How To Boost AOC
She’s happy to handle cheap-shot attacks
SINCE kicking incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley out of his House seat in Queens, incoming Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has carved out a persona for herself as a young, hip democratic socialist prone to the occasional gaffe. She’s also become a favorite target of ham-fisted attempts to shame and mock her personal life.
It behooves conservatives to stop the cheap shots, because they make the right look petty while allowing her to claim the high ground and highlight her savvy at the same time.
The Internet has scrutinized Ocasio-Cortez since the moment she arrived on the national stage. When she posed in a photoshoot for Interview magazine, critics slammed her for wearing an expensive suit and shoes.
When she complained from Capitol Hill that she kept being directed to events for interns and spouses, she was accused of lying.
When she admitted in an interview earlier this month that she couldn’t afford a DC apartment until she received her first paycheck as a congresswoman, the right-wing Twittersphere erupted with scoffs.
Some publications pointed to her savings — at least $15,001, per an election disclosure — and suggested she’s lying. This ignored that she quit her job as a bartender to run for office in February.
Ocasio-Cortez has figured out how to use such folly to her advantage, and if dunking on your critics online was a sport, at least one of Ocasio-Cortez’s apartment walls would be covered in the framed tweets of right-wing pundits who attacked her and paid the price in online embarrassment.
Washington Examiner journalist Eddie Scarry fell head-first into her trap. Earlier this month, he tweeted a photo of the incoming representative in a suit and heels with the caption: “That jacket and coat don’t look like a girl who struggles.”
The Twitter backlash might as well have come with a reputation body bag. Within hours, OcasioCortez’ Twitter defenders had framed Scarry as a creep and worse. Ocasio-Cortez herself responded, saying, “If I walked into Congress wearing a sack, they would laugh & take a picture of my backside. If I walk in with my best sale-rack clothes, they laugh & take a picture of my backside.”
The attacks invariably redound to her benefit. The dynamic is especially foolish for conservatives trying to win over the young, many of whom see themselves in her: a woman with a few thousand dollars in savings, who graduated with $20,000 in student-loan debt. It helps her solidify her preferred image, as a fighter for the “every millennial,” while her opponents end up looking like elitists who sneer at a young Latina from a workingclass background.
And if conservatives think her social-media smarts won’t mean much if she sets her sights on higher office, then they’ve forgotten the lesson of 2016. It was then-candidate Donald Trump, after all, who figured out early on that Twitter gave him a pipeline to his supporters that wasn’t filtered through gatekeepers. Ocasio-Cortez watched and learned.
The better route is to go after her ideas, many of which are wrongheaded, to say the least.
Take, for instance, the time she said that unemployment was low in 2018 because “everyone has two jobs.” Or when she responded to a question on how the US would cover the cost of Medicare for all by exclaiming that “you just pay for it!”
She seemingly forgot the three branches of government during a live online event to rally support for Democrats. “We have to work our butts off to make sure that we take back all three chambers of Congress — uh, rather, all three chambers of government: the presidency, the Senate, and the House in 2020.” (Rick Perry could probably relate to that particular memory slip.)
Most important, she should be pressed to explain how she thinks America will escape the dysfunctions that come with state-dominated economies — as in France, with its 25 percent youth unemployment rate and slow growth.
If you want to take issue with Ocasio-Cortez, these are the criticisms to make. But keep your opinions about her wardrobe, bank account and work history to yourself — or, at least, offline.