Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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Alexandria Ocasio Cortez being sworn in as a Representative in the House, 6 years ago.…A Getty Image

Nobody ever wins the first time they run for office. Nobody’s ever supposed to win their first bid for office. Nobody’s ever supposed to win without taking lobbyists’ money. No one’s ever supposed to defeat an incumbent. No one’s ever supposed to run a grassroots campaign without running any ads on television. We did all of those things. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

I’m not running “from the left.” I’m running from the bottom. I’m running in fierce advocacy of working-class Americans. A Tweet by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez after being elected as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at 29.

There is no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Mocking lower incomes is exactly how those who benefit from + promote wealth inequality the most keep everyday people silent about one of the worst threats to American society: that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. A tweet by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in response to a tweeted criticism of her inability to afford an apartment in Washington DC when she first moved there in 2019.

I so want to write about Trump’s tariff threats or his bragging about his malicious immigration policies, or his giving everybody in the government a bonus if they quit. But what good does that do to anybody? I don’t know anything about tariffs except what I read in the New York Times or the Washington Post, and I’m not sure they really know anything about tariffs either. What I do know – or remember, at least – is that both papers got hysterical when Trump put tariffs on Chinese imports in 2017 and then didn’t even bother to mention it when President Biden continued them in 2021.

With Trump, like almost everything he does, tariffs seem to be a way to fill the public communication space. Trump says something seemingly outrageous about tariffs, and then the mainstream media reacts by telling us that what Trump said about tariffs is outrageous. Then we’re all talking about Trump and how outrageous he is. But, and it is a big but, while the papers say that Trump is acting outrageously over tariffs, other news, often more critical, is pushed to the back page where, especially today in the new media environment, it is ignored.

As an aside, one of the things pushed to the back pages is how Trump fills the communication space – or flooding the zone – and how the mainstream media helps him with constant attention. End aside.

We are in a new media environment, and Trump is one of the few people who understand how to prosper in that environment. Most of the Democrats, maybe all of them except about eight, are still following the old rule book. Look good, and don’t say anything controversial. Think about it, then think about it again. It is better not to be seen than being seen in the wrong place or saying something controversial. It was better to move cautiously. .

Ok, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I want to write about Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. What I really want to write about is that I think AOC will be our first female President. I’ve been thinking this for a long time, and then I thought I was wrong because I thought Vice President Harris would win. And I thought the Vice President had an excellent chance, too. I still think she could have won, but she lost her nerve and started playing it safe. Playing it safe is what the Democratic establishment wanted her to do, but when running against Trump in 2024, playing it safe is a losing strategy.

Playing it safe is not something that New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez does. She started her political career in 2018 by running against Joseph Crowley, who, according to the New York Times, was once seen as a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi because his seat was so safe.

I don’t know when I first became aware of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez or even why, but it was after she was elected and before she became AOC. I fell in love with her as a politician immediately, and I mean politician in the best possible sense, in a politics as public service way. The only two other times I have felt that way were with Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. I was sure that Carter and Obama would both become president even when all the evidence said they wouldn’t be. I feel the same way about AOC.

Our politics is changing because our media is changing. The old politics, the pre-2016 politics, television politics, rewarded looking professional and not making waves. That politics required immense amounts of money and rewarded non-controversial positions. Everything was well thought out, which made for slow reactions.

The new politics, the post-2016 politics, the internet politics, rewards being seen, being everywhere, filling the news space, getting attention, and it rewards authenticity. In this new political space, exposure is everything. In the television world, Harris’es handlers didn’t want her to go on FOX News, but in the post-2016 world, that just seems crazy. Trump is a master of the post-2016 political space. He is everywhere. When the Democrats come back at him for, say, renaming Denali National Park, they help Trump in two ways: they keep Trump’s name in the center of the political space, and they answer two days later, which is two days after Trump has moved on. They seem behind the times (and they are).

I’m sure that some Democrats understand the new media landscape, but most don’t. Watching Minority Leader Schumer rebutting Trump’s 25% tariff on anything from Mexico while holding an avocado like it was going to bite him was embarrassing. And then he said that the tariff would raise the price of our Super Bowl Quack. Why did he get the job of rebutting? Not because he was good at presenting a case but because he was the senior Democrat. Meanwhile, Trump had moved on to turning Gaza into a resort after the pesky Palestinians moved to Eygpt.

