AOC should write a book that would be a page-turner (as in, a fast-paced account) account of when she decided to run to winning her primary. Well, the actual election was a foregone conclusion after she won the primary, so that part need not be covered.
It would be exciting. It would also be a handbook for people who might want to replicate that success elsewhere in the country which, I believe, would much please AOC.
The book would sell well and bring about financial freedom for AOC. That would be a good thing. That would free her to be more risk-taking. She is already plenty of a risk-taker. The book would free her from her congressional salary.
She is neck and neck to Donald Trump in terms of media attention, which is mind-blowing. But that would fool you into thinking people already know. Not the case. People don't know all the details. They do want to know.
I can see her playing a key role for Bernie in the fall of 2020 to get the young vote out. It is best there is a book out there before that so she maintains control of her narrative.
And taking AOC around the country like she were his running mate!
Sen. @BernieSanders challenged Trump to release his tax returns and made a strong case for Medicare for All on *checks notes* Fox News pic.twitter.com/jBd2ehaaGA
Ronald Reagan also ran and lost one time. Then he ran again four years later.
Bernie is in better physical shape than Ronald. Because Bernie runs. Not run for president, which he does. But run as in jogging.
Bernie also has some other parallels with Ronald Reagan. He is very, very clear about a few basic things that also happen to be fundamental. That clarity comes from deep conviction.
He is a breath of fresh air.
It was Bernie who put Medicare For All on the national map. Now every Democrat running is for it. That is an achievement. It just makes sense. Medicare For All is arithmetic.
So right now it is looking like:
President: Bernie Sanders
Vice President: Kamala Harris
Fall 2020 Campaigner: AOC
UN Ambassador: Tulsi Gabbard
Secretary Of Labor: Andrew Yang
Texas Governor: Beto
Senate Majority Leader: Elizabeth Warren
Secretary Of Urban Affairs: Pete
Trump predicts 'Crazy Bernie Sanders,' 'Sleepy Joe Biden' will be 2 Dem 'finalists' in 2020 race The 2020 Race Is Going Just Like Bernie Sanders WantedThe senator from Vermont is starting to think he will not only win the Democratic nomination, but beat Trump and become president...... The campaign is moving toward its internal $280 million target and savoring polls that have Sanders just behind Joe Biden, whom Sanders and his team expect will only go down once he gets in the race. The number of candidates keeps growing, lowering how many people it would take to come in first, beyond the 15 percent to 20 percent of primary voters who will stick with him no matter what...... Americans want Medicare for All, but are just anxious that Sanders wouldn’t be able to manage that or any of the other big changes that he’s promising. They believe a tightly-run campaign would demonstrate that he could run the country, too. .... he’s the only candidate with a sizable chunk of the electorate that won’t waver, no matter what, so a field that keeps growing and splitting support keeps making it easier...... Medicare for All has become a litmus test for many progressives, as has free public college tuition. ...... there was a band of young white guys in hockey jerseys playing a song about “cosmic dust” ahead of the Pittsburgh rally and staffing tables of merchandise with Sanders as a Sesame Street character and “Let it FUCKING Bern” written over a picture of a marijuana leaf
When Trump is calling Bernie "crazy," he is talking about Bernie's Einstein hair.
