Any politician that actually speaks common sense is a big deal.
Plenty of politicians exist who have sensible policies and speak truth to power and yadda yadda yadda. Most of them lose. The ones that one mostly get back-benched by party leadership or primaried out of office in subsequent elections.
AOC (and Sanders and Mamdani and a few others) tend to be notable because they advance popular policies in a manner that cut through corporate media white noise, while surviving a deluge of character attacks and faux-scandals intent on derailing their mission.
It’s not merely that you have some rando saying shit. It’s that you can hear that person, you can be represented by that person, and you can organize around that person to elect other politicians with a similar set of values and beliefs.
common sense
Careful with that term these days.
The rightwingnuts tend to call their anti-progressiveness talking points “common sense”.
How many other politicians are doing that? When a mechanic doesn’t try to scam you, you tell very person that will listen.
we went off the rails in the 1980s dude. Carter and Nixon were the last presidents that remote had any grounding in reality, and they were both loathed by the public for it. 1970s were a shitshow and instead of fixing shit we decided to just start mortgaging the country for the next 50 years.
we have been riding them every since, no feet on the ground.
We have had like a handful of pols who wanted to like fix shit in this country, but they are not widely popular and the establishment totally hates them, so they are portrayed as radicals.
For those here who remember AOC being a monitor company and not some politician, OP is talking about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is one of the representatives of the state of New York in the House of the Congress of the USA.
Typing how useless this comment is on one of several AOC monitors I use daily
Typing how useless this comment is for the other 94% of the planet
This was a huge cause of confusion years ago when the media started using “AOC” to refer to her. I was like, damn, their monitors used to be cheap crap, why are they so popular now?
It was nothing compared to the horrors of MTG
I can definitely see that.
It’s really annoying to me when people make posts in a general community without giving any kind of context (to non-US-Americans in this case) and this one had me tripping over mental monitors for a hot second.
Disinformation is so widespread, largely because of O&G marketing firms, that speaking common sense has become a big deal.
I think it’s at least partially because everyone else sucks so bad. She’s not a great speaker but she gets a lot of coverage from left-wing influencers because there’s no one else to promote. She also positions herself just far enough on the left to get their support but she’s also close enough to the center to still get coverage in the mainstream media. So she’s the face of progressive movent and gets attacked by Fox a lot. So she’s everywhere even though she’s kind of bland in my opinion (compared with European left at least).
She’s not a great speaker but she gets a lot of coverage from left-wing influencers because there’s no one else to promote.
She’s fine. There are definitely better orators. But she stays on message, advances popular policies, and is generally well-received by her constituents. There are plenty of other aspiring AOCs that don’t perform half as well. And you won’t be able to name them because they don’t win elected office - much less survive multiple hostile intra-party primary bids and smear campaigns - or fundraise effectively or get promoted via social media so aggressively.
There are definitely other people to promote. We just watched Graham Platner’s star rise largely on his personal charisma and ability to build a crowd. We’ve seen Al Franken and Anthony Weiner and John Edwards all come and go along similar trajectories. AOC might demonstrate better staying power simply because she’s not a giant sex pest.
So she’s everywhere even though she’s kind of bland in my opinion (compared with European left at least).
Compared to Corbyn or Mélenchon or Reichinnek? I’d say she’s par for the course.
she’s kind of bland in my opinion (compared with European left at least).
Compared to European politics, the USA doesn’t really have any “left”.
Most Democrats would be considered center-right in a lot of other countries.
Exactly. I would say Mamdani is “European kind of left” and he’s also really good at delivering his message. I totally get why he’s so popular. OAC is only OK but he really doesn’t have a lot of competition in Congress.
gets attacked by Fox a lot
A point about this is it’s a specific long-term strategy used by conservative media that worked on Hillary. It doesn’t matter what AOC says or does, they’ll give her negative coverage. They’ll spend years doing this so when she finally does make a run for president their viewers will already have AOC=BAD baked in.