Of those few Democrats who do understand the new world, nobody is better at communication than AOC. Even her tag, a very recognizable AOC, which she got very early in her political career – before she took office. shows her awareness of the power of Social Media. She is sincere, not afraid to be unabashedly herself, and relatable. She is both staggeringly young and staggeringly self-confident.

Don’t take my word for it; watch the video below. It’s long but worth it (if you are into this kind of thing and, maybe, even if you are not).

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Thinking About #47 While Trying Not To

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“I was saved by God to make America great again,” President Trump, in his inaugural address.h

“We shouldn’t be in a position where you have tumbleweed that’s dry as a bone. Even tumbleweed can be nice & green & rich & it’s not gonna burn. You don’t even have to remove it. It’s not gonna burn. But it’s just dry. So I hope you can all get together & say I’m so happy with the water.” President Trump at a firehouse in LA.

Mr. Hegseth, like many of President Trump’s nominees, represents a break from the status quo. His nomination directly challenges the internal culture, decision-making process, and politicization of the Department of Defense that the Biden Administration has propagated for the last four years. Horace Cooper in the National Center for Public Policy Research (which bills itself as a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think tank).

I don’t know what to make of Trump. I told myself I wouldn’t react like I did his first term. Then I watch a clip of him doing, almost anything, really, and it’s so full of casual assholery that I lose all objectivity.

However, I’m not as depressed as I thought I would be about Donald Trump winning the presidency again, but, listening to Trump bloviating every day, I’m getting there. Part of why I’m not that depressed, I think, is that I don’t think the Democrats are doing that great a job, and part of that is because I didn’t think Trump would be as bad as the New York Times thinks. Maybe the second part of my complacency is a pipe dream; Trump is undoubtedly a narcissist and a disrupter. But he has proven to be incompetent at almost everything he has tried. I think the last two personality traits will cancel each other out in a way.

Donald Trump will make a lot of waves, but he is not going to invade Canada (I don’t think). We liberals get hung up in what he says, and a lot of what he says is just filling space, just staying in the limelight. During his first term, Trump repeatedly said that he was going to release his Obama Care replacement in two weeks, strangely – it was always two weeks – and it never happened. This time around, he was going to end the Russo-Ukrainian War on day one; of course, he didn’t. He didn’t even try. It was all just talk.

Still, he is a disrupter, and he will be disruptive. All indicators indicate that he either doesn’t believe in Climate Change or doesn’t give a shit. Either way, President Trump will be terrible for the planet, but Vice-Presendent Harris wouldn’t have been appreciably better. Vice-president Harris might want to start reacting to Climate Change like it is a real threat, but the Democratic establishment does not want change the status quo. Harris would be better than Trump for sure, for sure, but still not what the world needs.

I do think that Trump will do a lot of damage to a variety of governmental agencies and a lot of people who work for them. He is a vengeful son of a bitch and it will not be pretty. Still, I don’t think he will turn us into a copy of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I don’t think he will for two reasons: one, Trump is not competent enough to pull off a coup, and, two, the only countries that have slipped from being democracies to being ruled by autocrats were democracies that had been democracies for a short period of time. The German Weimar Republic, even the idea of being a German democracy, actually was only about fifteen years old when Hitler destroyed it.

The United States has been a democracy for about 236 years, and democracy is deep in our blood and deep in our bones. OK, we aren’t really a democracy. We started with the vote being only for White Men who owned property, and it has slowly gotten better. I don’t know when the property qualification was dropped, but Black men were not allowed to vote until 1870 (and for a large portion of Black people, not until the mid-60s). Women were not allowed to vote until 1920.

However, our national myth is that we are a democratic country, and even people who are unable to vote are willing to die for that myth. People like the Tuskegee Airman during World War II. That makes it much more difficult to overturn the United States government compared to, say, Hungry or Russia.

I’m not trying to say that everything is going to be great for the next four years, it won’t be. I don’t think, however, that it will be the end of democracy.