Bernie Sanders Imagines a Progressive New Approach to Foreign Policy Sanders had scarcely talked about foreign affairs in his 2016 campaign, but his framework had a natural extensibility. Under way in the world was a simple fight, Sanders said. On one side were oligarchs and the right-wing parties they had managed to corrupt. On the other were the people. ....... He begins the 2020 Presidential campaign not as a gadfly but as a favorite, which requires a comprehensive vision among voters of how he would lead the free world. ..... “reconceptualize a global order based on human solidarity.” ..... In 2016, he had asked voters to imagine how the principles of democratic socialism could transform the Democratic Party. Now he was suggesting that they could also transform how America aligns itself in the world..... Basic impression: same guy. ....... “How many people in the United States understand that we overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran to put in the Shah? ...... One condition that Americans had not digested was the bottomlessness of inequality. ....... “Twenty-six of the wealthiest people on earth own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population. Did you know that? ..... “twenty-six people, 3.6 billion people. How grotesque is that?” ...... “When I talk about income inequality and talk about right-wing authoritarianism, you can’t separate the two.” ....... his thesis had always been that money corrupted politics, and now he was tracing the money back overseas ...... as emergencies in Libya, Syria, and Yemen have deepened, the reputation of Obama’s foreign policy, and of the foreign-policy establishment more broadly, has diminished ....... She and others now see in Sanders something that they didn’t in 2016: a clear progressive theory of what the U.S. is after in the world. “I think he’s bringing those views on the importance of tackling economic inequality into foreign policy ........There has been, he went on, “a bipartisan assumption that we’re supposed to love Saudi Arabia and hate Iran. And yet, if you look at young people in Iran, they are probably a lot more pro-American than Saudis. ...... But they also have more democracy, as a matter of fact, more women’s rights, than does Saudi Arabia...... Sanders seemed to oscillate between proposing a characteristically transformational reimagining of American policy at the grandest scale and, in specific cases, more complicated approaches ...... In Sanders’s account of global affairs, Americans have been as likely to be villains as heroes. Six trillion dollars had now been spent on the war on terror since 2001. “It’s an unbelievable amount of money,” he said. “Is this going to go on forever?” Seven hundred billion dollars was being sent annually to the military, he noted. “Do we really need to spend more than the next ten nations combined on the military, when our infrastructure is collapsing and kids can’t afford to go to college?” ......... whether the most powerful nation on earth is excessively capitalist or sufficiently democratic....... whether the existential challenges of climate change create a moral imperative for deep structural reforms, including the abolition of the filibuster and the Electoral College ....... it was hard to see much evidence for the global popular movement against the right that he hoped to ignite. ...... That is the optimistic scenario: that climate change will bring about a new spirit of international coöperation........ Power revealed steeliness in Obama, and an instinct for the consensus, and caution. ..... he has bent the Party’s policies and priorities so that they largely match his. ...... the fiery-sermonizer figure is in retreat, and he is sounding notes of caution. Most of the other Democrats running for President have embraced broad structural reforms: the Electoral College must go, and perhaps the filibuster. Not Sanders. On Palestine, he now invokes the tradition of Carter and Clinton. If the newer candidates must demonstrate and defend their beliefs, then Sanders is undertaking a more subtle task, in trying to accomplish a turn in his public character as he nears eighty: to extricate the person from the ideology, and to suggest that he is not just a revolutionary but also a safe pair of hands. Bernie Sanders acknowledges 'serious problem' at the border, demands 'sensible immigration reform' This is how Bernie Sanders thinks about foreign policyThe senator wants to create a global democratic movement to end oligarchy and authoritarianism..... has a consistent foreign policy thesis: income inequality and authoritarianism are intricately linked. .......... Create a global democratic movement that counters authoritarian leaders from Russia to Saudi Arabia as a way to improve the lives of billions around the world....... “The United States must seek partnerships not just between governments, but between peoples” ...... the senator explained that the US shouldn’t pick sides in ongoing geopolitical feuds, like Saudi Arabia vs. Iran or Israelis vs. Palestinians. ..... Musgrave had the same concern. “Financial firms in London, Geneva, and New York, including their intermediaries in places like the Caymans and the Channel Islands, play a big role in helping to preserve international oligarchs’ wealth,” he told me. “Presumably a President Sanders could deal with New York’s role in domestic politics — but how would he seek to shut down other countries’ financial networks?” ...... Sanders seems to think authoritarianism and oligarchy cause most of the world’s problems. “It comes a little close to a ‘Theory of Everything’” ...... When he was in the House of Representatives in 1998, Sanders famously grilled then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on IMF loans to repressive governments. And in 2015, he blasted the IMF for imposing austerity measures on Greece as a condition to receive economic aid during its financial crisis. ...... “At a time of grotesque wealth inequality, the pensions of the people in Greece should not be cut even further to pay back some of the largest banks and wealthiest financiers in the world.” ...... “It’s a vision in which international economics would be subordinated to a vision of political relations and human rights that would be as big a departure from Clintonism as Trumpism, just in a different direction,” Musgrave said. Bernie faces voters in the heart of Trump country
This comment from Steve Bannon is interesting. In that Bannon thinks it will be a Harris-Beto ticket on the Democratic side.
Harris is for Medicare For All, and for the Green New Deal, but she is very clear she is "not a Democratic Socialist." Beto has pretty much abandoned Medicare For All. Of the Dems that are doing well in the polls, these two are in rhetoric more to the center. In the US political system, the label socialist is still weight around the neck.
