Bernie and AOC are on a tour which is drawing large crowds based on a left-wing populist argument. Bernie is near the end of his career: he can’t run for President again, and he’s damn old even if he is holding together well.
This tour is Sanders re-anointing AOC as his heir: presenting her to the public. It didn’t have to be AOC and at one point it looked like it might be Elizabeth Warren.
Then two things happened:
- Bernie had a heart attack, and it hit his campaign hard, and AOC endorsed him and campaigned for him at exactly that point, turning the media coverage around. She was there when it mattered.
- Elizabeth Warren accused Bernie of being a sexist liar.
There was a lot of furor over AOC speaking at the DNC. First, that she had only a minute, then that she didn’t “endorse” Biden.
Both of these things come down to a simple fact: She was invited by Bernie to nominate him. As such, it wasn’t appropriate for her to talk about Biden. That she had only a minute is because that’s how long the nominations are.
AOC wouldn’t have been invited to speak at the DNC, really, if it was up to the people running the convention, Biden’s people, she wouldn’t have spoken at all.
She was there because Bernie chose her.
AOC is Bernie’s successor: She is going to be the leader of his movement when he no longer is, and this was his last Presidential campaign. She’s the progressive leader now.
It could have been Elizabeth Warren, but she called Bernie a liar and a sexist and waffled on key progressive priorities. AOC, on the other hand, when Sanders needed help most, right after his heart attack, came out, endorsed, and campaigned for him and made a huge difference.
Warren, in her short-sightedness, torpedoed herself in an attempt to win it all now, and then later to maintain viability with centrists. In exchange, she got a DNC speech, and in exchange she gave up her post as heir-presumptive to the progressive bloc. She will never be President.
I have my issues with AOC. I think she’s basically a sell-out. But she showed loyalty when it mattered and Warren didn’t. She was smart, and Warren was stupid and short-sighted.
So yes, AOC is being anointed and yes, she will run for the Democratic party nomination or as a third party candidate for President in 2028.
Tom Hoffman
Warren also is 75
mago
AOC basically a sell out? A hands down capitulate. A sign of the times. Another stain on the body politic. The face of the dismal Dems. But, hey, she’s photogenic and talks the talk, so what’s not to like, right?
Ian Welsh
Meaning still under 80 at the next election, which is not too old to run any more. Probably the way it would have worked is she’d run once, then hand the torch to AOC. If she hadn’t burned that down.
edwin
Gerontocracy combined with kataskopocracy.
different clue
Well, large numbers of people will gather like iron filings around Bernie and the magnetic AOC.
They will come for the AOC-Bernie, but they might stay for eachother. Or at least some of them might.
shagggz
Article ended on a typo.
bruce wilder
The whole “squad” trope was just a msm sleight-of-hand to distract from the Democratic caucus takeover by the security state types: conservatives with military, police and intelligence agency backgrounds became far more numerous and typical among new and relatively young Dem Congress critters.
There is neither a left nor a working-class in the Democratic Party. Just a veal pen for the unwary and those in a political coma since 1995.
Adam Eran
I understand the disappointment with AOC (and Bernie) as compromising “sellouts”… But want to ask when or where ideological purity is possible in congress or the senate. The closest we could come to such a thing was Dennis Kucinich, and the D’s conspired to keep him from becoming elected. Short of some kind of dictatorship, ideological purity isn’t American politics (AKA “The art of the possible”).
someofparts
Well, my thinking has been slightly reconfigured by the points Revelo and B Wilder made about the president needing to be someone who can survive the narrative control system in this country. When it is pointed out that AOC is a sellout I think, okay, that’s how she is coping with the system. Can she find a way to do some good despite the compromises she will have to make?
Also, isn’t it the case that Congress is chock full of geezers? Over the years when AOC might hold office there will be fairly massive changes in the people who will be sitting in Congress as the elders die off and get replaced. Those will be the people AOC will have to deal with to get anything done. Who will be in the legislature after these massive personnel changes and how will that modify the politics of the place?
In fact, wondering what a post-geezer Congress would look like leads me to wonder about Israel and AIPAC, with its outsized impact on that legislative body. The carnage and damage to US interests from these people are only going to keep escalating, so what will that lead to a few years from now?
Feral Finster
AOC will not run as a third party candidate.
If she gets the Team D nomination, she will have been rendered utterly impotent by that point.
j
If AOC actually stands for something, the Dems will not let her get anywhere. Same as Bernie. If she wants to win as a Dem, she has to give up whatever actual principles she has.
