The media on both sides of the Atlantic is getting all giddy over a young Latina who will be the Democrat candidate for a New York congress seat. As the BBC reports:
A millennial candidate has shaken up the US Democratic Party by defeating the incumbent congressman for his seat.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated political veteran Joe Crowley, 56, on Tuesday night in their party’s congressional primary in New York City.
…
She led a progressive campaign, supporting universal healthcare, tuition-free college and criminal justice reform.
Following Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s win, Merriam-Webster tweeted that socialism emerged as their top search item.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, and I think we’re going to see more of this. As the ZMan pointed out, if you import a lot of people from Latin American cultures pretty soon you’re going to get outbreaks of Latin American politics. Ms Ocasio-Cortez sounds in many ways like Hugo Chavez, promising lots of free stuff while making a big deal about her humble origins:
One of the many new female faces joining US politics this year, Ms Ocasio-Cortez is a Bronx-born Latina, a community organiser and educator from a working-class background.
A community organiser, eh? Where have I heard that before?
Now Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist politics might be daft, but Americans are going to have to take her seriously anyway. A lesson the British political classes ought to have learned from Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpectedly good showing in the last general election is that waving your hand dismissively and saying “Ha, socialism doesn’t work!” doesn’t work any more. People think by pointing to the failures of the Soviet Union they can undermine a candidate’s socialist policies, but you might as well point to the Ming Dynasty for all the relevance that has to a Millenial. To counter someone like Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are going to have to be smarter than Theresa May was when she ran against Corbyn. That means acknowledging that, while her solutions might be insane, she is probably highlighting genuine concerns among her supporters. One of the few things Corbyn’s detractors are willing to admit is his fans do have genuine grievances, not least a housing market which has been utterly rigged to benefit those older than them.
Republicans and sane Democrats (if there are any left) are going to have to come up with policies to address certain problems ordinary people have, especially feelings of alienation and isolation from an elite ruling class. This stuff is the bread-and-butter of populists and basing a campaign around it is a good way to get elected. In this regard, Ms Ocasio-Cortez is not too different from Trump who tapped into such resentment and suddenly found himself in the White House. The worst thing Republicans can do is ignore where her supporters are coming from and scoff airily about socialism as a concept. Given most American politicians are multi-millionaires and Washington D.C. functions like an imperial capital, hoovering up every loose dollar, redistributing billions along political lines, and enriching the ruling classes in the process, many young Americans might be forgiven for thinking socialism is what they have already so a little more can’t hurt. They’re wrong of course, but a proper case needs to be made as to why. Unfortunately, the American right are as firmly entrenched in the status quo as the left, and presenting alternatives, e.g. a smaller federal government and increased localism, would require a level of introspection and reform they’ve been unwilling to undergo in generations. This is a major reason why the likes of Ms Ocasio-Cortez can find a willing audience.
However, there’s another side to Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign:
She says she decided it was time her New York City district was represented by a young progressive woman of colour after watching the election of Donald Trump as president.
She described her congressional district in an interview with US news outlet Mic during her campaign. “Our median income is around $47,000 a year, we’re about 70% people of colour,” she said. “We’ve had the same representation for a generation.”
Embracing identity politics seems to be the direction in which the left is heading in the US: if you’re black, you vote for a black person. If you’re Latin American, you vote for a Latin American. This is actually how it works in most of the world, i.e. you vote for the person with whom you share an ethnicity. Europe and the US are notable exceptions, but that is rapidly changing. If Ms Ocasio-Cortez believes Latin Americans in the Bronx should vote for her because she’s Latina and this view becomes widespread, eventually white people are going to vote for white candidates. In a generation, a candidate being an old white man might be his greatest asset rather than the liability it is now.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez has burst onto the political scene waving the dual flags of socialism and identity politics. I suspect it will be a matter of time before the Democrats are completely consumed by both, and the America right had better be ready to deal with it.
’To counter someone like Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are going to have to be smarter than Theresa May was when she ran against Corbyn.’
Careful you don’t set too high a bar there! ????
Careful you don’t set too high a bar there!
Lol. I’m talking about politicians here, remember!