**This just might be the nerdiest podcast we've ever recorded.**
Nate and Galen met with a mathematician at a @WeWork in Boston to talk about a statistical method for determining when congressional maps become too partisan.https://t.co/aD6oVXcmHM
Democratic candidates may find it hard to 'change the channel' from Trump Andrew Yang: We're undergoing the greatest economic transformation in our historyFor Americans who are still trying to figure out why Trump is President, the answer is simple -- we automated away millions of manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, and Trump spoke directly to the fear and anger of those voters. He promised them that he would restore those jobs -- a promise on which he has notably failed to deliver. Here's the reality, though: The financial crisis of 2008 brought our 14 million manufacturing jobs (itself a low plateau from the 17 million in 2000) down to 11.4 million, and 10 years of expansion has only brought us back up to 12.8 million...... But what happened to manufacturing workers will soon happen to retail workers, call center workers, fast food workers, truck drivers and others, as the next Industrial Revolution takes hold of our economy. ..... automation will disrupt jobs at about three times the rate of the Second Industrial Revolution, which sparked thousands of strikes and mass riots at the turn of the 20th century...... The challenge for the Democratic Party is to solve the problems that got Trump elected...... We are undergoing the greatest economic transformation in our history, and we are dealing with it by pretending nothing is happening..... it is not immigrants who are causing economic dislocations. It is technology and an evolving economy...... We must reformat our economy ..... It would be paid for by a new tax that falls most heavily on the big winners of artificial intelligence and robotics, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook and Uber...... We must separate access to quality health care from one's employment ...... a human-centered capitalism....... we need to build a trickle-up economy from our people, families and communities up. ..... a time of unprecedented technological change...... the path is not left or right, it's forward...... More than 90,000 of these individuals have donated an average of $18 to our vision, and we are set to make the debate stage in June....... Trump is the symptom, not the problem. His solutions are to turn the clock backward, build the wall and bring old jobs back. I'm suggesting we do the opposite -- accelerate our economy and society and move us forward to solve the problems that got him there in the first place. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really thinks there’s still a way to impeach Trump Pelosi rips AOC, says her posse in Congress is ‘like five people’In a recent interview with USA Today, the House speaker pointed out that votes are more significant than Twitter followers — a remark that was also interpreted to be a dig at AOC. ....... “While there are people who have a large number of Twitter followers, what’s important is that we have a large number of votes on the floor of the House,” Pelosi said.
Right now I am thinking in terms of a Kamala Pete ticket.
Warren, Bernie and Gillibrand should continue in the Senate. Tulsi Gabbard would be a great UN Ambassador. Beto should run for Texas Governor. Andrew Yang would be a great Secretary Of Labor who implements the Universal Basic Income.
AOC should campaign in the Fall of 2020, crisscross the country.
लोकतंत्र में विपक्ष की अहं भुमिका होती है और इस चुनाव में वो रोल कन्हैया कुमार अकेले अदा कर रहे हैं। बेगुसराय तो वो जित जाएंगे। और चुँकि वो अकेले हैं तो इसका मतलब निकलता है कि मोदी फिर से सत्ता में आएंगे। लेकिन चुनाव के बाद कन्हैया देशव्यापी दौड़ाहे पर जाते है कि नहीं, संगठन विस्तार करते हैं कि नहीं, इससे बहुत फर्क पड़ सकता है। भारत में कन्हैया का चुनाव जितना अमरिका में पिछले साल अलेक्सांद्रिया ओकाजिओ कोर्टेज का चुनाव जितने जैसा हो सकता है। चुनाव मोदी जित जाएँ लेकिन मीडिया कन्हैया के वाहवाही में लग जाए, ऐसी नौबत आ सकती है।
भाजपा के एक प्रवक्ता हैं जो चुनाव प्रचार करते हुए कहीं खाना खाते हैं तो उज्ज्वला योजना की हकीकत सामने आ जाती है और किसी के घर जाते हैं तो प्रधानमंत्री आवास योजना की। उम्मीद है वे पूरे देश की यात्रा करेंगे। भाजपा के जुमलों की हकीकत ख़ुद भाजपा सामने लाए,इससे बेहतर भला और क्या होगा।
Manual Scavengers are the most oppressed group of people under our inhuman caste system. After all their demands have fallen on deaf ears, they have now their own manifesto. Completely endorse their demands - which the next govt must fulfil! @BezwadaWilsonhttps://t.co/RTX5xvISKS
शुक्रिया साथियों, आप सभी के सहयोग के कारण हमने एक के बाद एक कई साइबर हमलों के बावजूद बहुत कम समय में क्राउडफ़ंडिंग का 70 लाख रुपये का लक्ष्य पा लिया है।
They thought they will crush me by sending me to jail but my will to fight them has only grown stronger says @kanhaiyakumar in this week’s #JabWeMet Lots of music and songs in this week’s episode. pic.twitter.com/qSsgT2geh9
#KanhaiyaKumar is an example of The Great Indian Dream. A simple boy from a modest home earning just Rs 3000 per month does his PhD from #JNU. And shakes up a fascist government. And scares the daylights out of the communal corrupt crooks. More power to him.