Dems probably would be very happy to bring Bernie voters back into party fold tho. If that means offering her the office, I can see that happening. She falls in line and kites the voters in, the door opens up for her.
Obviously nothing that Bernie voters ask will be happening in that arrangement, so now there is two possibilities. Either they become disillusioned and drop out of the voter pool, giving team R a boost, or there emerges a new leader.
My Seldon skills are not up to the task on the latter one, but this much I do know: the Bernie movement needs to be grown into a new party, and somehow, one that does not finance itself, neither it’s people, via business money. The current arrangement of two parties advancing essentially the same business interest agenda can only end in either a collapse, or a blowup, and possibly, both. The writing is on the wall.
j
As to the issue of geezers dying off, they will be replaced by younger geezers. There’s no shortage of them. The next ones in line are inching closer as we speak.
Mark Level
I agree with mago, bruce, & Finster.
AOC is and has always been an Op. It may be impossible to fully prove, but someone in the 3-letter agencies recruited her way back when she was interning for Ted Kennedy’s office.
Bernie sold out his “movement”, once he had some good ideas and 10+ years ago he had some solid achievements in the legislative realm. But he got old and stupid (Ralph Nader recently denounced Putin as an evil “dictator”!! Once Ralph was whip-smart, now in his 90s he is brain-dead. It happens to even the best.) Bernie doesn’t have the self-defense moves of a Trump, so he stood by and let the Dems steal the nomination from him openly, twice!! Additionally, his wife as a member of the political class got into some sketchy legal trouble, so then he was basically blackmailed into becoming the human centipede at the Butt-end of Brain-Bleed Biden, his “good friend”!! When the Russiagate crew put out disinfo that “Putin is supporting Bernie” in 2020, he went right along with it, though no evidence was ever shown to anyone.
As someone noted recently, the Bernie/ AOCIA superzero pair-up is out on the hustings to . . . get donations for “Act Blue” which will go to the likes of “Leader” Hakeem Jeffries, a vicious Zionist who says the Dems are weak and can’t/ won’t lift a finger to oppose all Trump’s outrages.
Yes, the “Squad” should’ve been labeled “The Fraud” from day one. They refused to stand up to the likes of Pelosi and force a vote on M4A for the benefit of the saps who voted for them. They hippie-punch Left at a level that the Clintons would be proud of. They are all for endless war, even WW III with Russia, more hawkish than the RePugs most of the time. (They all get kickbacks on the paydays the War Pigs and MIC get from endless war.)
We now have a political Nomenklatura among both parties which is as sclerotic, corrupt and clueless as the Soviets’ version was c. 1988. (There are very few exceptions. Thomas Massey comes to mind, he is a free-speech absolutist and refuses to take Zionist money. Marjorie Taylor Green is mostly quite stupid and reactionary, but to her credit she also refuses to take AIPAC bribes and seems to actually be sincerely anti-War. Is there a single Dem worthy to shine the shoes of either of these 2? Not that I know.)
AOC’s back-story of being a “working-class bartender” from the Bronx (or wherever, not worth my time to research) is phony through and through. Look at the tongue-bath New York magazine gave her here– https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/aoc-biography-book-excerpt.html
She meets the Hillbot standard of being a “person of color” and additionally is conventionally attractive. (That’ll be gone by the time she’s 40, see Orwell’s comment that we all get the face we deserve by the time we are 50.)
She does not comport herself in public as an adult. At a small rally (barely 1,000 people bothered to show up) last year before the election with Bernie, AOC and Rep. Jamal “Fire-alarm” Bowman” she danced and chanted like a little cheerleader. Her pal Bowman got primaried by AIPAC and the War-pigs and his 15 minutes of fame ended.
Harry S. Truman was a high school graduate and failed haberdasher who was a cog in the Pendergast machine and got rewarded with the Presidency. (He at least some times dazzled the plebs with pithy little bon mots, but overall was not very bright or perceptive.) AOC is cut from the same cloth as Truman, just in a different era. It’s all Society of the Spectacle.
I try to ingest as little poison as possible. The suckers can vote for “leaders” like AOC. I will demur, “I prefer not to.”
bruce wilder
Representing the interests of the working and merely middle classes with integrity is an impossible “ideological purity”.
I don’t know about disparaging such as purity, but the “system” making for “impossible” seems to be the case.
Mary Bennet
Representative Ocasio Cortez was and continues to be elected to represent her district. Mr. Welsh, that is how our federal system works. Her constituents, the people in HER district who voted for her, expect her to be an effective member of Congress for their interests. She might have won her first election because of one of us, but she is expected to keep delivering for her district. Sure, that means federal money, but it also means working with other congresspersons, it means voting in accordance with her voters’ beliefs, and it means conducting herself with a modicum of decorum and decency. Democratic voters generally don’t like rowdy attention seekers like Rep. Marjory Green. What sank Kucinich’s presidential aspirations is that he is a crazy drama queen.
