America's Sweetheart, Part I

Not a popular position in Congress-- but OUTSIDE the Beltway...

I have to admit I stopped watching 60 Minutes quite a few decades ago. But I don't remember it being a place where they spotlighted too many members of the House, let alone a freshman who was on her first week in the House. Many members of Congress are just seat warmers who do what their party's leadership tells them to do, but some actually do a lot of hard work and accomplish worthwhile stuff for the country. 60 Minutes doesn't do profiles of them either.

As I write this, she has 2.36 million twitter followers. Axios did a story yesterday comparing her twitter power to the establishment and concluded that she's has more twitter power over the last 30 days than the five most prolific news organizations combined. A couple of weeks ago some white GOP walking corpse with an inflated imagine of himself was on Fox referring to her as "that little girl." Axios explained that "she has far more power on Twitter than the most prominent Democrats, including the congressional leaders and the likely 2020 presidential candidates. Dwarfed by her:

• every other member of the House
• every GOP House leader combined
• every Democratic Party House leader combined
• Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Laura Ingraham combined
• every living former U.S. President combined

It would be so smart of the DC Dems to harness that power, don't you think? But they're not smart; they're stupid. After all, they aspire to be a little, tiny but less horrible than the Republicans. And that's exactly what they usually achieve. Instead of working with AOC, many are hysterical with jealousy and barely controllable hatred. One of the guys who still plays poker with Joe Crowley, the corrupt conservative "next speaker" she eviscerated in a primary, can't talk about Ocasio-Cortez without people wondering why his mother never washed his mouth out with soap. The hatred is ugly and palpable-- and he's not a Republican.

So what good is all this social media-- and unsocial media-- star power doing her if Democrats like Pelosi and her cronies were able to turn her down flat without a second thought for a position on the House Ways and Means Committee while advancing a gaggle of worthless and corrupt political hacks to the top committees? Over the weekend, The Hill helped explain what good it is: her ability to spark debate on issues that congressional leaders had no intention of debating-- like a 70% marginal tax rate. Republicans and Trump-TV just lie to their simple-minded fans about what a marginal tax rate is-- Ocasio's plan, which was so far from radical that it has some progressives grousing, is to tax income above $10,000,000 at a possible 60-70% rate. Democrats have been barely better than Republicans so far. I don't hear anyone saying, "Hey, what about having that top marginal rate kick in a $2 million, not 10 million" or saying 60-70% is way to low and recent U.S. history proves that the country thrives most when the marginal rate is more like 90% and when it kicks in at around 1 million dollars. Instead the Democrats are doing what they do best... whining.

House Democrats are treading carefully when it comes to talk of a 70 percent marginal tax rate on income above $10 million, an idea floated by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in a recent 60 Minutes interview.

Many Democrats are supportive of the freshman phenom’s call for higher taxes on the rich, but even some progressives are stopping short of endorsing that high a marginal rate.

...Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), a leader of the progressive caucus in the last Congress, said that while it’s important to make sure that “everybody’s carrying their load,” he didn’t know if 70 percent “would be the right number or not.”

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-KY) said he wasn’t sure about a specific top rate but said that Ocasio-Cortez is “not off-base.”

Other Democratic lawmakers were more critical.

“I thought it was comical,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means panel.

“You can have reasonable taxation, and then you can send signals that we’re just going to go after people who have a few dollars,” he said.

Is $10 million "a few dollars?" Pascrell hasn't been given $2,221,655 (also more than "a few dollars") from the Finance Sector because of his stunning good looks but because, as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, he's never brought this kind of heresy up-- and never will. AOC made a lot more sense than these "experts" did, noting that "a high marginal rate wouldn’t hit most Americans, and that it would also only pinch a portion of a wealthy person’s income. A 70 percent marginal rate on income of $10 million would be effective only on a person’s income above $10 million." That isn't too hard to understand-- unless you really, really, really don't want to understand, like Pascrell and his campaign donors.

Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a 70 percent marginal tax rate does have the support of another freshman progressive lawmaker: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), who said she could potentially see herself introducing or sponsoring legislation down the line.

“I think we have a decisive mandate from this electorate, this 116th Congressional class to be bold. I think every creative solution needs to be on the table,” Pressley told The Hill. “And from a values based perspective to tax those, you know, who earn $10 million a year, I think it's exactly what we should be doing.”

Pressley said while she and most members are currently focused on the partial government shutdown, she looks forward to continuing having a dialogue with like-minded members as they consider crafting policy.

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), when asked about a top rate, noted that there had been a rate of 90 percent in the past and thinks that lawmakers should be “as bold as we can so that we can implement the courageous policies that are going to usher in prosperity for all Americans.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who offered a bill in 2017 that would have created a 49 percent rate for income over $1 billion, said that she hasn’t proposed rates as high as 70 percent in the past but “would not reject that out of hand.”

Some Ways and Means Committee Democrats said that the focus should be on holding hearings looking at the tax code following the enactment of Trump’s tax law, rather than pursuing Ocasio-Cortez’s idea.

