Jerri-Lynn here. AOC takes no prisoners in outlining what the next stimulus package must include: assistance for the vulnerable rather than massive bailouts for large companies. No wonder, Wall Street is financing a primary challenger, as The Intercept explains, WALL STREET TITANS FINANCE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY CHALLENGER TO REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ.
By Jake Johnson, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only Democrat in Congress to oppose the previous multi-trillion-dollar coronavirus stimulus package, said during a conference call with progressive leaders Monday that communities across the U.S. cannot afford another incremental relief bill that delivers crumbs for the vulnerable and massive bailouts for big businesses.
“Incrementalism is not helpful in this moment,” said Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat. “It’s not helpful. For people to say: ‘Oh, well, we got something, so we might as well support it. You know, we got a nickel, a dime in a trillion-dollar bill so a nickel is more than nothing, so we should support it’ is unacceptable… It’s like putting a Band-Aid on an enormous wound.”
As the legislation that Congress passed last month fails to deliver adequate relief to workers, the unemployed, and small businesses, progressive lawmakers and outside advocacy groups are pushing for the inclusion of a slate of priorities in the next major stimulus bill, including $2,000 monthly recurring payments and opening Medicare to the unemployed and uninsured.
But the Democratic leadership is at the moment focused on negotiating interim legislation that would provide additional funding for a flawed small business loan program and hospitals while leaving out money for states and cities, hazard pay for frontline workers, and other progressive demands.
Ocasio-Cortez said during the conference call Monday that based on what she has read of the interim bill in press reports, she is leaning toward opposing the measure. The New York Democrat and other lawmakers on the call stressed that they have yet to see the full text of the bill, and that negotiations on the measure are taking place between Democratic leaders and the Trump administration behind closed doors.
“It is insulting to think that we can pass such a small amount of money in the context of not knowing when Congress is going to reconvene,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “And pass such a small amount of money, pat ourselves on the back, and then leave town again. I am not here to support that… I’m not here for a $5 bill. And I will not insult my community with one.”
“Incrementalism is not helpful in this moment…for people to say ‘Well, we got something, so we might as well support it. We got a nickel, a dime in a trillion-dollar bill so a nickel is more than nothing, so we should support it’ is unacceptable.” –@AOC on #PutPeopleFirst pic.twitter.com/KwOOwsaE7u
— “Ideas That Are Lying Around” (@_waleedshahid) April 20, 2020
The impetus of Monday’s call was to outline progressive priorities for what has been dubbed “Phase Four” of the federal government’s coronavirus relief effort, which has thus far been marred by dysfunction and legislative solutions that do not come close to matching the scale of the public health and economic crisis facing the United States.
“The vast majority of people have still not received any relief and bills are piling up,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on the call. “If we’re going to climb out of this crisis, we need bold solutions.”
The conversation was attended by a handful of Democratic lawmakers, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Mark Pocan (Wis.), the other CPC co-chair. Leaders from progressive advocacy groups Indivisible, United We Dream, Community Change Action, and MoveOn also took part.
Echoing Ocasio-Cortez’s condemnation of incrementalism, the lawmakers and activists emphasized the urgency of the moment and called on the Democratic leadership to use the significant power they have to deliver a bill that—unlike the CARES Act—puts the needs of frontline workers, the unemployed, the uninsured, and other vulnerable groups ahead of corporate interests.
“Settling for less means that we lose lives,” said Tlaib.
Earlier this month, as Common Dreams reported, the Executive Board of the CPC outlined a number of demands for the next stimulus package. The Progressive Caucus is demanding monthly $2,000 stimulus payments to all U.S. households, a nationwide moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, nationwide vote-by-mail, and a suspension of all consumer debt collection. On the conference call Monday, participants stressed that relief must be made available to those who were neglected or entirely left out of previous bills, such as undocumented immigrants.
Whether the Democratic leadership is willing accept any of the progressives’ demands, and how quickly another massive stimulus package could come together, remains to be seen.
In a Dear Colleague letter on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote vaguely that as negotiations with the Trump administration over the interim legislation move forward, “we are working on CARES 2 to prepare for the path ahead to support the lives and livelihoods of the American people.”
“It is recognized that the key to opening our economy is testing, treatment, contact tracing, and quarantine,” said Pelosi. “It is self-evident that America’s heart is full of love. Let us be worthy of the American people’s generosity of spirit.”