गांधी और सरदार पटेल वाले गुजरात से मेरा दोस्त आ गया है, घर-घर जाकर बेगूसराय के लोगों को मोदी और शाह के फ़र्ज़ी गुजरात मॉडल की सच्चाई बताने। बहुत से दोस्त बेगूसराय पहुँच गए हैं, आप भी आइए। सब मिलकर नोटतंत्र ओर भीड़तंत्र के चंगुल से लोकतंत्र को आज़ाद करवाते हैं। @jigneshmevani80pic.twitter.com/5q38d8BV6E
Right now I am thinking Kamala Harris for President, Beto for Vice President, Tulsi Gabbard for UN Ambassador, and Andrew Yang for Secretary of Labor with the mandate to implement the Universal Basic Income. And AOC as the campaigner to reach the 18-28 crowd in the Fall of 2020, with Pete accompanying.
The young Florida Republican who is championing a Green Real Deal is an ally. He is emphasizing the tech entrepreneurship aspects of the Green Deal, which will be at least 70% of the Green Deal, if you think about it. Perhaps the Green New Deal and the Green Real Deal need to be fused to create a Green Deal.
But people who are really, truly falling behind are academics. Politicians go shopping. It is academics who are to theorize new ideas. Politicians shop among those ideas.
The bad news is not that robots and AI will be capable of numerous jobs. That ought to be good news. But that abundance absent new political and economic paradigms will give rise to mass slavery like in The Hunger Games.
The inequality in America has to be talked in the same vein as climate change. Both are existential threats.
Andrew Yang is blowing Silicon Valley-style fresh air into the political discourse. But he is too apologetic. The Universal Basic Income money does not have to be a fiscal move. It needs to be a monetary move, a quantitative easing for the people. Pass a new law that says the Fed is now also responsible for administering the UBI.
If all educational material can be online and free, why is the cost of education not dropping dramatically?
True, you can not bring all eight billion people to America. But who needs to? What is America but an idea? Once there is fast broadband every spot on earth, land or ocean, that opens up a new paradigm. Biometric ID is more powerful than a US social security number. Digital money is more convenient than $100 bills.
The UBI should truly be universal. Give every human being on earth a biometric ID, and give everyone a UBI of $100 a month to start with, paid for by their data wells. All data any company gathers on any individual is owned by the individual. Commercialization of that data pays for the UBI, to start at $100 a month and then to go upwards.
It is obvious you need a world government. America does not want immigrants. But America will also stand in the way of a true world government. You can not have it both ways.
I am for taxing the rich. I am for a wealth tax.
But the bigger problem is how money gets parked in tax havens. Trillions of dollars are idling in the tax havens of the world. And the tax havens exist for the simple reason that a world government does not exist.
Digital money is very different from physical money. It is as different as steam is from water. Digital money asks for a rethink on the fundamentals of finance. Couple digital money with the Blockchain and now finance asks for physics like thorough thinking.
But then the spiritual is supreme. Enormous rises in productivity will simply lead to enormous rises in chaos if the spiritual is not at the center. The 40,000 Christian denominations need to talk to one another and put out the scriptural fires and become one conglomeration in terms of organization and reach out to the other faiths. If you dig deep enough you will realize that all major faiths are pointing towards the same ladder to paradise.
The Democrats running for president are a formidable bunch.
Abraham Lincoln went from the House to the White House. He was never Governor or Senator. John Kennedy went from being junior Senator, an absentee Senator hardly active in the committees, to being president.
AOC has to realize the committee structure in the House is a political swamp. No, she does not owe her constituents endless hours in committee. That is the way of slow political death. All the things AOC wants, they will not be done by committee, at least not by the current committees of the current House. Nancy Pelosi is a fine person, but she is not the answer. She does not have answers. It can be argued, she does not even have the questions.
