Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) – or AOC, as the kids like to call her – thinks that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is “in no position to try to negotiate the debt ceiling.”
In a fashion befitting a Marxist-Leninist like herself, AOC will countenance no conversation with filthy ideological deviationists or brook any compromise with those class traitors, such as McCarthy and the House GOP.
They will either bow down to AOC’s presence or be canceled by her comrades in the media.
The context here is key. At a time when everyone (myself included) was convinced that President Joe Biden was going to listen to his Far Left base, as represented by the likes of AOC, and essentially take the country off the fiscal cliff in a lame attempt to blame Republican obstructionists going into the 2024 election, Biden appears to be “optimistic” about his recent negotiations with McCarthy and the House GOP.
Given how much the Far Left Progressive wing of the Democratic Party has led Biden around by the ideological nose, we’ll see if Biden actually follows through on this sudden turn toward the political center.
Although, it shouldn’t be that surprising, judging from the long—very long—arc of Biden’s career in government.
Biden the Dealmaker?
After all, at key points during the intractable debt battles between House Republicans and former President Barack Obama, it was Joe Biden, serving as Obama’s vice-president, who broke the stalemate by quietly backchanneling with his old Republican colleagues in the Senate.
Biden secretly got compromises negotiated with the Senate Republicans while the zealous House GOP and the fanatical Obama Administration refused to talk to each other in those days.
Now, Biden is president, and he just might be willing to finally stand up to his psychotic base.
That’s the real reason that AOC is having her pathetic temper tantrum. It isn’t a display of strength on her part. Rather, it is a reminder of just how impotent she is as a member of the United States House of Representatives.
AOC is all media flash and no legislative substance. All she can do is to publicly complain about how her party’s leadership is abandoning she and her rabid base.
Of course, there’s a far cry between having some meetings and getting something done.
But AOC’s public reaction seems to indicate a real fear on the part of the Left-wing base of the Democratic Party that Biden just might be negotiating in good faith. I have written previously in these pages about the mindset of the ideological extremes of the two parties.
For both extremes, there is little incentive to negotiate. They’d rather witness the country go off the fiscal cliff and try to blame their political rivals for the damage done to our economy, hoping that blaming their rivals would yield political gains.
No one will win in such a scenario. It seems that Biden might be coming around to the insanity of that strategy.
AOC Want America to Burn
As if to head off any meaningful breakthrough in the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling negotiations, the senior most Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Brendan Doyle, is attempting what’s known as a discharge petition which would force a vote to increase the debt limit, thereby heading off any potential default on America’s debt.
It requires 218 votes to pass. Democrats will likely get 213 votes. Republicans will not jump ship and vote with the Democrats. AOC’s ranting about how the Democrats only need five votes to change the dynamic indicates how unbelievably ignorant she is. In the House, when the two party’s fortify in their respective ideological corners, those five votes may as well be 50 votes.
It would be preferable if both parties chose to do a clean debt limit increase until the 2024 Presidential Election was decided. But the Republicans appear dead set on having this fight now. That they’re negotiating—and that Biden is joining the negotiations—indicates that the GOP might be able to get some necessary concessions from the Democrats on reining America’s profligate spending.
Republicans Might Get Some Things They Need
The Republicans are unlikely to get the real changes they want (namely massive spending cuts). Still, they can likely get some compromise that satisfies their voters without risking the nation’s economic well-being by driving us off the fiscal cliff and presiding over the default of America’s debt.
We’ve come a long way to go in a short amount of time. But judging from AOC’s unhinged public reaction to the Biden-McCarthy meetings maybe—maybe—sanity prevails, and the United States avoids a destructive debt default and perhaps the GOP can get some of what it wants to slow the government’s out-of-control spending.
That’s what I call a “win.” Let’s hope the crazies in both parties are kept far away from these talks because, with just a few weeks left before the debt ceiling vote occurs, the whole thing could fall apart and leave ordinary Americans holding the proverbial bag.
Bottom line: stop listening to self-aggrandizing fools, like AOC, when seeking useful strategies for keeping America’s economy going.
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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 (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
