The ‘AOC Left’ Has Achieved Plenty
The ‘AOC Left’ Has Achieved Plenty
Im skeptical a fair bit of time about those congressional 'lefties' but this is true, for the most part they're doing what they can. What I do like most about them is when they show up outside of a legislative capacity, like showing up at strikes or going to meet unions. I think many people discount how important that boots on the ground work is. Imagine being a franchise owner of something trying to snuff out union efforts knowing you're gonna have US Lawmakers who agree with your workers physically there with the workers. You better come correctly in that situation.
Just want to point out that they only showed up in support of the current labor movement after immense pressure was put on them after failing to support the historic Amazon JFK8 union drive. AOC and politicians like her still have to pushed, sometimes hard, to do the right thing.
Oh I agree with you and am biting my tongue to not talk about how disappointed people like them made me when it came to the railroad unions and strike in this thread simply because at the end of the day through mistake or other means nymag got it right that they do indeed do thing that have an impact.
Good. I hope they achieve far more in the future, it would be a net benefit for everyone, even those who dislike them and their politics
The greatest threat to conservatives is other conservatives. Unfortunately, they’re just too stupid to understand why.
Their own party treats them with more disdain than their supposed "opposition party."
AOC and the other actual left-wing minority making waves in a sea of right-wing neoliberals and righter-wing fascists is amazing. They can't win, the game is fully rigged and the institutions are fully captured by monied interests with political bribery legalized, but it's like watching Cap get up to face Thanos' army alone, it's inspiring.
Too bad no one, including most Americans, are on their left.
Because were too far into the sunk cost fallacy to reject
"free market"rigged crony capitalism."We can't re-examine our core economic beliefs! We already gave the owners all the money, and they promised for half a century to whip their dicks out and urinate golden showers of prosperity on all of us!... any day now..."
The article makes an argument exactly against this mentality.
Isn't that just the progressive left? As far as I know we don't worship figureheads like the fascist right with their orange demigod.
America’s “left” is pretty middle of the road if you compare the US to other first world nations.
Things like free affordable / free university education, universal healthcare, consumer protection, and decent unemployment insurance are not controversial elsewhere. But in the US the right wing claims these boring ass ideas, that the rest of the modern world has embraced, are radical.
If left wing idea were hot sauces, the GOP would think mayo was the Last Dab on Hot Ones.
You can still respect and admire a figurehead without worshipping them. The difference is whether you bend definitions and rules to make exceptions of them when they deviate from expectations.
I mean, the article linked is an AOC apologist quite literally bending “definitions and rules to make exceptions” for her after another columnist said she was "just a regular old Democrat now."
Branding the progressive left the “AOC Left” is also problematic and indicative of some hero worship on the author’s part.
Nope, worship people claiming being other sex and making people to call them by a gender they are not. :)
You seem to be confused.
She's the Obama of millennials, and will probably achieve the same political success. (Once the boomers preventing her ascension all die off.)
👍
It’s not the generation, it’s capitalism.
Just as subservience breeds subjugation, so choosing between differing forms of exploitation can only result in continued exploitation. Being asked to choose between capitalism and fascism does not change the direction we are travelling in, it only marginally changes the route we are taking to get there.
This article said basically nothing about what the “AOC left” has actually accomplished. It’s just a pro-Dem puff piece. Also, the author clearly doesn’t understand who leftists are.
How far did you get in this article?
The article sites examples such as the left dragging the party into supporting:
- a much bigger social safety net during the pandemic
- debt forgiveness
- investing a shitload in transitioning to green tech
I could go on. Read the article.
We’re not transitioning to green tech, we’re doing what was previously known as the “all of the above” plan, which is among the worst possible options. We’re expanding renewables, but we’re also in the midst of one of the largest expansions of Oil and Gas development, and specifically pipelines and drilling on public lands, in the history of the country, if not the largest overall.
We could build a hundred trillion dollars worth of renewable energy, but it literally does nothing but put MORE carbon into the atmosphere via production unless we couple it with drawing down fossil fuel usage.
I read the article twice, chief.
“The left has won a lot more than “nothing” from engaging with the Democratic Party.”
“The left” in this instance is talking about actual leftists, and I would love anyone to point to me where the Democrats have done ANYTHING that LEFTISTS want. What have they done that fundamentally changes anything? What have they done that hasn’t been and won’t be stricken down by the courts? What have they done for labor organization?