Immigrant groups hate each other more than they hate us, so we’ll probably be OK for a while.
BTW, did you see the BBC internal survey showing 417 transgender employees? Shocking! Until you discount for a) taking the piss and b) putting down a marker so you can’t be sacked.
It’s only an extension of expecting all women to vote for Hillary because vagina.
Her age and inexperience will likely prove fatal to her pretensions.
In an age where you have to be very careful what you say, having radical views can prove very difficult. She only has to “show solidarity” badly a couple of times.
Is she for or against the embargo of Cuba? For will place her on the conservative side, but against will place her against a very vocal Hispanic community.
She has to be “pro-Life” as a D. Not good with conservative Hispanics.
A careful opponent should be able to chip away at her “natural” support.
In the multicultural society, one group does not accept decisions made by other group. Like the police is for POC nothing more than hostile tribe warriors.
Your greatest asset may be old fat white male but after winning, this white male sit`s in office without any real power like Saruman on he`s tower.
Did you know that Mikhail Gorbachev actually made referendum about preserving USSR and it passed with Russian votes ? The problem was that Estonians Latvians Lithuanians and so on did not gave a flying fuck to this democratic decision and teared USSR down.
That is why tyranny, secession and civil war are unavoidable and elections are irrelevant. Also Supreme Court is irrelevant because average diverse person can not distinguish between Supreme Court and KKK.
White liberals btw too. They don`t accept Brexit and working to derail it by any means from new poll to horrific deal worse than EU membership. Nobody accept hostile tribe will.
It was inevitable, in a world of divisional politics, that identity would be become everything. What I expect is that if blacks want to increasingly only vote for dark-skinned candidates, and muslims make it clear that they only will deal with and vote for islamists, etc, then we will return to a time when there are very clear-cut boundaries between ethnic groups. We will, in short, have segregation again (though I expect largely imposed by non-whites this time) and the relatively short-lived ideal of ‘all for one and one for all’ will disappear.
Moreover, in all fairness and being fully aware of my regrettable preferences here, I could not vote for say an RoP candidate even if they promised the earth. Whatever any politician says and what they do are always two wildly different things.
There is this …
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2018/06/low-turnout.html
Long story short, out of 27,000 votes cast, she got 16,000. Yay for her. But, there are 236,000 registered Democrats in the electoral area she won.
Hardly a resounding vote of confidence, methinks …
One of my first loves was a Puerto Rican girl named Sandy Vasquez that I met in Greenwich Village, NY, she was hot as and a great dancer and looked like the bird from the Bacardi advert, her mother in uptown NY thought I was nice as well. My best mate started dating her cousin Shirley and their relationship lasted a lot longer than mine did. One of the reasons that our relationship ended was that she tried to hit on one of my mates at the time, who was gay, whilst I was on holiday in California.
Fast forward a few years later when Shirley and my mate came to visit me in London and he caught me casually kissing her after he went out to get some KFC and came back a bit too early, so what, we were young and it was kind of okay. A few nights later she came to visit me at a restaurant bar I was working at in St Martins Lane, had a drink and left, only to return after closing time when it was not cool to be there, to say that my mate had followed her and suspected that we were having an affair (not true) and she feared for her safety and couldn’t return to my mates hotel and I in turn gave her my key to my apartment and said that we will sort it out when I got home.
Got home later on, noticed that my apartment door was unlocked, no one home and I crashed out. My mate woke me up in the morning when he came round to advise me that he had found Shirley in my apartment, confronted her and she had went back to him and his hotel and overdosed and was on death doors in hospital. She survived.
The moral of the story is that PR’s are fucking hot, but not worth the drama.
Sandy is now fairly senior in the NYPD.
“eventually white people are going to vote for white candidates”
White people have always voted for white candidates. The new trend will be to vote for white candidates explicitly because they are white.
This is also inevitable due to the slow march of white people towards minority status. As they become a minority, they will start acting like a minority, which means voting for one of your own.
Mass immigration, multiculturalism etc. were seen as a way to bury white racial consciousness forever. The irony is they may wind up resurrecting it in a particularly virulent form – that of the cornered beast.
“Ms Ocasio-Cortez is a Bronx-born Latina, a community organiser and educator from a working-class background.”
