Sunday, November 08, 2020

Sunday Morning Quarterbacks

Every Democrat who ran for federal office in Texas ran ads in Houston pushing M4A. Which probably works with 50% of Houston/Harris County electorate. But they all lost. Personally, I like AOC. I think she's damned sharp, and deserves her due: But her view seems to be the view from across the Hudson from the rest of the country, to be honest. If Joe Biden's victory proved anything, it proved this. Democrats REALLY need to acknowledge the truth of that first statement. I realize I'm an Old Fart, and that I post tweets incessently (beats thinking!), but I also think this is true: Twitter is not the voice of the electorate. Although AOC may be right (read the interview) that campaigning with ads on Facebook is probably more effective than ads on broadcast TeeVee (I saw a lot of those. Seems the effective ones were the ones about how "scary" Democrats would be.) OTOH, this is like saying there is no place for truth in public discussions. I'm old enough to remember the marches across the nation after the George Floyd murder. No, that wasn't a sea-change in American politics (neither was King's March on Washington, which was much more radical than an anodyne "dream"). But we can't keep hiding our original national sin and think we can sold our national problems. Defunding the police is still a good idea, and Social Security and Medicare are socialist programs. Time to stop being scared of shibboleths from the past, especially if you want to convince young people to participate in democracy. You don't have to kowtow to them (everyone wants to jump to extremes), but you do have to give them a reason to participate. Electing kindly old men to the Presidency is not the best way to do that. Always keeping in mind politics is about what is practical: Oh, and that bit about who the most important voters in the party are. Seems to me they're also centered in South Carolina. Worlds away from the boroughs of New York.  On the other hand, AOC is largely a media creation, as far as this discussion is concerned.  There was almost no mention of her in those ads in Harris County I mentioned.  It had a lot more to do with "California liberals" (because Californians are moving here in droves.  Same reason, literally, Colorado is now a blue state.).  NYC is too far away from Texas to much matter, and I suspect that's true of much of the country.  Only the media bias of NYC=center of the world makes AOC into a shibboleth.  As I say, she's a very sharp politician, and her points should be considered/argued over.  But she's not running the DNC (which is a mess in its own right) and she's not even running for POTUS.  I think we can consider her points without saying everything she says is doom and disaster for the future of the country.

She wants to pull Biden in her direction, and this is the time to lay those tracks.  Tell me there aren't other politicians in DC doing the same thing right now.  Same as it ever was.
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