Fuck the democrats.
Jesus I couldn't even finish the article. It was a long winded "but the Democrats are good actually!" Sheepdog bullshit piece.
This article is about progressives changing the Democratic parties objectives/policies and does give examples.
Between 2009 and 2020, many left-wing Democrats agitated for their party to embrace a “full employment” macroeconomic policy. AOC was among them. Then, when the COVID crisis hit, Democrats did as these progressives advised.
...
In 2020, congressional Democrats insisted on increasing unemployment benefits to a level that left many laid-off workers with more income than they’d previously earned at their jobs. Under Biden, meanwhile, Democrats enacted a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill on a party-line vote. The party’s decision to pursue stimulus on this scale — after Congress had already appropriated trillions of dollars in relief spending — was explicitly motivated by the left’s critique of Obama. As New York Times reported in 2021:
...
Since Occupy Wall Street, the American left has made student debt forgiveness one of its core policy demands. The Biden administration has taken extraordinary measures to answer that call. The president has successfully canceled a record $116.6 billion in forgiveness for 3.4 million borrowers. He has also attempted to unilaterally cancel at least $10,000 of student debt for virtually every U.S. borrower.
How is it a pro-Dem puff piece when the first half of the article describes the arguments against progressive headliners like AOC?
It then goes into great detail examining those claims, and provides, as @hypelightfly notes, significant specifics on how those progressives created real policy shifts that directly benefited Americans in a time of crisis.
This is an intelligent, in-depth, nuanced opinion piece with well sourced reporting. Either you're too trapped in your bubble to acknowledge that, or you haven't learnt how to read and critically think at the same time.
so most of this article was excuses as to why progressives supposedly cant achieve anything.
I have yet to see any realistic paths suggested which would actually achieve all those policies. The most common one I see is to ignore the law and do it anyway and challenge Republicans to question it. Which, for some reason, they don't think Republicans will, despite a decade showing us to the contrary.
Even more ironically, they say that you are the fascist for disagreeing with them -- not, you know, the person actually suggesting they ignore the law to implement their agenda.
I mean, making Republicans publicly block good things is good. Just because the Court is captured and Republicans are reliably awful doesn't mean the best course of action is just quietly accepting their power.
You're acting like the law is a hard and fast rulebook that you turn the crank and find the result. Our legal system is already full of gray areas, split decisions, and laws that are ignored because that's part of the role of the people enforcing it. Student loan forgiveness wasn't definitively illegal, it was only "illegal" because we knew the Republican court would find some way to stop it. They threw away the law to make that happen, and they'll do it again, but the first step in contesting their power is forcing them to wield it against public opinion, the next step is to remind the public of the limits of their power. Simply saying "good game, you got us, the Court gets to do whatever it wants" is just cowardice.
democrats are currently at war with eachother which is most of what's preventing them from achieving anything progressive. Even if things like renewable energy, closing the wealth gap, gun control, healthcare reform are popular amongst democrats, they're far from unanimous. Even shit like ending the filibuster which would have given a democratic congress much more potency, was resisted by the same conservative democrats that poison the efforts of all progressive efforts.
Democratic fundraisers are pumping tons of money into both sides and getting nowhere. The path to achieving progressive policies is electing a progressive party, which does not currently exist.
Vote for Excuses/Distractions- 2024. “Make America the Same Again.”
AOC is just another fucking populist. I do not understand how people fall for this shit over and over and over again.
Populist:
a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. "he ran as a populist on an anticorruption platform"
I one hundred percent agree that AOC is a politician who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
The critical difference between AOC and all of the right wing populists, is that she is concerned about people, and the preservation and expansion of human rights.
Right wing populists fire up their base by singling out minorities, and others that wield little to no social or political currency, and picking on them. Besides being morally repugnant at face value, the rhetoric and actual right wing policy never deliver tangible quality of life improvements to their base.
oh my god this is rhe dumbest thought ever. i hear this from "libertarian"(see:morons) side of America all the time and i just have to ask.. how the fuck do you come to this conclusion??
because she works to get voters? her policy goals and platform are clear, she represents extremely vocal voting blocks of liberals.
how is any of that a populist?? because she's trying to get voters? you don't know what a populist is
Anyone under 40 in American politics is an automatic beloved novelty.