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I mean she's not great. She's probably the weakest among the squad cohort at actually playing the game of politics. She gives a good speech but she regularly gets her ankles broken because she seems to have, like the article demonstrates, a very calculating nature, or at least developed one after sher first two years in Congress.
And that's bad. Like, very bad if you seek higher office, because people are done with the whole not saying what you mean thing.
So you want someone stupider, or at least better at seeming like they don't think? I don't think I take your meaning. Politicians are meant to be 'calculating', it's a famously viperous workplace. I prefer one that thinks, and I don't mind if you can tell when they're doing it.
People should be less obsessed with optics, and more oriented towards what politicians do.
Maybe you just don't follow politics much, but this critique of AOC isn't new and we've been getting on her about it for years. Instincts matter in politics, a lot. Getting through a presidential primary is hard.
Just try and notice how your now defending the things that we specifically went out of our way to remove from our politics as progressives, because it's coming from someone you identify with as being in your team.
Look, politicians don't need cheerleaders. They need critics who can make them stronger, and if AOC does want to run, shes got some real issues that have been piling up shell need to address. And yes, this developed tendency to become more and more couched hlin her language, to become more and more politically calculating, it's a real problem.
You’re not wrong. But I also think this point of view is perceived as a kind of auto-fellatio.
I think the negative reaction from us, the great unwashed, is due to people being so sick of political processes devolving into a meta-game that revolves primarily around the ability to think cynically and act tactically.
Meanwhile we’re out in the world, dealing with fallout from actions in that sphere that don’t make any kind of sense to the material reality of most people. People with rent to pay and groceries to afford and gas to pump.
Playing 4-D chess with the law of averages, playing the long game, and cornering other narcissistic kitten-eaters in saying and supporting things that, on their face, sound horrible… We're just not sophisticated enough to understand it’s part of the process. We have problems that need solving right now and whatever tactical victory that moves an abstract chess piece forward doesn’t seem to do anything to remedy that.
I take your points, but we're in the pre primary stage. If that's not the time to be critical if the details, when do we get to be?
Also, it's a political forum. It's supposed to be a safe space for auto fellating in these topics. And maybe I misread or over read, but that auto fellating thing, it's the critique I'm making of AOC too. She become too calculating, too much like Pelosi.
I also think AOC can fix these issues, but they were issues she had 2 years ago too. and they aren't issues her cohort shares, they are unique to her.
Bernie takes hard interviews. Ilhan takes hard interviews. Khanna takes hard interviews.
AOC only goes for softball safe space media opportunities any more. And she's weaker because if it. She can fix that issue and strengthen her game in this regard, but that's on her.
Fair enough points, I can take them at face value. I just grew up very disillusioned with leftist infighting generally, so I tend to see any leftward scrutiny with a jaundiced eye. In a first past the post system, the side that is least critical of their candidate is going to mainly win I feel, and though I know the value of being critical too well, living in this system makes me of two minds about it.
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, and I'm genuinely interested to know how you arrived at it. Like I really want to know how you arrived there.
I'm interested because, I don't think of it as a "sides" issue; what it takes for a Republican/ conservative to win an election and what it takes for a Dem/ progressive to win, they have practically nothing to do with one another. Its two entirely different sets of cohorts you have to appeal to, its two different ways of viewing and thinking about politics and power. I also don't believe that voters exist along a left-right spectrum. I think thats an appealing trope to entrench liberalism, one political class, of which both the Republican and traditional Democratic parties are a part of. So if you think along a unary spectrum to try and understand what people believe, you'll make very serious mistakes when you try to predict their behavior.
In my view, if you are running on the left, its the politician that withstands the most criticism, and stays standing, who is the strongest candidate. Graham Platner or Mamdani is an excellent example of this. And excellent examples of avoiding criticism, Hillary, Biden, Harris, they all led to republican victory. Criticism makes candidates stronger. Allowing them to persist uncritically leaves them, and you if you are they're supporter, vulnerable.
That being said, what it takes for a Democrat to win vs Republican? Absolutely different things. Apples and bananas.
It's a difficult thing to articulate, so I've put off responding. Sorry. I think there's a lot of daylight between how we view the US electorate for one thing - but perhaps not as much as I first thought. You're right that the distinctive difference between left and right-leaning voters is that only one side is highly critical of their candidates and easily falls out of love with them, while the other is a lot more willing to be led and uncritical. That's all pretty much what you'd expect from the research by Dr. Altemeyer on authoritarian personalities.
I do not mean to propose that we should be uncritical of self-styled leftist candidates, only that we should be more willing to forgive. I think of people like Al Franken and (across the pond) Jeremy Corbyn who were doing good things and were successfully ousted based on smears and vibes. I do not mean they are perfect or that we should vote 'blue no matter who', but that we should give grace to people who get smeared because we live in an adverse media environment where billionaire-owned news and social media clearly give preferential treatment to the right, and often silences or viciously smears anyone who might be a problem. And we let them rob us of the voices we need in politics. That's all.
A lot of my thoughts revolve around the game-theoretic implications of elections under FPTP. I feel that the dominant strategy in that 'game' is a bipolar oligarchy of mutually complicit actors who, in lay terms, run a good-cop/bad-cop con on the voter. You see it in the US very clearly, and to a lesser extent in the UK (because it's a different game, and the bipolar tendency is not as strong I think - though the chatter after the recent elections does seem to be reframing things in terms of Green v. Reform as a major upset, so it might just end up being a continuation of the same dynamic under different circumstances).
So in that situation of good cop/bad cop that I see happening, yes different things motivate different voters but - crucially - these two parties are operating on two sides of the same basic con (and I don't think it's a con that necessarily involves deliberate awareness of the con, I just see it as an emergent aspect of this game).
Basically I just hate the game, it needs to change. I don't know how cogent you'll find this, sorry I don't have a lot of time to edit down. Until someone's doing that, I'm going to advocate for being more forgiving. Still critical, but knowing that every time we cut someone loose we're weaker, and they're always stacking the deck against us.
There you go. Bad, weird opinions. You asked!