Yep. She gets my vote as a living, breathing person that seems healthy enough. I'm not excited to vote for her, and I'm really concerned about our chances with her, but she's not Trump and automatically gets my vote assuming she gets the nomination.
Wisdom is choosing when to pick a fight. AOC is intelligent, but not very wise.
She's very popular with the progressive crowd who want to hear their problems and solutions echoed by a prominent politician. But she's also tact-less. Stirring up shit that has zero chance of becoming reality.
And again, I think it can lead to healthy discussion of what things could be like. If we had a possible super majority and could really reform the government. If it were phrased as such, I wouldn't have any problem.
But in practice, I find her antics to be more screaming into the wind than being productive. And it has only served to weaponize the "leftists" against the party to the point we're losing votes and not gaining anything.
I wouldn't say I dislike her, but I don't like the AOC worship here.
Yes, she voices what we're all thinking. She elevates our voice.
The problem is that she's also unrealistic in expectations, and that can cause a rift. I wouldn't say her comments cause a rift in the party itself, but among voters.
For example, she was all in on the expanding the SCOTUS bandwagon. Functionally, it's untenable. Any politician should know that. There's some loophole that would allow you to do it with simple majorities in house and senate, but that loophole is sketchy and likely won't work out. And if it does, that opens Pandora box to completely railroad this country next time Reps get simple majorities in both houses. Which may be half a year away.
But it seems like a brilliant workaround on the surface. And people who bought into that pipe dream became extremely disruptive, causing fights amongst blue voters.
And this isn't the only time. She's a consistent voice of the Progressives. Which is fine. Idealist should have a voice. But I would prefer it if her and Bernie would also include pragmatic expectations with their ideas in a way that doesn't put their more moderate colleagues on blast for no reason.
To give it a real world hypothetical we can all probably relate to. I'm a programmer, so I'll put it in those terms, but this applies to pretty much any job one way or another.
Let's say you're maintaining a code base that has a lot of problems. Maintaining it is a nightmare. Ask an experienced engineer, I have identified a number of solutions of varying effort and effectiveness.
The best solutions would require giant re-writes and would require parallel effort from other teams to support our effort. Risk is large
The next best requires extensive refactoring of our teams code base, but can be done in isolation from other teams for the most part. Risk is still large because we're going to need to swap out major parts of our internal infrastructure, but no impact to other teams.
And then there's the shortest path. Fix problems as they come up, make small refactors as you can to help relieve some headaches. Let's you move fast and not be disruptive, but the underlying problems stay around. Smallest risk.
Now, having brought these to the table, management chooses the least risky option because they can't or won't commit to larger scale efforts because of other priorities.
Do I talk shit, be extremely negative, try to get other non-management colleagues to join my outcry for the "right" solution? I could. I have. But if I do, I'm putting my employment / influence at risk. And sometimes it's more appropriate to just keep the ideal solution on the backburner, do what's immediately effective, and bring the best solution to the table at a better time.
To me, AOC and Bernie are those coworkers that won't shut up about the "perfect" solution. And maybe even attack their colleagues for not supporting them in their pursuit of perfect when they're just trying to tread water and get the easier wins to the finish line.
You say you get the point, and then demonstrate that you missed it entirely.
The reason she's speaking out is because her constituents are exactly the kind of people that will lose the most of Trump wins. And she's calling out that the longer this uncertainty continues, the more it harms our chances. That the stakes are high, and (her) people will be hurt if the Dems fumble this again.
She's also seemingly making the case that changing nominees will hurt our chances more than keeping Biden. Primarily because there's no obvious choice behind Harris, who the old blood want to skip over, according to her.
You're missing the point, even though it's in bold letters and flashing.
She's saying that her constituents are among those that are severely threatened by a GOP win. "Failure is not an option" is a very simple way of expressing that. A loss may eventually mean literal concentration camps or some flavor of that (deportation, loss of basic rights, etc)
Ok. They could put police lights on a weiner mobile too. That would get a ton of community engagement. But for some reason I can't put my finger on, they have chosen a very expensive tiny dick toy instead.
I thought the polio vaccine wasn't fully effective. The idea is that with a wide enough coverage, it keeps the number of infected low and manageable.
If it were to find a large concentration of hosts, there's a danger of it getting to critical mass to where vaccinated people are also at risk due to greater exposure.
But maybe I have my horrible historically devastating viruses mixed up?
We can only hope. I'm more wary of the torch being passed on to him. Trump has a limited shelf life, but Vance is young.
And before the wave of "Trump doesn't share power", I know. I'm not talking about what Trump intends, I'm talking about all of Trumps powerful allies who want continued influence after Trump.
Trump will try to neuter Vance, for sure. But I have my doubts that he can pull it off.
And that's a whole lot of ignoring reality on your part.
Our government, for better AND for worse, was structured so that a president couldn't go rogue and do whatever they want. For most mundane things, they need a simple majority in both houses. For serious rewriting of fundamental rules (amendments), you need super majorities. And a SCOTUS to safeguard.
This is so that the next Nixon, the next Trump (who might just be Trump) can't single handedly upend this country and bend it to their wills. Like Putin did.
However, the GOP has corrupted all branches, all levels of the courts, including SCOTUS. This is why they get away with all the shit that they do, while the Dems seem impotent. Because they have spent generations undermining our checks and balances while the Dems have mostly played fair, albeit with a fair amount of corporate subservience.
You rage against a machine without understanding the parameters. The Dems are shackled by law. And the key to it all was the GOP owning the SCOTUS, thanks to all you conscientious objectors that let Trump gain power and heavily stack the courts. Because you think both parties are the fucking same.
Our government was built to be amended if our elected officials could agree on direction. It's our elected officials that are disappointing. And our voters that elect them.
And no, I'm not both sides-ing this. Corporate dems are certainly a problem, but no where near as bad as the entire GOP at this point. And I suspect Dems would be amenable to passing things like ranked choice voting if there was actually a chance at it happening.
As always, they are actually bound by the rules of our government. Checks and balances. They can't just do something, they need the numbers. They are stating their intent on what they'll do if voters give them the numbers.
Because it's entirely in voters hands now. There is no bipartisanship to be had. We need absolute majorities, even super majorities if we actually want to truly fix things like our blatantly corrupt SCOTUS.
I just don't see it. Harris doesn't even seem to be popular within the party, or by progressives.
It's very possible that she has been playing dead fish on purpose to let Biden have the spotlight, as is the role of VP. Maybe she can take the gloves off and rise to the challenge. Maybe.
But I think it's far more likely she serves as a bland, dry candidate that gets completely steamrolled by theatric behemoth that is the Right's propaganda entertainment machine. Who, by the way, will have ample ammo on her for being a last second replacement, AND easily reclaim the misogynistic and racist votes that they may have lost who weren't MAGA zealots.
Ok. If past accomplishments are no measure, then why choose Harris? She has no personality. She's not charismatic. She's a dead fish candidate, and has the extra hurdle of being Black and female, which sadly is still a hurdle to overcome.
And if not Harris, then who else has the name recognition at the national scale that could rally the party and undecideds with absolutely zero prior momentum in less than 4 months?
That's why I don't support changing course. Stay with Biden, he is our only chance this late in the race. Had he stepped aside from the beginning, we'd have a shot at any of several options had they had enough runway to lay the foundation needed for a fresher face to compete at the national level. But that didn't happen, so he's our best chance.
We have a perfect museum for Trump. It's themed around "Tolerance". He would be around his greatest heroes.