“I think what makes sense is for the committee to step back and start holding hearings on what’s out there right now, seeing what the impact is, whether that meets our needs and obligations as a country, and maybe not just pursue policy because a newly minted freshman thinks it’s a good idea, who isn’t on the committee,” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI), who is also a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.

There is nothing remotely "moderate" about Ron Kind when it comes to fiscal policy or corporate America. He's as far right as almost any conservative Republican. He also stinks of gross corruption, sitting on the Ways And Means Committee while taking $3,308,271 from the Finance Sector and sitting on that committee's Health subcommittee while gobbling up another $2,676,043 from the health sector. People like Kind fear and hate Ocasio. How could it be otherwise? Her worldview would crash their neat little scam. As Micah Uetricht put it in a Jacobin post, Welcome Their Hatred last week, "Democratic leaders are outraged at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s actions in Congress and are trying to reel her in. It’s a clear sign she’s antagonizing all the right forces in the party." Uetricht focussed on the same Politico hit piece we "re-editted" for them last week.

The article paints a portrait of a fairly pathetic party, led by officials who style themselves as #Resistance leaders but shit their pants when a twenty-nine-year-old with a Twitter following joins them and actually takes pro-working class, stop-the-world-from-burning-to-a-crisp policies seriously. “People are afraid of her,” one jittery, anonymous Democratic aide says, perhaps while wearing a fake mustache and trench coat, calling from a payphone on the outskirts of the capital.

But the fact that Ocasio-Cortez has drawn this kind of ire so quickly means she-- and the broader movement she is a part of-- is antagonizing all the right forces within the Democratic Party.

Her rhetoric thus far has zeroed in on the contradictions between the kinds of social-democratic policies growing numbers of Americans want-- Medicare for All, free college, a Green New Deal, taxing the rich-- and the complete unwillingness of the party’s leadership to do anything to achieve those policies. The Politico article focuses on issues of congressional decorum, but fundamentally, the Democratic gnashing of teeth comes down to their opposition to those policies.

No one should be shocked that party leaders are reacting to AOC this way. The Democrats are hopelessly pro-corporate, America’s “second-most-enthusiastic capitalist party” and all that. This is who they are. But just in the past few weeks, by helping make issues like a Green New Deal or a 70 percent tax on all income over $10 million part of the mainstream discussion, Ocasio-Cortez shows that it is possible to open up new, leftist political possibilities while operating within that party-- and, whether she means to or not, highlight the reality that progressive forces will have to break with the Democrats at some point if they really want to achieve their goals.

The Democratic leadership isn’t afraid of AOC herself. They’re afraid of the movement that is coalescing around her and Bernie Sanders, and groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Justice Democrats; they’re terrified of multiple Ocasio-Cortezes running in elections around the country, backed by more socialists and climate change activists and angry rank-and-file workers demanding much more from the party and taking to the streets to do so.

So, the pressure on Ocasio-Cortez from Democratic power brokers isn’t going to let up. If she sticks to her agenda and rhetoric, Democrats will only cook up more ways to fight her. The threats from House members that she will end up isolated on the Hill aren’t empty. Whatever the quoted representatives say about primarying “fellow Democrats,” in four years, donors and party leaders would surely be happy to go all in on a challenger who’s willing to stick to the party’s script.

...Ocasio-Cortez won’t win these Democratic leaders over. She should welcome their hatred.

Yesterday, her hometown paper, the NY Times, which largely ignored her primary challenge to Crowley, weighed in with a piece by Shane Goldmacher warning that she's pushing the party left, whether they like it or not. And they certainly do not. "In the two months since her election," he wrote, "Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has had the uncanny ability for a first-term member of Congress to push the debate inside the Democratic Party sharply to the left, forcing party leaders and 2020 presidential candidates to grapple with issues that some might otherwise prefer to avoid." Some of the 2020 presidential contenders aren't appealing to the same status quo forces corrupt congressional hacks are, so they are making an effort to be seen to be embracing Ocasio and her ideas with more love and less venom. Bernie and she have been campaigning around the country together and Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and some of the others on the progressive end of the spectrum seem excited about the energy she's bringing to ideas they are using in their own campaigns.

"A bartender from the Bronx has been able to create a litmus test around climate and economic policy for every 2020 Democrat,” said Waleed Shahid, who was one of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s early campaign advisers and is now the communications director for Justice Democrats, a liberal activist group. “If that’s not seen as a metric of success, then I don’t know what is.”

Far beyond policy, she has emerged as a potent symbol for a diversifying Democratic Party: a young woman of color who is giving as good as she gets in a political system that has rarely rewarded people who look like her. Her mastery of social media has allowed her to connect with audiences who might otherwise be alienated from Washington.