The way you firmly establish Green New Deal on the 2020 map is by crisscrossing the country. Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement must merge and become one organization. That unified organization could call itself Green New Deal Nation. And AOC has to lead that organization. That organization has to fund AOC's national travels.
There is a minimum amount of committee work that no member of Congress can avoid. And that is fine. But that has to be kept to the barest minimum by someone like AOC. Her appeal is national. Her appeal is the new generation. Her platform is social media.
Granted committee work can also be a great way to earn political capital. One example, this bad guy video.
The Green New Deal is not a policy proposal, not yet. It is a conversation. It is a discussion. It is a grand conversation that has to be made grander. People have to participate. Steering that conversation is important.
AOC has to be proactive, not reactive. Proactive is participating in and shaping the conversation around the Green New Deal. Reactive is responding to every right-wing media zinger and responding to every news of the day. It is tempting. But don't give in.
The goal is to firmly establish the Green New Deal in a way that no Democrat in 2020 can afford to skip that. And committee participation is not how you gain that political capital. For that, you have to crisscross the country. Your personal staff cannot manage that. It has to be an organization.
The Green New Deal is an evolving policy proposal. And we are talking Green New Deal 1.0 right now. 2028 will be time for Green New Deal 2.0.
The Green New Deal is going to be an amazing fusion of technology and politics. Tech entrepreneurs are going to play a major role. In fact, the deciding role. But only vibrant democratic processes will make sure the human being will stay at the center of it all.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Unfavorable Rating Climbs: GallupThe congresswoman’s high profile so early in her term is exceeded only by that of Hillary Clinton in 2001, Gallup says. .... While half of Americans had not heard of or had no opinion of Ocasio-Cortez in September, more than 7 in 10 U.S. adults now know of and have an opinion of her .... The only more-recognized member of Congress so early in their term was Hillary Clinton, who had served as first lady before being elected to Congress .... Just 5 percent of GOP respondents reported that they have a favorable view of her, while nearly 6 in 10 Democrats say they like her. .... Younger adults and non-whites are also more likely to say they have a favorable idea of Ocasio-Cortez. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the most famous member of Congress: pollattributing her high name recognition to her outsize presence on social media and intense media coverage..... The main reason for the negative uptick: More Republicans are turned off by the self-described Democratic socialist.....56 percent of Democrats view her favorably compared to 15 percent who don’t.
The emergence of AOC is existential. Climate change is existential. Inequality is existential. Both lead civilizational ends. But AOC has a plan to combat both.
I was not even following the developments closely. I thought it was a done deal. Past tense. And then Amazon announced its exit. I was surprised. I still have not had the time to dig into the details. I did read the NYC Mayor's op-ed on the topic. And the AOC celebratory tweet. And there is this Wharton podcast, that I read. (I did not listen)
If it was a botched deal, maybe the NY Governor, and the NYC Mayor did not sell it to the people hard enough. Or maybe Amazon made the mistake of not engaging. Or the protestors did not see the full picture. It comes across as a political victory, but an economic loss.
When I think of the Green New Deal, I see a lot of high tech entrepreneurship. Otherwise, under the current economic paradigm, the Green New Deal can look really, really hard. Pricing out dirty energy is much smoother than trying to shut down an industry. There is no shutdown valve.
Just like the original New Deal created a new middle class and a new age of prosperity, I see the Green New Deal as ushering in an Age of Abundance.
You probably don't want to come across as anti-entrepreneurship. On the other hand, maybe Amazon should not be so stand-offish when it comes to ordinary people and their elected representatives. The local community matters. The city might have gotten 25,000 jobs. But what was Long Island City going to get specifically?
I see no evidence AOC was the central figure in the protests. (Some New Yorkers will protest a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g) But she obviously was supportive, and she obviously was celebratory after the fact. If it was a political victory, it was a grand one. Hey, not everything is business.
But I do think AOC should work harder to come across as pro-entrepreneurship.
There was little in the fuzzy proposal that guaranteed jobs for actual NYers, yet lots of hard concessions from the public.
Queens saw how the FoxConn/Wisconsin disaster is working out - a $4.5 billion nightmare - & asked Qs.
The response? “This is above you, you won’t get it.”
Or that a technology giant of big-brother-esque potential was selling (notoriously flawed & racially biased) facial recognition technology to ICE while trying to move into 1 of the most immigrant-dense areas of the world?
