Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Electoral Politics Page 1 of 30

The Only Thing That Matters Is Winning Primaries

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On June 26, 2026

27 Comments

From Stoller:

Last night, something happened that I’ve never seen in my time in politics – a bunch of Democratic incumbent politicians in New York and Maryland lost to left-wing challengers. New York in particular has an intensely wired Democratic machine, with advocacy groups, unions, and identity rights groups cemented together with big money. This machine rarely loses, and never loses en masse. Yesterday, they did, as voters said no to the entire political establishment.

The winners mostly ran on a platform of opposition to the U.S. alliance with Israel, as well as subordinate themes like opposition to corporate greed. For instance, Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president and a well-respected establishment figure with virtually every endorsement possible from both liberal groups and real estate interests, lost to Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez by more than 25 percentage points. Adriano Espaillat, the head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was unseated by fellow DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier. State assembly incumbents lost, and both the state and Federal delegation are now far more progressive.

The New York machine, in other words, got wrecked.

I came out of the netroots: the blogosphere. We had a motto “more and better democrats” but every time we tried to primary some shitheel Democrat, we got wrecked.

We didn’t have the juice.

And in American politics the most important thing is whether you can win primaries. In a duopoly, even if your candidate loses the general this time, they’ll eventually back into power if the district is competitive. If it’s not competitive, and the party you can win elections in is the shoe in, well, it’s the same as winning the election.

The reason the populist right has been pandered to by Republicans on many issues (but not corporate governance) is that they can win primaries.

The reason Kathy Hochui kept her implicit deal with Mamdani and has given him money for New York and other help is that Mamdani is a powerhouse and a bellweather. Opposing him would mean he and the movement he is the standard bearer for would have come for her next.

This is localized so far, but if it spreads the Democratic party will change. And unlike the Republican right, which can be bought off with culture war bullshit, this a left wing populist movement which is explicitly anti-oligarchy. Mamdani has been very successful so far, coming thru on many of his promises. I recently saw someone earning six figures say that Mamdani’s childcare plan had saved him 30K. That’s not chump change and it dwarfs anything the well off, but not rich, will lose from Mamdani’s other changes. In other words the 80% to 95% benefit, as does everyone under 80%.

That is one one hell of a big coalition.

Democrats and Republicans, since Reagan, have largely refused to compete on doing things for ordinary Americans: at least anything pocket book related. The competition has all been kabuki, symbolic gestures or cultural red meat. Some of it has really hurt people, to be sure (abortion bans for example) but overall the idea has been that money should be given to the rich and programs which help ordinary people’s finances are a no go.

Since the US is a duopoly and you only get to vote for two options, neither of which intend to help, the only solution was to change the nature of one of the parties.

That has now begun. How far it will go and whether it will succeed, I do not know.

I do know that if it does, the Democrats will rule for another 50 years, like they did from 32 to 80. Republicans will get in sometimes, but they will be like Eisenhower: ruling in a populist left fashion. The mirror of Clinton or Obama, who in most respects might as well have been Republicans. They were certainly arch-neoliberals.

This is your moment of actual hope. Not the fake Obama stuff, the real thing. It’s not certain, of course, there is a ton of power opposing it, but it is real hope.

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Vance Is Trying To Thread That Vice Presidential Needle

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On June 19, 2026

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J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice-president has often said that his job is to support the president.

He’s also made sure that people know he was against the Iran war, the 12 day war, and so on, with careful leaks. Publicly he’s all pro-whatever Trump says or does, but he’s trying to have it both ways.

The MOU gave him a present, he was able to say that Israel are ungrateful turds who shouldn’t be so violent: nine million people can’t kill their way out of all of their foreign relations troubles, and that Trump is the only major world leader who has supported them (essentially true. In this calculus only Russia, China, Turkey and the US matter.) Israelis turning on Trump are ungrateful. (Well yes, but you didn’t expect people whose idea of making war is to kill children en-masse to have a fine moral sense.)

Anyway, here he is:

Vance has always had a very narrow road to follow. He wants to be President. He can’t directly oppose Trump on anything publicly because even if Trump is driven from office in disgrace, there’s a hard core of primary voters who will never give him up. On the other hand Trump’s becoming increasingly toxic and it’s pretty clear that he’s going to leave office very unpopular.

This issue killed Kamala. She was ahead and doing well. I still remember when she was asked on TV if there was anything she’d have done different than Biden. She said no. And it was at that moment I knew that Trump was going to win: she needed to say something, even something a bit weak “well, I admire what the President has done, but I’d like to have done even more to bring down grocery prices and to end the Gaza war” say.

Vance is attempting to get around this with his loyalty pledge: you support the President even if you disagree, but you can disagree and advise him so be hind the scenes.

He’s hoping that two-step, “I was loyal to Trump, but I would have done some things differently” will keep him electable.

We’ll see. A lot will depend on who Democrats nominate. Democrats rarely select their most popular candidate, they prefer party loyalists who can be expected to keep the corporate pork rolling and not upset important funders like the Israeli lobby.

If Democrats serve up a lukewarm candidate and if Vance makes his turn correctly, he could squeak in as the next President.

Iran MOU update: As predicted the Israelis kept attacking in Lebanon, the Iranians said they wouldn’t go to the signing in Geneva on Friday till the fighting stops, and negotiations won’t start till they do. Israel appears to be attempting to take an important strategic point Ali al-Taher hill. Hezbollah is going all out to stop them. We’ll see if the US is capable (politically, it can easily do so in principle) of discipling Israel. 

