nothing interesting to say.

I'm willing to learn a bit - who would you say would be a good candidate from the Democrat pool who happens to be a white male? Ideally someone younger.

Please also don't say "Bernie Sanders" or "Joe Biden", I'm looking for a deeper cut than that.

EDIT - I'm being genuine, if there are good Democrat candidates I'd like to know about them.
 
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I think having a wordfilter so Democrat Party to NPC Party until they stop being a bunch of npcs would make things more accurate
 
That's whats so fascinating about her: she does point out real issues here and there, that's not the problem. The problem is that she's so hopelessly batshit insane/unbelievably stupid that any "solution" she pitches would be WORSE than the original problem.
Like that time she conflated a benign but annoying skin infection with fucking hookworm.
 
[idiotic stupidity that comes from the mind of a 13 year old.
The reason employees get paid so little is because... their labor is worth so little. If stooges working for Amazon or Walmart could make more money for similar work at other companies, then they would do it. But they cannot because they are uneducated, unskilled, and entitled. People blame corporations like Amazon, Walmart, and McDonald's while not realizing that Moe Hammad's Halal Deli, Beaner Pedro's Taqueria, and every other small business is offering them no more money

Worse still, you dumb goon, companies like Amazon have increased consumption, which is exactly what giving poor idiots more money would do (which is hell on environment, but give poor people more money because environment does not matter when you are talking about "justice"), You cannot have it both ways.
 
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