There’s no CHANCE that the speculative insider real-estate buys that were creating immediate spikes in rent in one of the most rent-burdened communities in NYC could have possibly been unpopular?https://t.co/wArbA7B1Q6
There’s NO WAY that this deal - one of the biggest giveaways in state history - could possibly have been bad, right?
Surely there can’t be anything wrong with suddenly announcing a massive restructuring & pricing out of a community without any advance notice or input from them.
Frankly, the knee-jerk reaction assuming that I “don’t understand” how tax giveaways to corps work is disappointing.
No, it’s not possible that I could come to a different conclusion. The debate *must* be over my intelligence & understanding, instead of the merits of the deal.
very wealthy tech people tweeting their objection to @aoc income tax proposals and yet silent on this presidents actions on the "national emergency" wall, healthcare, social justice etc is deeply upsetting
Costumer: “I’d like to order 25 pizzas. I have a 10-dollar-off coupon I’d like to use, too.”@AOC: “No, you must pay full menu price! I will not accept your evil coupon.”
Costumer: “I’ll just take my business elsewhere.”@AOC: “Hey boss I just saved us $10 can I have a raise?”
Come for me all you want, but my job is to make sure that people are protected in society.
Someone’s got to look out for the people our system is leaving behind - esp now, when most of the wealth created is going to fewer people, those left behind are the majority of Americans.
This deal wasn’t a simple tax break. It was $3 BILLION dollars. When the community wanted to negotiate, Amazon said “all or nothing.” They bailed when they didn’t get 100% of what they wanted.
Amazon was not coming to my Congressional district, had no concentrated outreach to us that I’m aware of, yet w/ no effort I defeated the richest man in the world?
Doesn’t add up. Story that’s not being told: the local community organized to reject it. https://t.co/S9Or7NKprZ
Few things effectively communicate the power we’ve built in fighting dark money & anti-worker policies like billionaire-funded groups blowing tons of cash on wack billboards (this one is funded by the Mercers).
It is good so many people are running. It is good that both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, one a socialist, another not a socialist, are running. It is extremely good that it has become normal for a woman to run for president. Two of them are showing really good numbers so far: Warren and Harris.
But the big deal is the Green New Deal. First AOC said a 70% tax on incomes over 10 million. Makes sense to me. It is not that you pay 70% on your entire income when you make 10 million. You only pay 70% for income past 10 million. I don't know about you, but I think that would be a nice problem to have. Why is anyone complaining? Then Warren proposed a wealth tax. Is it 2%? That is minuscule. Long past due. Bernie proposed yet another.
It is capitalism, not socialism, that asks that the gap between the rich and the poor not get too wide. Too wide and the wheels don't grind like they need to.
Trump is looking suspect. Will Mueller merely be background noise for the next two years? Or will Trump be toppled and Pence be beaten in 2020? He almost lost the Senate on the Wall and shutdown issue. It happened fast. If enough Senate Republicans nod, he is gone.
His handling of the shutdown reflects upon the trade war with China. If you were going to take the December deal anyways, why engage in the shutdown? If you were going to take the Chinese offer to get them to buy more soybeans (and a few other things), why create the drama?
Will Trump be impeached? If not, will he be beaten? Which Democrat will win? Will it be a Warren-Harris ticket with Sanders helping hone the basic message? AOC will loom large without even running. If she can get the young people to vote, the Democrats win easy.
Too young to run in 2020, AOC is going to be the most exciting figure in 2020. I can see her crisscrossing the country on behalf of the ticket once the primaries are over. If it is a Warren-Harris in 2020, AOC gets 2028 for Green New Deal 2.0.
AOC represents a generation that did not contribute to the global warming crisis but is set to suffer all its consequences. Howard Dean did not become president. But Deaniac Obama did. Bernie is not going to win, but AOC will carry his torch. It is not capitalism, it is not socialism, it is not this or that. It is a new label. It is a bartender millennial rising up to the challenge. It is a new political outlook (not even ideology) that is to herald the new Age of Abundance.
Harris is Left Coast.
Women have been kept away from the White House for so long, it feels like one woman getting in for one time is not going to be enough. Warren, Harris, and AOC are three generations of women.
The Green New Deal is a bold plan to shift our country to 100% clean and renewable energy. We do not fight this fight for our generation alone but for generations to come.https://t.co/Mzi2Y2LZg0
When your #GreenNewDeal legislation is so strong that the GOP has to resort to circulating false versions, but the real one nets 70 House cosponsors on Day 1 and all Dem presidential candidates sign on anyway https://t.co/BbHIn8cu0f
It wasn’t all me! It’s us. Our team’s perspectives, conversations, arguments, examples, humor, and bravery give me the tools to draft these lines of questioning.