If she has as much sense as I think she does, I doubt she will run for president. BUT, public speaking is a major talent she has, and she is deploying it to make sure that the 2028 nominee must have her endorsement. Kamala Harris, or Mark Kelly or Andy Bashear is going to have to negotiate with her. Don’t forget that she has put in lots of time and travel campaigning for other progressives, include some whom she must have known were going to lose. It would not surprise me at all if one of her demands is get the AIPAC money out of our party.
As for AIPAC and Israeli influence, I think that faction has overplayed its’ hand. In this time of smart reporters knowing how to use the internet to track down where money is coming from, all a DSA recruited candidate will have to do is runs adds showing the devastation in Gaza and then point out how much money his or her primary opponent is receiving from AIPAC. Josh Shapiro’s presidential aspirations have already died in Gaza.
AOC’s speech endorsing Sanders after his heart attack is one of the best political speeches I have ever heard. It was clear, easy to understand, down to earth but not corny or stupid. My daughter was in the crowd, and I wish I had been there.
Soredemos
Woof woof goes the trained sheep dog.
somecomputerguy
Warren stayed in the race long after it was clear her campaign wasn’t viable. This split the progressive primary vote, instead of throwing her support to Sanders.
Then she got to pick Lina Khan. Quid pro quo?
responseTwo
AOC does what she is told:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/08/31/wkwm-a31.html
When it comes to the needs of the working class she is useless. Her and Sanders both. In the end, they shaft the working class in order to keep their political careers. If she runs as a third party candidate big-money DNC and corporate news will ruin her career.
Elizabeth warren was real good at calling out what big banks do. Still, there was nothing she could do to stop them. The whole thing is going down. The so-called ‘grand experiment’ has been a failure.
I should add, I was a donor to Sanders both times he ran. A waste of money..
Stormcrow
Mary Bennet wrote
I somewhat regret to say I didn’t hear that speech. But not too much. Here’s why.
I recall how the Dems I knew 20 years ago practically did handsprings over Barack Obama’s 2004 DNC speech. My painfully acquired realism forced me to reply that the content of his speech, however inspirational it might be, had no, as in “zero“, value, in predicting what his policies and actions might be once elected. And it was his policies and actions that would count, long after his words were forgotten.
We all saw, painfully and at length, how that worked out.
My considered advice is to take AOC’s speeches, no matter what their content might be or how they might make you feel, with a very large grain of salt. What she actually does is all that matters. ALL. That is the only way you can discover what her actual character might be, and what impact she will have if elected.
miss jennings
Remember when Bernie met with intel and then a reporter asked him about a negative article the Washington Post had written about him and he turned towards the reporter and said, “The Washington Post? They don’t like us too much…” and then he turned back around and got on the plane that was waiting for him?
I rememeber everyone at NC being elated. Yves Smith was throwing out potential vice president candidates.
And that was it. That was the week of the ‘long knives’ I believe so all that energy crashed because Obama got them all to drop out except Warrren and none of them disobeyed Obama to put up a unified front. I think even BS artist ‘Tulsi’ remained in. I forget the specifics but it doesn’t matter because all one needs to know is that once again the ‘dem-liberal-left’ thing was utterly divided against itself and thus impotent in the face of power.
As for AOC it’s very hard to trust because her entire political persona is a lie. She came from a solid middle to upper middle class background and she made bank as a pretty young thing at her bartender gig in the financial district. She knows how to roll with these people.
Also, she discovered some long lost Jewish ancestry at one point in time. Remember when she announced that?
Remember when she wore an “Eat the Rich” dress to an affair that only ‘the rich’ and well-heeled ‘in-crowd’ could ever atttend?
I mean, come on. There’s simply no way that that appeals to the people who need to be a part of the political/voting bloc we will need to change things.
There is nothing wrong with coming from this background. Just be honest about it. And maybe dress down a bit rather than up.
At least try to look/act like a working class person. But she can’t. She doesn’t have that in her. So she’s not going to appeal to most non-voters or the Trump voter.
Oh yeah: Remember when AOC was ‘teaching’ her pupil Corey Bush about the political game? Corey Bush was recently homeless before she became a pol.
