At a recent townhall event in her district of New York City, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) – or AOC – bore witness to a civil war of sorts between members of the audience who supported her and those who did not. There was a panoply of problems that were raised during AOC’s meandering townhall.
AOC: All of the Drama
Of course, AOC did little to ameliorate the situation, at once antagonizing the crowd with her partisan rhetoric and annoying the rest with her best Clueless impression, whilst wearing her oversized—ironic, I guess—glasses (does she even need glasses or is that for effect?), and generally reminding everyone why the country’s education system failed so many of my fellow Millennials.
Half the crowd was angry over AOC’s support of the Democratic Party’s endless deficit spending that is contributing to the debt. That same group were upset that she was supposedly favoring illegal immigrants over veterans and other native-born American citizens.
To be sure, the Democrats’ spending policies have done untold amounts of damage to the United States for decades.
AOC Loves to Spend Our Money
It was excessive government spending and printing of money under the auspices of the COVID-19 response that put the United States in its current predicament of high interest and high inflation rates that are currently crippling the American middle-class (which AOC doesn’t care about because, like Hillary, she views them as a basket full of deplorables who are irredeemably racist).
AOC subscribes to the radical Leftist view of finance known as the “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT), which is, frankly, too stupid to articulate here. Let’s just say it’s the economics equivalent of magic pixie dust.
The part that I found most interesting about her chaotic townhall was the opposition ostensibly from the Left-wing of the audience. You see, they too, were apoplectic over AOC’s support of unfettered federal spending.
Leftists Target AOC for Her Support Ukraine
No, these Leftists didn’t suddenly become conservative in their economic policies. Far from it. Instead, they are angry with AOC over her bizarre (from a Leftist perspective), unswerving support of the Biden Administration’s support of Ukraine in its defensive war against an evil Russia.
Thus far, the US government has spent $40 billion on supporting the Ukrainian war effort. In the grand scheme of things, it is a small sum of money.
But at a time when every penny is under scrutiny, as even the smallest expense contributes to America’s onerous debt (which could lead to the collapse of the American economy, if left unchecked), many are questioning the wisdom of giving what amounts to a blank check forever in a war that could go nuclear at any moment—with the Americans and their Western allies stuck in the middle.
What’s more, AOC ran (read, lied to) as a Progressive anti-war candidate who would challenge the neoliberal status quo of the Democratic Party’s elite. As soon as AOC became an elected representative, though, it was like a switch went off, and she became another person.
Suddenly, AOC began backtracking on some of her most Progressive stances from the campaign—notably in foreign policy—to hew closer to the Democratic Party’s official line. Many of her voters have picked up on this sad reality.
It is likely that AOC’s first year in Congress was a period of rapid learning. Not just where to get the best coffee on the Hill or where to sneak away from the prying eyes of the press. But probably, a time when she learned quickly the do’s and don’ts of being an elected member of the House Democrats.
One of them is don’t dare cross the moneyed interests.
From Renegade to Tool in Record Time
War is good for business. It’s also a boon for elected leaders looking to score cheap political points and to set themselves up with a fallback job in the defense industry, should they have to leave office.
AOC went from being a Liberal firebrand who was going to change her own party from within to a warmongering spendthrift and tool of the Democratic Party’s Old Guard. Of course, she’s using the old Democratic aristocracy to her advantage. Once she has achieved her preferred position in the DNC, she’ll turn on them as quickly as she turned on the Progressives who put her into power.
AOC is going to have watch herself politically, though, as challenges keep erupting from her Left, notably over her support for Ukraine. She is a linguini-spined opportunist who is interested only in her self-advancement in the Democratic Party’s power structure.
These behaviors have worked to her advantage thus far. It will catch up to her, especially on the tricky issue of Ukraine, in which the Democratic Party’s elite finds themselves so far removed from the popular will of their own base (which is traditionally antiwar).
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A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