Here's the dumbest paragraph in Goldmacher's piece, one he should be made to stand in the corner and explain why its stupid and why he will never make the same stupid mistakes: "Still, her unexpectedly outsize profile could bring perils. Her threats to knock out more moderate Democrats in future primaries in particular seem to have rankled. Some whisper her tweet-first, ask-questions-later mentality reminds them of President Trump." Here's why it's stupid and misleading and shameful:

• She didn't make any threats
• "Moderate," the most favorably-viewed word in American politics, is used here to describe the Republican-wing of the Democratic Party. Ocasio's marginal tax rate discussion point is moderate. Pascrell's and Kind's is reactionary. A thesaurus describes the antonyms of moderate as: "unfair," unreasonable," "excessive in behavior," "intemperate," "unjust," "beyond reasonable limits," "incautious"-- all loaded-- negatively loaded-- words and phrases conservatives have successfully fostered in a largely unthinking mass media.
• She is spontaneous but nothing whatsoever like Trump and Goldmacher is slandering her when he spreads that kind of calumny.

He does seem downright giddy though to pass along that "Many Republicans are downright giddy at the notion that a self-described democratic socialist is driving Democratic policy discussions. Congressional Republicans saw up close the dangers of having the more staunchly right-wing elements of the Tea Party come to define their tenure in the House majority." Exception she isn't anything like the Tea Party and Goldmacher has neglected to mention that every time two the GOP and their media shills goes after her, she comes out on top and her power grows while they just look foolish. Hopefully they'll find more videos of her dancing when she was in college and release them as new scandals. At least he admits that "Republicans face their own risks if their attacks on her are perceived as sexist or condescending."

Supporters and rivals alike agree that she has upended the traditional rules of engagement on Capitol Hill with a millennial’s intuitive sense of what sells online-- all before she has hung anything on her barren office walls or even found a permanent place to live.

In an interview, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez rejected “the general notion of, ‘Oh, you’re here and need to be quiet and keep your head down.’”

“For me, especially as a member who won her seat via a primary election against another Democrat, my constituency was telling me the exact opposite thing,” she said.

Republicans, she said, fundamentally misunderstand her: “They think I’m just a Tea Party mirror. It’s an easy and convenient way to frame something. But I don’t think it’s the same.”

Still, she has fully embraced the radical label-- especially if it means pulling the Democratic Party to the left. “I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country,” she told 60 Minutes.

...She had a full 60 Minutes segment devoted to her on her first Sunday as a congresswoman. She was the first lawmaker that MSNBC turned to after Mr. Trump’s first Oval Office address for analysis on what was Rachel Maddow’s most-watched show ever. And she has become a viral internet sensation many times over, including one video of her dancing outside her office that has topped 22 million views across the globe.

She’s a draw on the right as much as the left: Fox News spent more than two hours covering her first five days in Congress, according to a tally by Media Matters, the liberal media watchdog group. MSNBC spent 52 minutes and CNN 96 minutes talking about her in that span.

(Interest in Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is so intense that even her chief of staff has appeared on CNN-- something almost unheard-of in Congress, where 30-second hits on cable are a sought-after commodity for members of Congress themselves, not their aides.)

In a recent Instagram chat-- live from her kitchen with several thousand fans watching-- Ms. Ocasio-Cortez outlined her strategy to “shape the national narrative” while chopping vegetables for an Instant Pot recipe.

“In Trump’s America,” she explained, “I’m not a big fan of bipartisanship.”

On the environment, she said that her goal was to move the boundaries of debate far enough to the left that a carbon tax would look like the moderate option, compared to “wildly ambitious” direct government intervention imagined in the Green New Deal.

Perhaps Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s most talked-about idea, raised on 60 Minutes, has been that people she called “the tippy tops”-- those earning above $10 million-- should pay a 70-percent rate on income above that threshold. The remark sparked days of debate among economists and pundits, on the right and the left, about tax rates unseen in America in decades but common during the post-World War II era.

“I’ve been trying to open up this rhetorical space for many, many years,” said Stephanie Kelton, a former chief economist for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee.

“They used to talk about the Oprah effect,” said Ms. Kelton, now a professor at Stony Brook University. “I think it’s the Ocasio effect at this point.”

Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and federal housing secretary who is running for president, was shown the clip of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s tax comment during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos-- and then went even further than her.

“As you know, George, there was a time in this country where the top marginal tax rate was over 90 percent,” Mr. Castro explained. “Even during Reagan’s era in the 1980s it was around 50 percent.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was still glowing about it days later.

“It’s so incredible to see,” she said in the interview. “First we had Elizabeth Warren come out and talk about a Green New Deal. Next we have Julian Castro defending marginal tax rates and he basically is saying we’ve had 90 percent-plus in the past. It’s totally changing the conversation.”

...“She absolutely does have the ability to put issues on the map,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Seattle-area Democrat and a leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “It’s not that there haven’t been champions of these issues before. But when you’ve got 2.1 million Twitter followers and a press that will cover anything you say, it’s a huge opportunity for us.”

The sheer brightness of her star has evoked more than a few eye rolls among House institutionalists. Most colleagues do not know quite what to make of her just yet.

“I love Alexandria Ocasio. I saw her in her 60 Minutes interview. I thought she was great,” said Representative Adriano Espaillat, a 64-year-old Democrat from a neighboring district that includes part of the Bronx. “She is like one of our daughters. You know, she could be my daughter, one of anybody’s children. She’s an adult, obviously. But you know I love her. She’s sharp, has a great smile, intelligent, is liberal, progressive. I think she has great ideas, bold ideas.”