On the conference call, progressive lawmakers voiced frustration about the lack of transparency surrounding the interim bill, lamenting—like Ocasio-Cortez—that most of what they know about the legislation has come from news reports.
Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, raised concern Monday that if Democratic leaders give Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration what they want in the interim legislation, progressives will “have less leverage for the coming fights.”
“We know that Republicans are taking advantage of this moment to shovel more money to big corporations. They are simply indifferent to the human suffering that is unfolding before our eyes,” said Greenberg. “That’s why it’s so critical that Democratic leadership use their leverage and the full power of the House to demand solutions that rise to the needs of the moment.”
Jayapal echoed Greenberg, saying the Progressive Caucus has “real concerns about giving away leverage now without getting some of the priorities that we need.”
“We have to recognize the urgency of the moment, the scale of the crisis,” said Jayapal. “We cannot just give away the things that Republicans want most when we know that they’re not going to fix the problem that is in front of us.”
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Frankly these days I could care less what a politician says. I want to see how they actually vote. I have already noted my belief that AOC voted yes on the CARES Act and have stated why. But here I would like to quote from an article that I saw today-
“Along with some concerns within the GOP, the criticism from progressive lawmakers raised the possibility that the House won’t be able to pass the interim measure by unanimous consent as it did last month with the $2 trillion package, which could slow down the process.
Ocasio-Cortez said she wasn’t sure if she would demand a recorded vote, however, unless she had the necessary support to force one.
“If one person stands up and asks for a record vote, that is not sufficient,” she said. “To stand up and ask for a record vote when there are not 44 members, it would be essentially to needlessly endanger folks.” “
I have tried to nut out that last statement of hers but without success. Does that mean that if she is alone – and no progressive will support her at all – that she will once again support a voice vote? Is this what happened last month? And who are these “folks” that are needlessly endangered?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/ocasio-cortez-house-progressives-criticize-interim-coronavirus-bill-n1187981
Agreed! I am even more cynical. Is Pelosi is allowing these “rebellions” in an attempt to hold the progressives interest in the party?
So unless the whole party turns anti-incrementalist I could care less about the talk of one or two new members. Until people get pissed off enough , they will continue to eat from the corporate trough.
Thanks for the link, I’ve been trying to find these words.
She means endanger fellow politicians. 100%.
It is hard to nut out. Jimmy Dore and Steph Z. were also puzzled last night. The reason it’s hard is because it’s hard to feature that she could have fallen so far, so fast. But she has.
She’s talking about politicians being “endangered”, in the sense of either losing their seat (angry constituents) if they are seen to not support a recorded vote, or in danger of reprisals from above (angry Pelosi) if they did support it. She means one of those things or both of them. There’s no other way her words make sense.
The time to oppose it was when you had leverage The cares act passed unanimously in congress – albeit a male “neigh” in the house voice vote. This is not opposition it is virtue signaling.
It passed by unanimous content which allows that members do not need to be present for a vote. Unanimous consent does not equal unanimous support for a bill.
Ironic, that.
Cheating, really. But no one supported Massie’s demand for a count.
Wait, didn’t AOC, along with every other Democrat, vote in favor of very same bailout package she is now “opposing”? Note, they never say she voted against it because, well…she didn’t.
Articles like this one are theater, manipulative nonsense designed to confuse readers into thinking the courageous so-called progressive Democrats have integrity and backbone, when in fact they all fell into line and voted in favor of what AOC is “opposing” here, i.e., giving trillions of dollars of free money to the 1%.
So voting against your stated principles is perfectly okay so long as a few weeks later you verbally “oppose” what you just voted for? Jesus wept…
Thank you The Intercept for your valuable contribution to honest journalism, keeping the public informed and holding our leaders to account.
The question is why is NC drinking this Kool Aid, too?
In the House, it was a voice vote (I watched it live…the applauding at the end was particularly galling!). Anyway, AOC didn’t have a chance to register a vote on the record, which was the point of the voice vote. The speaker (someone standing in for Pelosi for whatever reason) said the Ayes had it, and that was that.
And while the following was after the fact, AOC was the sole Democrat to go on record with The Intercept that she would have voted No if she had the chance (link):
So while she didn’t have the opportunity to officially register her dislike of the first bill, she appears to be going out of her way to make clear she’s a No ahead of the next one.