So, they were both out at a political thingy to drum up money and votes from those in need and someone from the true working class/left (I think it may be the guy who is running against Torres?) came out to listen to the AOC/Bush poor tour and he started calling them out because they weren’t really talking about the things that need to be done. In fact, he said, “Hey we’re not done here? What about the fact that all these other people are going to be losing their homes/health care/etc? I forget the specifics he brought up but the point is that as soon as this person started talking about what’s really going on AOC saw what was happening and immediately began to pack up and got Corey Bush to do same.
So, never poor AOC got recently poor but now a pol Corey Bush to immediately forget where she came from and Bush went right along with the game instead of staying around to talk to constituents in need.
It’s very very hard to see anything changing from within the system itself at this point.
Tell everybody waiting for superwoman…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKiVSuDEF2c
mago
What sank Kucinich’s political aspirations, presidential or otherwise was his truthfulness in a world of mendacity, but yeah, whatever.
AOC represents money and her own interests, and if her constituents are incidentally benefited, hooray! It burnishes her creds.
Her lofty ideals weren’t compromised by the corrupt system in which she plays, she’s a chameleon whose physical sheen will dull as age and gravity do their trick and the curves and taut mounds go south. (Thanks ML for the insightful comments, btw.)
And oh yeah, the geezers are going down, but their spawn and ideologies will carry on. That shit carries through the generations, like ethnic hatred. Whatever happened to Victoria Nuland, btw? Not that I care. There’s always another one where that came from, so yeah. Here we go again. . .
mago
Yes Soredemos. Woof woof. Round em up, move em out.
miss jennings
I rememeber everyone at NC being elated.
I was really feeling it too.
Who’s next?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q
I believe that the ‘hard left’ movements and structures of the 60’s and into the 70’s were getting a lot of financing and other ‘assistance’ from outside the country.
I don’t know that the same level of assistance and coordination is happening now and that’s probably because the other countries – and I’m really thinking of Russia now – these countries are themselves more capitalistic than they were then. Certainly Russia is. It may not be neoliberal but it ain’t the USSR.
Xi Jinping recently said ‘no welfarism.’
I believe in the welfare of the people and I believe any even remotely market-based/capitalistic society will produce many who ‘fall through the cracks’ and that holds even more true as populations are being moved from – alright ‘poor’ by shiny new city standards but at least almost entirely self-supporting – moved from these environments to more urban environments.
We correctly rue the loss of non-tech skils here in the US and I have to imagine the same has happened in fast developing economies that are almost entirely tech-based. I hope I am wrong.
If/when things get really bad it may come down to the local cops and other such positions having to be on ‘our’ side which they are already economically.
steppenwolf fetchit continues to inspire.
This is interesting and strange and a bunch of things rolled into one:
N.J. Tesla dealership becomes a battleground. Dueling Musk rallies spill onto highway
https://www.nj.com/bergen/2025/03/tesla-dealership-in-paramus-becomes-battleground-for-musk-trump-protests.html
The Spadea guy running for governor was recently at Trump’s Bedminster estate sucking up to the big power players. Now he’s out on the highway with the Musk-Trump people – a very varied group at least according to this article.
The simple act of the postman giving the dog a biscuit may bear fruit.
AOC and Bernie should go to simple events like this. Get out there face-to-face instead of hiding behind a podium up on a stage.
Maybe a more rebel-type figure will emerge ‘on the left’ to do just that.
——–
I do not mean to ‘read’ as a mean, uncaring person. Nor certainly ‘holier than thou.’
I am direct but I hope I also elicit a very vulnerable side in my writing which is very real. I sometimes think I read as pathetic.
I am sorry. It isn’t my intention to offend anyone.
I will do better.
miss jennings
I believe that the ‘hard left’ movements and structures of the 60’s and into the 70’s were getting a lot of financing and other ‘assistance’ from outside the country.
And well before then. I tend to default to that time period. But the point remains that the entire world is different now.
This is very serious even though the video is comedic. What happens to the nukes when the US breaks down? We’re screwed here in the eastern US. How long can the NORAD folks remain down there?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibDNwF8bjs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States
Mark Level
A gentle correction to MJ, aka “miss jennings”– AOC wore a “Tax the Rich” dress to a rich person’s gala. Eat the Rich is an actual Radical’s motto, and as unconvincingly as she feigned being a “progressive”, she never actually took the Fraud/Squad game to feigning radicalism.
The info on her discovering “Jewish” roots is telling, I guess once some people are “In” they desire to become even “Inner”. One of your better posts after a couple of recent misfires, so thank you.
different clue
I suspect there are people who think having “Jewish roots or ancestry” is cool the same way that there are people who think having “American Indian roots or ancestry” is cool.