Just FYI but, while she was born in the Bronx, it appears working-class is not her background as her parents moved shortly after her birth to one of the richest U.S. counties:
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/300794/
Cheers
Already demolishing her street cred…Jenny from the block she is not! A couple of years down the line she will be as comfy and rich as comrade Bernie.
Socialism is best dealt with by rifle fire. But I doubt there are any Americans left who are willing to give up their lives on principle should it come to that.
@ Mr Black.
Lenin made he`s “revolution” with few hundred men. And he succeeded because capitalism made people life so miserable that nobody lifted a finger to defend it.
We laughing that capitalism is road to communism. System based on worst human character traits like greed, unfortunately always fails. Free market is basically prison fight. Worst guys win, not best guys.
Nobody gonna fight for poverty, unemployment and opioid epidemics. People should have reason to fight, at least minimum wage or something.
A careful opponent should be able to chip away at her “natural” support.
Exactly, any competent politician should be able to calmly and politely demolish her policies at every opportunity. The problem is I’m not sure the right has any competent politicians.
Just FYI but, while she was born in the Bronx, it appears working-class is not her background as her parents moved shortly after her birth to one of the richest U.S. counties:
Yes, I saw that, but IMO this is isn’t a good basis on which to attack her. We know she’s not from the ghetto because people from the ghetto don’t end up where she is, but none of her supporters care and nobody is going to change their mind about her because she embellished her street-cred a bit like all politicians do. Much better to tackle her on her policies, using a combination of mature questioning and (by others) mockery and derision. Outrage and listing “facts about socialism” won’t cut it.
A couple of years down the line she will be as comfy and rich as comrade Bernie.
Of course, that’s the main appeal of a career in politics.
Juri–Cockrot.
Socialismo–the creed whose arse you seemingly love to kiss– has murdered 150 million human beings–so far. And ruined the lives of hundreds of millions more even as it continues to worsen life in socialist shitholes such as Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
You are likely some junior wanker living off your Mam and Dad while shite-talking sanctimonious leftist platitudes on the internet.
As for “opioid epidemics” try North Korea where pain control is mostly non-existent for ordinary folk –unless they can afford the high prices “free” socialist health care charges then for even a paracetamol.
@ Mr Ecks
Thank you for your compliment.
I consider personal issues irrelevant, but I am Eastern European 43 years old fucking white male and first 16 years in lived in the USSR. Later served 10 years in the army and then joined private military when the Iraqi mess broke loose.
And I am not sitting home with my Mom but waiting flight to Bahrein . There is one ship, which need armed escort via Aden Gulf to Suez because of Somali pirates and Houthi rebels and Islamic State operating down there and other funny folk.
But unfortunately there are people living with parents and they are British Army Vets because of greedy capitalist British Private Military Company changed to chap labor and replaced their workers with Eastern Europeans.
And sooner or later our fellow British Vets life will get so miserable that they will accept Soros money. Lenin got his Red Army like this and Soros will get too.
When they told us in the USSR about “rotting capitalism” , they
thought exactly that. Capitalist greed makes people`s life miserable and then communists have their chance.
That is why communists hated old school social democrats. Until you keep capitalist greed at bay, communists have no chance.
Well, rant over. I fly out now for a 2 weeks. You may like the newest Zman article There Will Be Blood.
Yes, there will and only because your beloved Reagan and Thatcher let capitalism loose, jobs are gone and country is a mess full of hostile foreigners and desperate people ready for everything. Have a nice communist revolution.
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=14262
Do not feed the Troll.
He’s literally a mercenary complaining about free markets and how people will do evil things for money! Irony appears not to be his strong suit.
Even assuming any of that was true–here is a fool who knew first hand the evil of socialism but thinks it better than “greed”. Millions fucking murdered and “greed” is what matters? And why should you give a flying fuck about UK service men–who are employed and pissed on by the British State BTW not the free market–unlike you merc.
Glad that Thatcher and Reagan helped finish the soviet union tho’. A shame that most of the murdering socialist scum there escaped Nuremberg-style trials. All socialist murderers should get an equal helping of retribution.