If by vote, you mean an official, on the record list of members, then AOC did not vote no. Not her decision, since the whole purpose of a voice vote was to avoid letting the people at home know who was responsible. Under the rules of the house this constitutes unanimous consent.
I acknowledge your skepticism, but it’s not clear what AOC did on the vote because it was a copout voice vote. Do you really know she said “yea”? If she did, I agree with you; if she did not, then you’re succumbing to “a pox on all your houses” mentality. I think that this move by AOC exposes Bernie, or at least revels the utter contradictory and compromised nature of supporting Biden. While it is the case that few politicians in DC are actually for the people, why disparage one who might actually be for them? In fact, it might be of great value to the nation if AOC loses the primary and then goes on to be a movement leader -I sure don’t think she will return to being a barista -whenever they get back to work.
A Republican representative did demand a quorum count but was denied. As other commenters have mentioned, you can see the vote and one of the wide shots showed far less than the necessary numbers, but he was denied and that was that.
I do not think the representative was against the bill. I think he was just angry at the shenanigans. Something eighty something people including staff and witnesses standing raptly at attention and just one person objecting.
Rules? What rules? We don’t need no stinking rules!
I think the 44 is the number of votes required to force a recorded vote. A quick search turned up this passage:
“If at least one-fifth of a quorum of 218—or 44 Members—stand and support the request, then the recorded vote will be taken by electronic device” (titled “house voting procedures” https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/b79ade62-94d9-4e91-9883-70b00f76a708.pdf )
Guessing the end of the sentence got a little garbled and should more clearly read, “it would….essentially….needlessly endanger folks”.
In this context, folks then would be other members.
It was passed by unanimous consent. No quorum needed.
The problem is that all ideologies are out of runway.
Nationalism is a bust. Globalisation is a bust. Internationalism is a sort-of bust — nice enough as a theory but you wouldn’t, literally, stake your life on it delivering for you in a crisis.
Ocasio-Cortez has correctly added incrementalism to the list, but that still doesn’t answer the question of how to proceed from here given all our old thinking isn’t working any more.
So, as my grandmother-in-law used to say, now what?
I do agree. Like Tverberg’s (whom I looked up – she’s an actuary who analyzes risk for the oil industry, etc.) comments that everything in economics dissipates. Same for ideologies. It looks like it declines from a real world of limited resources, to economics, to politics, to “Now what?” On that note AOC is closer to reality than the rest of congress. Mitch looks like a crippled, laughed-out old joke. And Nancy is pandering, as usual.
one Now What will be nationalizations – starting with oil, I’d guess – and agriculture – it’ll be a cascade.
The problem is that all ideologies are out of runway.
Yes, and it reaches beyond standard political alignments. It’s reaching even to siloed opinion groups on a variety of topics, including bicycling. A well known/read US blogger/writer on bicycling in the US – Bike Snob NYC – has at least partially jettisoned his usual acerbic wit as unhelpful during this pandemic. Or, rather, he’s directing it toward the still siloed smug-errati.
While I’ve dedicated much of my adult life to having opinions and ridiculing others for theirs, I admit that given the current situation I’ve lost my tolerance for sanctimony and self-righteousness. This is because the acoustics of the room have changed, and voices with which I generally agree now sound jarring and discordant to me.
https://bikesnobnyc.com/2020/04/20/fck-it-im-leasing-a-hyundai/#more-1244
I just love that phrasing “the acoustics of the room have changed”. It encapsulates it perfectly. The same noises (often enough from the same noise-makers). But they just don’t sound as they used to do.
It’s like our sensitivity settings have been turned up. That which used to be merely annoying and you tuned out becomes a cacophony. That which used to be a cacophony makes you run from the source in agony. I now know just how the figure on the bridge in Edvard Munch’s The Scream felt. That figure is me (although I do look a little better once I’ve got out of bed and tidied myself up a bit) and possibly you too, along with everyone else. There’s no prospect of an immediate return to putting our collective ear plugs back in.
Weasle words, huh? She can demand a recorded vote and then vote yes not to ‘needlessly endanger folks.’ Or vote no and endanger ‘folks’. No one refers to people as ‘folks’ in the Bronx (Queens?) anyway. At least until Mr. Obama popularized this pseudo-folksy pop term. She can take the heat for voting no saying the is insufficient, while it passes without her vote, or slither under a rock to protect her anonymity. Who knows, most probably the bill will be so useless that it is designed to ‘endanger’ people no matter what. Ha, at present they’re as safe as cooing turtledoves. I find her stance duplicitous and cowardly…so may she well turn out to be. Too clever by half.
