Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
AOC accuses Pelosi of racial discrimination
This is really getting interesting. The Democrat party, known for both its odd amalgam of special interest groups and its remarkable ability to coordinate these different groups into lockstep support of ever-increasing leftism, seems to be coming apart. I’m sure Donald Trump and some others would like to take credit for this, but it appears to be more of an attempted suicide than an attempted murder. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
The accusation of racism is pretty much the most vicious attack one can wage against someone in modern America, and for one leftist to attack another leftist in that way really is ruthless. And extremely unusual. I doubt that AOC understands the irony of her accusation, considering the racist background of the Democrat party in the not-too-distant past, but Pelosi probably does. I’m trying to feel sorry for Pelosi, or at least avert my eyes from this humiliating spectacle, but I just can’t. A few years ago, I thought Bernie Sanders was an entertaining old crackpot. But look what he hath wrought! What do you think? Can Pelosi hang on? Or is the Democrat party about to be officially renamed the American Socialist Party?
For the record, I’m not sure how much this matters. The Democrat party has been going as far left as it could for decades, and that line keeps moving further and further left. I’m sure that it will continue to do so, no matter how this turns out. But perhaps I’m wrong – this could be serious. What do you think?
Published in General
The real world has bit little Miss Bartender on her ass. She thinks she’s the first person who ever rode a crest to Washington and then found out about a little thing called the “seniority system.” It frustrated the Tea Partiers and caused many of them to break their pledges of self limited terms.
Freshmen in the House are the crap the leadership of both parties scrape off their shoes at night. Miss Bartender thinks she can play the race card and be “special.” But at the end of the day, no matter how many network cameras she’s used as sex toys, she’s still one of 435, with 176 people in her own party that was in line before her. Poor baby.
The four New Spice Girls (AOC, Pressley, Tlaib, Omar) are revolutionaries. They view Pelosi and the DEMe as too staid and slow moving. They’ve learned from a young age that you can go far by yelling racism and sexism anytime they are challenged on substance. It’s a tactic that has gotten them far.
I tried to find any instances where Trump has accused anyone of being racist and I came up with nothing. Does anyone here know if he has ever called someone racist?
Try not to get too literal on us.
Trump should get at least some credit/blame for accelerating the Democrat move to the right. But as the OP says, they have been going that direction for decades, although I think that “decades” makes it too recent a move . (I would say that it isn’t just the Democrat Party that has been moving.)
But will they rename themselves? Why? Well, maybe to become the “Socialist Democrat Party” but I doubt it.
I think she looks nice when she doesn’t bug her eyes out or show off her shark’s teeth . . .
Some litigator said something like, when the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.
To this we can add, when you don’t know the facts or understand the law, call someone a racist.
When the New Spice Girls were elected, Pelosi saw them as a vehicle to assure the D’s got the young woke vote and calculated she could control them. They, however, have a different agenda and now Pelosi sees them as undermining D chances in the 2020 elections, so they need to be taken down. Pelosi is a savvy pol so my money is on her, but the D base has gotten so crazy I might be wrong.
a) Methinks the election of Donald Trump contradicts that thesis.
b) Hannah Arendt wrote that power and violence were contrasting phenomena, if not outright opposites. If you have power, you don’t need to use violence. If you need to use violence, it means you don’t have power.
I reckon that a similar thing can be said about AOC’s style of political whinging.
AOC’s antics are evidence that she has precious little political power, and I see little-to-no evidence that her political power has increased since her election. If AOC had power she’d be able to rally the votes of her colleagues in Congress. I don’t see that happening.
Spats between old and new in Congress is not a new phenomenon. Breathless, instant public coverage is new. Back in my day, you youngsters, you had to look a few pages deep in the Washington Post A section or in the Congressional Quarterly or you had to hang out with Hill staff and lobbyists to know this stuff. Now it is everywhere.
AOC is odd. She has no understanding or intention of learning how stuff works which is the usual path to power for congressional newcomers. She is utterly indifferent to political realities such as the possibility that a sizeable majority of Americans recoil at anything resembling socialist central planning and that most kinda want borders. She is very much the typical product of American colleges: badly educated, blissfully unaware of how much she does not know and fiercely intolerant of the possibility that disparate views are anything other than manifestations of bad intentions. Unlike what Democrats have done forth last 8o years, she is unwilling or unable to conceal or verbally obfuscate big-government positions with centrist pablum.
Oof.
And to add the rest:
All you children are poor unfortunate victims of systems beyond your control
A plague upon your ignorance and the gray despair of your ugly life
By DC standards she is a knockout.
She’s no Henry Waxman.
Hypothesis: AOC is so very crazy that people assume there must be a great deal of compensatory hotness.
You think AOC will be elected Speaker after Pelosi?
…they’d be Democrats.
The fact that she’s a nitwit is precisely why she gets so much coverage. Her lunacy is entertaining, therefore she generates clicks.
Blaming her lack of influence on “the seniority system” rather than blaming her own personal awfulness still gives AOC too much credit, and plays right into the Left-wing thesis that “the system” is to blame.
News is about destruction; car crashes, natural disasters, falls from grace. The more closely a person can emulate destruction, the more news-worthy they become. This is how Trump got where he is and how AOC has gotten the prominence she has attained.
Only if the comparison is limited to elected officials, and one doesn’t apply “DC standards” to staffers as well.
These freshmen congresscritters are the culmination of the the notion that ethnic/racial identities and victimhood status trump (no pun intended) everything else. POTUS 44 was a preview of what happens when charismatic people with meager skills are elected to high office. They perform just as a rational observer would expect. BHO had the executive branch and supermajorities in both houses, and was able to piss away a ton of money (shovel ready, anyone?) and pass one piece of signature legislation that has clearly been a failure by any practical measure.
Letting this run its course can be a long term good thing (if we all survive it.)
I think AOC has studied Trump’s technique. She doesn’t back down. She just doubles down or “denies the obvious”. She just did that in denying she was calling Pelosi a racist when everyone knows she did.
The progressive youth are well trained to embrace victim-hood – by the top victims of the Democratic party for years – too many to list here – pull the woman card, pull the race card, never look at yourself (unless its for taking a selfie)…
I very much doubt this.
I agree but I’m also not seeing she can muster support except from the ‘brainless’. Not all Democrats qualify.
And some of her friends. Darth Pelosi stars in the new movie, The Dempire Strikes Back:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosi-has-sharp-words-for-house-democrats-11562779313
Looks like four of the new “WokeTroopers” may find their Femperial armor falling off and their blasters drained of energy as Darth uses the dark side of the Old Guard Demo Force against them . . .
In the Foundation series of novels by Isaac Asimov, one of the oft-used quotes by a main character is “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
Seems to apply to the left and their antifa thugs . . .
It’s a little surprising journalists chose her, but not surprising how it has played out.
Media conspire and parrot each other so that any interesting notion quickly becomes a fad. Then nobody wants to be the first to admit the mistake… because breaking ranks among the Left is suicide.
Democrats will reunify for the main election. They hate Trump and Republicans more than they hate each other.
Maybe not all Democrats.