Are progressives too hard on AOC?
TYT's take, and mine, on how we should deal with the Squad
I don’t often get into debates on Twitter. I hate drama, so I try not to interact with people who are hostile (don’t feed the trolls, like they used to say). So most Twitter disagreements I have are minor and I tend to take an “agree to disagree” approach.
But recently I got some pushback for a tweet I wrote criticizing AOC and decided to defend what I had said because I strongly believe AOC is letting progressives down big time.
AOC’s staff recently told the press that she would not be running for Senate in 2024. There had been some whispers that maybe she would, which apparently were either false or didn’t come to fruition. So instead the incumbent corporate Democrat — Kirsten Gillibrand — will likely be reelected.
So here’s what I tweeted (click the image if you want to see the full tweet — Twitter doesn’t play nice with embeds on Substack…)
A few people pushed back against this. @GentlemansHall replied:
“You realize the number of Social Democrats in the House is less than 15? What are they all supposed to do? […] I'll never understand this take from the left, it's how we're left with crumbs.”
So the reason we have “crumbs” is because progressives are too unreasonable in pushing her too hard to fulfill her campaign promises, so she’s not even trying to represent us anymore? Or because she’s so immovable on progressive issues that she and other progressives are making the establishment angry, preventing more gains we would have if we or the Squad played nicer? Neither seems based in reality to me.
Another (@cbickle) likened my take on AOC to Leftist-turned-Conservative-Sellout Glen Greenwald
“Glenn Greenwald agrees... AOC sucks […] What you (like TYT) refuse to consider: if she acted the way you want her to, it wouldn't get the results you (we) desire […] I’m not saying she’s beyond reproach, just that her ability to fight the establishment at this point is constrained by the liberal Dem consensus in both D.C. and the corporate press
I guess my username is associated closely enough with The Young Turks for some people (from live reads of my comments the past several year) that even though I made no mention of TYT, and I don’t agree with them on everything (the reliance on nuclear energy is a recent one that came up), what I said was linked right away to what they’ve been saying on TYT about the Squad.
Coincidentally though, in this past Thursday’s Post Game, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian addressed TYT’s criticism of the Squad. I was curious to hear what they would say, because they tend to either praise what progressives (in particular AOC and Bernie Sanders) just did, or they criticize them for not fighting back against the establishment. So I was curious what their overall take was, all things considered.
Here are some excerpts I put together from a fairly long discussion about this. The take away turns out to be similar to how I feel about it.
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If you’re in the TLDW (too long didn’t watch) camp, Cenk and Ana’s argument, as I understand it, is basically that progressives sent the Squad and Bernie to Washington to buck the system — AOC and her fellow progressive lawmakers are supposed to be the ones who call for progressive change even if the odds are against them, to be the ones who call out their establishment colleagues when they stand in the way of progressive change. Instead, they all too often fall in line so that they don’t ruffle any feathers.
Progressives’ job, as I see it, is to push them from the left. They are getting plenty of push from the right from the establishment, from other representatives and Senators, from the President, from the corporate media. We need to remind them what they were sent to Washington for — to take on that corrupt system. They started out pretty well, at least in some cases. But especially since Biden has been elected, with a few exceptions, they either go along with the corporate Democrats (the ones they promised to take on) or one or two of them may quietly give a protest vote, without organizing as a block.
If we don’t push the Squad, Bernie, and the few other progressives currently in Washington, what motivation do they have to resist the calls from pretty much everyone in Washington to just fall in line with the corporate profits-over-people status quo? How can we get voters to support progressives if we see that once they get elected, they basically just support the system the same way any old Democrat would?
I think Cenk and Ana’s take on this sums up overall my thinking as well. If AOC or other progressives don’t fight, we have to call them out on it, but not just for the sake of criticizing them. Praising them when they do take a stance, and pushing them from the left when they don’t, is the whole idea in my opinion.
If we can’t hold our elected officials accountable, and try to push them to move the needle on core positions — the minimum wage, Green New Deal, Medicare For All — that they campaigned on (and which, we shouldn’t forget, are policies supported by a majority of voters) then we might as well just have a corporate Democrat in there. What motivation do the majority of voters who support these positions have to send them or other progressives to Congress if they almost always do what the corrupt establishment tells them to do? We need to remind them why voters sent them to Washington in the first place.