National Post (National Edition)
AOC's revolution over before it began
PARTY STRATEGISTS TOO UNHIP FOR SQUAD LEADER
In the wake of Joe Biden's nail-biting defeat of U.S. President Donald Trump, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasted no time making clear that she'd learned nothing from the surprisingly difficult electoral victory.
In an interview with The New York Times, the face of the Democrats' leftist faction rejected the conclusion — widely shared among those examining the entrails of the campaign — that Trump's ability to frighten voters with forecasts of a socialist putsch had made Biden's task considerably harder.
No, according to AOC, demands to defund the police couldn't be blamed for a race that was so close in several states that it took four days for news organizations to build up the courage to declare a winner. Nor did the street violence Trump was so skilfully able to portray as a law-and-order issue, rather than one of pent-up racial frustrations. No, said AOC, the failure of the much-projected “blue wave” was a result of the party's lack of the “core competencies” that are essential to modern campaigns.
By that she appears to mean that party strategists were too old and fusty, too out of date, inadequately technological and too unhip to effectively insulate voters from the more adept scare tactics practised by Republicans.
“I've looked through a lot of these campaigns that lost, and the fact of the matter is if you're not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fundraising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, getout-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. And not a single one of these campaigns were firing on all cylinders,” she said.
The party's gurus, she suggested, rely too much on television and mail, and too little on the internet. They're too afraid to upset the apple cart by recognizing that racism — meaning white people who vote Republican — is a core problem, and too hesitant to embrace the aggressive, outspoken approach of activists like her. There's too much “magical thinking” in Washington that treats party campaign leaders as “special people that kind of come down from on high” to dictate election strategy.
“I've been begging the party to let me help them for two years,” but kept getting turned down, she complained. “All five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing.”
It may be that AOC underrates the possibility that firebrands like herself can work wonders in ultra-liberal jurisdictions where identity politics and the Green New Deal are settled issues, but are a distinct liability in the very large part of the country that is wary of a massive expansion of government power and its proposed intrusion into new areas of daily existence.
All the pledges of guaranteed lifetime jobs, free college tuition and a flood of new benefits didn't persuade the Cuban, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan voters in Florida from favouring Trump over an economic model that sounded worryingly like the ones they fled. People with firsthand experience of corrupt central governments headed by socialist saviours overseeing collapsing economies seem to have developed an extremely high resistance to chancing a repeat in their new country.
Inadequate use of internet campaigning can't explain the deep inroads Trump made among Latino voters in Texas, especially in low-income counties along the Rio Grande, where Mexican-Americans shifted to Trump in large numbers. Starr County, which is 96-per-cent Hispanic, came within five points of choosing Trump, all but erasing the 60-point margin run up by Hillary Clinton. Zapata County, another small, heavily Latino area, made Trump the first Republican victor in 150 years.
The shift was widely credited to the GOP's more vigorous courting of Hispanics, but also reflected a very real alarm among conservative, religious families, many of whom are reliant on income from oilfield jobs, over predictions that Biden would be pressured into unpopular policies on abortion, taxes and fossil fuels by AOC and her burgeoning activist wing.
Their concern mirrored distrust in much of middle America, the vast belt between the two coasts that was responsible for swelling Trump's support by eight million votes over 2016. If the voting numbers and a diminished seat count weren't enough to catch the attention of activists, frustrated Democratic candidates did their best to make it clear in a lengthy, heated post-election caucus call.
“We need to not ever use the word `socialist' or `socialism' ever again,” one successful House candidate insisted, according to The Washington Post. “If we are classifying Tuesday as a success … we will get f---ing torn apart in 2022.”
Ocasio-Cortez and her allies aren't wrong in claiming that party leaders failed to adjust to changed realities. But if there was a single unmistakable message in the election result, it's that a very large percentage of Americans are not ready for the wholesale revolution envisaged in the crowded urban centres of New York, Boston and San Francisco. They can't all be written off as racists and haters, or dismissed with casual disregard by well-educated urbanites.
Biden has said repeatedly that he considers it his overriding priority to unify a deeply divided country. Again and again he's insisted that, “It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again.”
AOC and her troops aren't about listening or learning, they're about demanding, rejecting, confronting and insisting. They want a party that marches to their banner. It's typical of leftist politics, which loses itself in ideological fervour and unbending dogma. It's why universities have become swamps of identity politics. It's why Republicans see a future without Trump in much brighter terms than you might imagine of a party that just lost an election.