The big local story, which has gone national, is the victory of 28 year old political newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over ten term incumbent Joe Crowley in NY's 14 district. Her political ad was powerful, and if you watched it with the sound turned off, it could be the trailer for a TV drama about a young professional trying to make it in the city, because Ms Ocasio-Cortez looks like an actress-model:
You could set your watch to those cheekbones! I think the mainstream media is going to freak out about her because she is too gorgeous not to put on the TeeVee, and she is too intelligent to fall into their stupid traps, with even 'liberal' NPR trying to get her to badmouth Nancy Pelosi. One take on Ms Ocasio-Cortez' message discipline is that she grew up in the social media mindscape, so she knows that unconsidered utterances never go away.
I am also impressed by her unabashedly socialist platform: Medicare for all, the disbandment of the hopelessly corrupted ICE, and a real effort to mitigate climate change. She is as passionate as she is disciplined, advocating policies which would actually benefit those who suffer from genuine economic anxiety. In a year in which women will play a major, hopefully a transformative, role in politics, she is a pacesetter.
As if all weren't enough to make you swoon, she has an asteroid named after her. Not every rising star has a space rock.
I'm glad you said it.
ReplyDeleteIn all of the excitement over her win over an establishment Democrat who outspent her 19-1, I felt too guilty to actually come out and say, "Wow, she is gorgeous."
That's not to in any way minimize her message or her intelligence or anything else. It's just... yeah, bonus.
Yeah, I felt kinda sleazy, but she really is incredibly good-looking. I look forward to her troubling the dreams of authoritarians for decades to come.
ReplyDeleteUm, yeah, ok.
ReplyDeleteI get the universal health care, but how, exactly, can abolishing ICE and mitigating carbon pollution be described as 'socialist' policies?
I know it's just my personal hobbyhorse, but the way liberals throw around the term 'socialism' just makes them sound uneducated. As the oft-repeated line from 'The Princess Bride' goes, I do not believe that word means what you think it means...
I get the universal health care, but how, exactly, can abolishing ICE and mitigating carbon pollution be described as 'socialist' policies?
ReplyDeleteThe Overton Window has been pushed so far to the right that even the 'market based' cap-and-trade approach to carbon has been portrayed as Bolshevism. Hell, anyone to the right of Chuck Schumer believes that global warming is a Chinese hoax to undermine American industry. Me? I'm just taking the piss. Ms Ocasio-Cortez would be a perfectly middle-of-the-road politician in a functional society.
Gotta well actually you here.
ReplyDeleteActually, almost no one believes climate change is a hoax, or even a questionable hypothesis. Only in the US do conservatives even bother to pretend. And most American conservatives know climate change is real, but want to protect the economic well being of the fossil fuel industry, so they pretend to have doubts or worse. And from a social issues/class warfare standpoint, they find it beneficial to demonize 'environmentalists'.
There are some that are so steeped in old testament American baptist fundamentalist theology that they can't accept certain kinds of science, but they are the rare ones, and it's kind of amazing how rarely that kind of theology ends up running counter to movement conservative policy goals...