Are you from the Bronx? Do you live in the Bronx “Quentin”?
The most absurd use of the word “folks” was little George Bush when he referred to the terrorists beheading journalists as “these folks”.
the endangering she’s talking about is in asking for a recorded vote
how could that possibly be referring to non-congressional human beings? How could such an act possibly be endangering anyone?
It’s clear to me she was referring endangering fellow legislators, endangering in the political sense, being on the record for either wanting or not wanting a recorded vote
I’ll listen again (ugh), but I’m pretty sure I heard it right
Yes, my interpretation as well.
The vote in question is for a future bill still being discussed as of 20 April, not the “cares” act.
Well the knives sure are out, aren’t they? Whether or not she “opposed” the previous bill (this article says she did), and whether or not she “voted” for it (hard to say either way), AOC is talking here about the next stimulus package. She is getting out front and saying she will oppose any bill that does not include the specific items for the working class outlined above. So I mean, maybe she heard the criticism about her role with the previous bill. Maybe she wants to play it differently this time. The knee-jerk disparagement of anything our (rare) ostensibly left voices in politics say or do these days is… understandable I guess but still disappointing to see here. It looks to me like she’s trying at least.
Agree, seems she’s drawing a line in the sand. I just hope she’s able to bring enough others on her side of the line to make a difference.
That is not sand she is standing upon. It is the quicksand of the Democratic party where all good progressives go to die.
Yes. At this point “The leadership” is very much invested in saying they got something out of Trump, but not so invested in actually getting anything of substance that they will risk slowing up the slosh of cash for Wall Street. The mere fact that Pelosi and others have bought into the illusion that they have to haggle over spending amounts when the Fed on its own and with no approval from anyone began printing trillions of dollars to funnel it to the top earners means that this game is already rigged.
But she needs to stop being nice and just say that.
As “sd” keeps saying, NO one actually voted for it; “unanimous consent” is a fiction. there probably wasn’t even a quorum; they’re spending $2 trillion without a valid vote.
I have to call BS. On March 29th, AOC gave CARES a C-. Said it was 1/3 good. 2/3 bad. Blamed it on Reps in the White House & Senate. Gave the elections matter, get your voters’ registration in and vote. Classic TINA spiel.
I will give her props for being well-versed on what was inside the Act. Able to break down many pieces into layman’s terms. Knowing that the Fed fund was a leveraged fund and sharing that with the public during that house floor speech. It’s a hell of a lot more than what Sanders or Warren did on their supposed personal bread & butter issues.
C- is a passing grade. Barely.
No offense but I am sick to death of it’s all the Reps fault. I’ve read the Pelosi and Schumer crap and it’s quite obvious that it is NOT in fact all the Reps fault. Distraction distraction.
At least there’s some noise now. Let’s see if the noise can be turned into real leverage or if it’s just powerless white noise to lull us all to sleep. Wouldn’t it be nice if somehow that background noise all of the sudden became a melody with a very loud and energizing chorus?
I await with bated breath for the “progressive” deals they are able to bargain for. I’ll look for how they plan to undo / minimize or even counteract the damage the CARES Act will unleash on the country moving forward. I know baby steps. Oh, wait AOC says she’ll no longer support baby steps. Okay, full-on attack on House Dems & Reps leadership. Woo Who! Let the food fights begin (literally since people have no money and food access is getting scarier by the day)
Given what’s happened with the previous 3 Acts, do we really expect something different this next go round? The House isn’t even in session. I suspect the only way to get real national / regional TV coverage of the issue is to co-opt the front lines of the handful protestors wanting to reopen the states.
On a less cynical note, AOC does have celebritism & charisma. She seems to be whip smart. Play her cards right, gather a posse, pick her issues/timing carefully, and well, I think she could make an impact. The question remains for whom?
I hear you on that one. Take a look though at the Intercept link in Jerri-Lyn’s intro. It notes that AOC’s primary challenger was a registered Republican until a few years ago and has advocated for getting rid of SS and Medicare. This isn’t the first time by a long shot that we have seen Republicans with ambition who live in “blue” districts simply switch parties to get elected and the Democrat party doesn’t care one bit.