Could AOC inspire the 18-28 crowd to vote in the same ratio as the 60-80 crowd? That is the question. Could AOC inspire that crowd to run for office in similar proportions? There are all kinds of offices to run for. There are numerous offices at the local level that do not ask you to quit your day time job.
AOC's challenge is not what committee assignment she can get herself in Congress. It is what she can inspire at the grassroots level nationally and globally. The digital natives have to come out in full force. The generation for whom climate change is existential has to take the lead on doing something about it.
I believe AOC has the option to take the Green New Deal idea to the Netroots Nation, and I don't mean the organization. I mean the digital native crowd who have never not known the Internet. Done right the Green New Deal becomes centerpiece legislation no matter which Democrat gets elected president in 2020. Senator Elizabeth Sanders has already endorsed it. And many say she is the frontrunner. She also leans towards the same end of the political spectrum as AOC.
AOC represents a paradigm shift in politics. America saw its greatest phase of prosperity when the top tax rate was indeed in the 70% range. And America was still called capitalism then. And back then, in the heat of the Cold War, pun intended, capitalism was not just an economic system, it was also a political ideology. It was life or death on the nuclear tip.
The Green New Deal will not get enacted over the next two years. So fighting for some kind of a congressional committee is a losing proposition. But that fight can be used to go to the netroots nation. See, the Congress is not responding, not at scale, not at speed. Get involved. Shape the 2020 agenda.
The Green New Deal is not one thing you do. Just like the New Deal after which it is named, it is sweeping. It is a fundamental realignment.
This is not about let's create a Facebook group. This is not about, can we get more Twitter followers. New digital tools are needed. This is about building an actual organization with local chapters, and locally elected leadership. This is about a political organization that raises funds. Somebody is going to have to pay for AOC's travels. Let a PAC do that. This is about crowdsourcing the drafting of actual legislation. How do you get a million people (at least) to take part in the drafting of legislation? And it has to feel meaningful. I myself am not clear how. The Green New Deal will not be drafted by a committee Speaker Pelosi agrees to. The Green New Deal rough draft will be crafted by a million members of the netroots nation.
Building an organization .... I am thinking, how about Green New Deal Nation for a name? GNDN. The short form sounds right on the lips. It will have to create its own software. That is not a big challenge. Anyone can sign up. You sign up with your email address, phone number, name, and zip code. Basic stuff. It is both a website and a mobile app. Then the software organizes you by zip code, 10 people to a group. The 10 closest people to each other, geographically speaking, form the basic group. Anything larger and people run the danger of not getting heard. You insert your address, and that finds you the group closest to you. The group is a monthly house party. But even on the website and in the app, each individual has the option to start solo. There is a form you fill out where you say what are the political and economic goals that are most important to you. As that moves from one person to a 10 person group, the leader of the group brings it all together. It starts with a list of all that team members want. Then the team votes, so there is a priority list as a second step. And it keeps going up. 10-10-10-10 could keep happening. As a second step, 10 team leaders come together, if not in person, then virtually. And so on. That is a bottom-up thing that must happen.
And then there is a shopping mall concept. The top thinkers in the Green New Deal camp (and many might be academics) make the best case they can make to throw out ideas. The netroots goes shopping among those ideas. These are ideas that have been thought through in terms of technology, in terms of budget numbers, and so on.
You don't need 10 years to build a think tank. You need a split second.
The thing is, this is a cost-effective path. Most people might not have to go any further than their nearby house party. Let the average donation be a glorious $5. Skip the coffee. Donate instead.
This done for a year will make the Green New Deal the centerpiece legislation for any Democrat who might end up in the White House in 2020.
Once Green New Deal 1.0 has been drafted, going back and forth between the netroots and the leadership and the shopping mall of thought leaders, then the leadership has to take it back to the netroots. You participated in the crafting of it, now sell it to the population at large. Canvass. Vote.
And there you have it. Momentum.
That conversation is the democracy. Google is not just some small town library gone digital. People ask Google questions that were never even asked. And on any given day, one third of search queries on Google are new.
This digital conversation will be unprecedented. It just has not been done before.
When you yourself are drafting legislation, that leaves little room for apathy.