Because a lot of you are cowards and hid away instead of helping to shape public opinion. When these leaders like AOC and others do not have people creating content on popular platforms then it leaves a runway for the opposition to create any narrative they want. It’s a numbers game at this point. The opposition convinced supporters to run away and hide and they did willingly.
It might not look like much, but the really impressive part about their journey is how they avoid being dragged into a political sport between the liberal/conservative/MAGA cesspool, and instead drag our attention towards the meaningful.
Its a dreamers game, and those who captures the imagination of the people are the winners.
At the same time, Washington politics is a money game, and Sanders wing have been able to keep up with them only with money from small donors.
Well at least thats my takaway from following us politics between 2015 to 2021.
There is a really excellent documentary called Knock Down the House. It followed four progressive women launching grassroots campaigns against powerful political figures.
If memory serves AOC is the only one of the four who won her race.
You see MAGA love to hate women. That is one of the reasons why they hate Nancy Pelosi so much.
It is the Howard Stern effect, where people who liked his show listened to about half of it, people who really had no opinion on Stern didn’t listen to any of his show. People who hated Howard Stern listened to every minute of his show. AOC is the same way.
MAGA’s hatred has made her a household name and it is awesome, because I love her. She is just excellent. She is what MAGAs wish Donald Trump was.
It’s america. It’s because she is easy on the eyes. Don’t overthink it.
Most politicians at that level (maybe all levels) appear to be bought and paid for, are not genuine, and just say whatever the polls and their campaign managers tell them. She seems to be more genuine, competent, charismatic, and a threat to the status quo.
Read all the posts here. Most of them are correct in some way.
- She threatens populism from the economic side forcing the corrupt MAGA politicians to care about ‘fake news’ like ‘affordability’
- She threatens insecure dudes by being smart, attractive and speaking spanish
- She threatens the political republicans because she actually interacted wth the public instead of going to an ivyleague college and being taught to speak folksy by a speech trainer
- Won’t somebody think of the lusty christian men?
So she’s like perfect ragebait for every right winger
Right Wingers lost their minds over Jimmy Carter, a Christian, Naval academy graduate.
They need to stay mad, because being angry makes them feel powerful.
Look up the “overton window”
Did you know South Australia was the first place in the world to grant women both the right to vote AND the right to stand for parliament — and it happened partly by accident.
In 1894, the SA parliament was debating a women’s suffrage bill. The bill originally included a clause explicitly preventing women from sitting in parliament. Enter Ebenezer Ward, an MP who was opposed to women’s suffrage. He cleverly moved to strike out that exclusion clause, thinking it was so absurd that women could be MPs that the whole bill would be voted down in disgust.
His plan backfired spectacularly — the amendment was accepted, the bill passed, and South Australian women became the first in the world with full political rights (voting and standing for office). This was 1894, predating Finland (1906) and even New Zealand’s right to stand (1919).
It’s kinda alarming that very few people read bills
you’re going to read every line of a 2000 page legal document?
no, you have some interns basically skim it and highly the stuff that makes you look good or is the pork for your district, and as long as that’s in there, then vote yes for it.
bills in the last two decades are overwhelmingly omnibus bills, as in one giant long document with tons of changes to the law and funding.
we don’t pass simple single-issue bills since like the 1970s
Doesn’t Iceland have some form of parliament that includes everyone for a thousand years?
Who could participate in the original Althing:
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Chieftains (goðar) held the real power—they controlled the agenda and made laws
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Free men, particularly land-owning farmers and their dependents, could attend, speak, and vote on legal matters
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Women could be present as observers but had no voting rights
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Also happened before that year in France, that first in the world claim is bs
Also happened before that year in France, that first in the world claim is bs
…
The granting of suffrage to women in France, finalized in 1944
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/women-s-studies-and-feminism/france-grants-suffrage-women
Like it or not, people need political leaders to follow.
Also, AOC has the advantage of representing a district in New York City, the media capital of the world. She probably wouldn’t be as well known if she was the Congressmember from Topeka
These little town bluuues
Ain’t melting awaaay
I’m gonna be as bored as shit
In Topeeekaaa!Who knows who Joseph Crowley was?
The Shadow knows…