So if you go on with the premise that most of the Democrat party is now just a bunch of Reagan Republicans, which it is, blaming the “Republicans” makes a lot more sense.
Those who do so just need to point out that detail. It may go a long way towards clarifying things for the part of the electorate who for whatever reason don’t pay all that much attention to politicians past the letter after their names.
I read about AOC’s primary challenger. Pretty brutal.
What I don’t understand is why we hold onto the Dems as some superior moral party. I’m sure the other side also feels its party is morally superior.
Yes, rhetoric is great, but we should be judging based on actions of said party. Instead, what we do is tag party membership as “Blue Dogs” or Republicans turned Democrats because the Overton window has moved so far right. So aren’t most in the 80% basically just accepting TINA?
What federal legislation have Dems created, championed, implemented and maintained in the last 20 years which has primarily benefited the bottom 80%? How do said pieces of legislation / amendments compare to legislation / policies which have sped up wealth transfer up to the 0.01%?
I wish that Thomas Frank instead of asking what’s the matter with Kansas, would’ve asked what’s the matter with New York & California?
You are right of course – they have shown repeatedly over the last few decades just how useless they are, always “fighting for” but never delivering, which is deliberate if you ask me. Of course they did manage to pass huge legislation that the Republicans wanted – NAFTA, Obamacare (Republican crocodile tears aside), etc.
I don’t think too many hold the Dems out as morally superior anymore though – I’d argue that’s why Trump is currently president.
They had their chance, the very year ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas” was published. Nan was up on her grandstand, claiming ‘elections have consequences’, letting lots of people hope that might mean impeaching Bush for his administration’s multiple war crimes, etc. The people voted in the Dems and it turns out there were no consequences at all, just a huge bait and switch. So to be fair to Frank, back in ’06 it seemed like there might still be some redeeming value to the Democrat party. My guess is their subsequent actions disabused him of that notion. I know they certainly did that for me.
I think the truth is no-one wanted to vote against those $1200 checks to their constituents; so no one actually voted.
Millions Of Americans are on the verge of becoming homeless and they know it.
They are frightened and desperate and their view of reality is shaped by the propaganda organs that constitute the MSM.
Bluntly,the people in charge are less in touch with reality than Mrie Antoinette was and the USA is on the edge of the cliff.
If these people aren’t taken care of soon we will see chaos.
Let them eat ice cream.
https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1252599558275764226
And what the senate Dems did right, the house Dem leadership caught and “corrected.” /s
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1252214222563532803
Jimmy Dore said she didn’t vote against. And pointed out this video she says plenty of truths but we r on the fourth covid bill and she like other progressives didn’t push for anything significant when they had leverage. Now there is no leverage so they’ll say some words and roll over not for republicans but for Corp Dems like pelosi who want to pay cobra vs M4A.
Jimmy D has quite a take-down of her so-called opposition. Watching her meant seeing on full display the process of a once progressive person being completely co-opted by the system, while still moving her lips to a progressive tune. Very sad… reminded me of obama, just in a female form.
Her comments are decent, but i’m not breaking out the pompoms. Here’s the marker for me:
She needs to say House Dem leadership is very much part of the problem. They’ve stopped remote voting and negotiations are behind closed doors. It’s been a major consolidation of power into the hands of an even smaller group of people.
She can say it nicely, if she has to, but she has to say ‘our leadership needs to change course’ or something like that.
Or maybe take a cane into the chamber and start cracking skulls. That ought to get someone’s attention.
We all know where nice guys finish.
Yeah, that was last tried in 1856 in the Senate but the eventual fallout from that a few years later proved the folly of this idea-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner
To be fair, it was also fists, knives, and guns as well as canes in both chambers of Congress before 1860.
“Resistance is futile.” Anyone hoping for people to take to the streets with righteous demands just has to look at the direction that anger and resentment have been channeled — “We want our Freedom!” “Open the state!”
Trump is the Mule, he has loosed the Crowd and pointed them toward an object of communal hatred. While the Blessed Leaders like Pelosi and Schumer and McConnell and the rest are holed up with their gelatos and swimming pools and personal trainers and “staffs’ to protect their bubbles and cater to their whims. “Wir konnen nicht Sanders.”
I don’t envy AOC. She seemed willing to ride the tiger, but is trapped in the Mr. Smith paradox: Stand up to the System and lose your place, or go along, and lose your soul.
Of course having watched numerous nominal populists over the decades rise and then join the Elites, it’s tempting in parsing the reported entrails to accept that AOC and the rest of the Squad are either just a walled-off vesicle rendered ineffective by the killer T-cells of TPTB, or that unit that seems to appear these days when internal political-economic stresses get close to loosing the carnage. Just a place to direct the demands of the mopes toward, then to be crushed by the combined power of Pelosi’s Mafia, the complicit media, the state security apparatus (all they know how to do is defeat any kind of populist insurgency), the monied interests and the rest.
“Don’t cry for me, Mope America
The truth is I never left you…”
I don’t envy AOC. She seemed willing to ride the tiger, but is trapped in the Mr. Smith paradox: Stand up to the System and lose your place, or go along, and lose your soul.
You’ve defined the progressives’ situation quite well. Sanders was faced with the same choices and he chose to lose his soul.
Unfortunately, too many “liberals” still admire and worship Obama and that everything he did was good. Until they find themselves in the same state of despair as the poor, thing will continue to get worse.
“…if Democratic leaders give Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration what they want in the interim legislation, progressives will “have less leverage for the coming fights.”
Well that is exactly what Pelosi (and the rest of the Dem leadership) has been doing all along. Reforming the group of freshmen lawmakers into the Mod(erate) Squad and relegating them to inconsequential roles and eventally turning them out in contested races this fall.
It’s one thing for the democrats to fight Trump’s corporate bailouts. It’s entirely another for the democrats to withhold money to the grass roots because it will give Trump a political edge in November. But the democrats do not seem to be able to discern which action to take. The Squad is trying to tell them – because the American people are not as stupid as congress likes to believe. Voters, if not surpressed, will reward the politics of equality.
Since I remember when the federal budget passed $1 billion, to considerable fanfare, it’s pretty weird to see $495 billion called “a $5 bill” – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, and apt rhetoric.
At this point, with most small businesses shut down and (what proportion is it, anyway?) a high proportion of workers on lockdown, the government is basically trying to maintain the pretense of a functioning economy. If we can prevent a wave of bankruptcies and evictions (why any landlord would evict a tenant in these circumstances is beyond me – it isn’t even good business), then we have a shot at restarting with minimal damage. Good question whether that’s even a good idea – the clear skies are a hint – but we have to at least restore everybody’s livelihood. The progressive demands in the article are probably the bare minimum.
And an awkward question: what about all the unauthorized immigrants? As a practical matter, if they’re paying taxes, as a lot of them are, they’ll probably get a check; and as a matter of economics, that makes sense. they’re part of the economy you’re trying to prop up. But it’s a political hot potato.
It looks like AOC has been domesticated, and is now one of the toothless progressive caucus kittens. She is permitted to say the right things to make progressives believe they actually have representation. As inevitable that Pelosi would win as that Biden would be the Dumb Party nominee. Unfurl the “Lesser of Two Evils” fighting flag for the charge into the election.
Even so, it is curious that Wall Street is so intense on defeating her. Like Bernie, she has to take it directly to voters to gain any real traction for her agenda. Her rhetoric during her next campaign will be instructive.
AOC has also said that she did not stand up to ask for a recorded vote for the CARE swindle, because it would take a quorum of 44 reps to force a recorded vote, and she knew (somehow) that there weren’t 44. She said she did not stand up, and this is an exact quote, because that would just “endanger some folks.”
This is clearly referring to fellow legislators. Whether she meant those who stood would be in danger of reprisals from dem leadership, or that those who didn’t stand would be in danger of losing their seats from angry voters, I don’t know. I’ll do her the favor of assuming she’s not worrying about the latter.
Either way, these words demonstrate the high value she’s placing on expedience and on career, as our country staggers through depression and pandemic.
Take her seriously at your own risk.
AOC and the rest of the gang threw away all the leverage they had when they gave away the store in the first package. What leverage is she or anyone going to be able to use when the people they need to use that leverage on already got everything they want and more? Also, agree with posters here saying they are bone tired of everyone, including Sanders and the squad (god I hate that moniker more with each passing day) blaming all our problems on the Repubs. thereby covering for 50% of the criminals who are killing us.