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Establishment Attacks On Platner Are Classic Woke Attacks On The Populist Left

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On June 5, 2026

36 Comments

I think everyone who’s observed American, indeed, Western politics is aware that whenever a strong economic left winger comes along the attacks on him are almost always primarily about violations of “woke”.

Corbyn was attacked for anti-semitism, when he might be the most anti-racist person on the Earth. The idea that he was anti-semitic was laughable on the face, he’d be the first person putting his body on the line if there were actual threats to Jews.

What was remarkable about the smears against Corbyn is that the guy is practically a Saint. He’s as pure as driven snow or aquifer water run through a triple filter.

Not everyone is. Al Franken did some inappropriate things, though none of them rose to the level where he should have stepped down.

Woke is used because it works, especially sexual harassment allegations. It doesn’t just work against the left. New York Governor Cuomo was taken down for sexual harassment, which I always found hilarious, because this is a guy whose policies killed thousands of people during Covid when he stuck Covid patients in old folks homes. That’s gross negligent manslaughter, in my books, and he should have gone to prison, not just lost his job, but it was the sex stuff that took him down.

That doesn’t mean the Democratic establishment wanted him gone. Oh no. They supported him to the hilt against Mamdani in the NYC elections. Anything can be forgiven if you serve corporate interests, nothing can be forgiven if you don’t.

Platner’s the latest target, and man is he ripe. There’s the skull and crossbones tattoo: Nazi symbology which he got as a soldier twenty years ago.

They attacked him on that. It didn’t work. It didn’t work for the same reason attacks on Trump didn’t use to work: because Platner appears very anti-establishment (and unlike Trump, probably is.) He’s a left wing economic populist. This is from the top of his policy page:

So out came the sexual allegations. First the fact that near the start of his marriage he sent texts to women. That caused marital issues (surprise!) but Platner and his wife got counseling. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner:

“It makes me really angry, disappointed,” Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, said in a direct-to-camera video Platner’s campaign released Saturday night. “And I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on.”

One might wish to discount this: political wives are famous for publicly dismissing scabrous behaviour. But it was years ago, and she has stayed with him.

Of more interest, I think, is this:

The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Gertner told Platner’s campaign about the sexually explicit texts last year, near the start of his Senate bid. Her disclosure came during a conversation with campaign officials about potential opposition research into Platner, the two outlets reported, with the Times citing a former senior official in Platner’s campaign and the Journal citing people familiar with the matter.

I believe this falls under “the call came from inside the house!” Platner and his wife were foolish enough to trust Democratic officials, not realizing that the Democratic party is the opposition, far more than the Republicans.

Now we have the New York Times, doubling down:

Amid the turmoil, Mr. Platner worked the phones, rolling through calls to ex-girlfriends who might publicly acknowledge that while he may have been a bad boyfriend, he was, in fact, a decent guy.

In interviews with The New York Times on Wednesday, several women did just that, describing Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner, and saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended.

But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.

Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful.

OK. Sounds like some of his ex-girlfriends like him, and others don’t. But there’s no allegation of rape or assault, only “once physically threatening” and you know that if there were, they’d have run with it.

I don’t think Platner sounds like the greatest guy with women, but I think it’s also unlikely you’ll find many people, men or women, who have had multiple relationships and all their ex’s don’t have anything bad to say about him. I also don’t think that any of this is disqualifying for office.

Serious war crime allegations, since he was a soldier, would be. A pattern of corruption in business would be. “Has, on occasion, been a jerk to women and unfaithful” is laughable. Neither FDR nor JFK were faithful, their behaviour was far worse than Platner’s, and FDR, at least, was arguably the best President America ever had for ordinary citizens.

But for whatever reason, Americans take allegations like these much more seriously than gross corruption, bribe taking, insider trading, or mass murder.

Or—they did. Because so far this doesn’t seem to be working against Platner. Americans are finally getting their priorities straight again: certainly rape or assault should be disqualifying (though neither were for Trump), but sexual immorality? Please.

The woke attack takedown, perfected and used for a couple generations now, is beginning to fail. Voters are looking at the actual issues and thinking “actually, I care more about the fact that I can’t afford rent, food, gas and healthcare.”

In this I finally see some hope that Americans voters might be growing up. For may years now Americans have basically gotten the politicians they deserve, with some exceptions. To deserve better they have to stop being suckers. The takedown of Thomas Massie by the Israeli lobby was a bad sign. The failure, so far, to take down Platner is a good one.

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Mamdani Represents A New Era Of Political Conflict

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On November 5, 2025

51 Comments

As everyone’s probably aware, Mamdani, a brown muslim social-democrat who has promised, among other things, to open city grocery stories, make transit free, a rent freeze on stabilized units (about 40% of New York’s apartments), universal free child care and to build 200K new apartments. He’ll pay for it with tax hikes on rich New Yorkers and corporations.

(Read Mamdani’s Victory Speech. Powerful stuff.)

Mamdani’s extraordinarily charismatic, with an upbeat optimistic style and rarely shies from fights (though he has backed down on Palestine.) He’s a good candidate.

But he won because he was laser focused on the affordability crisis: food, housing, transit and child care. For many years now I have said that voters in most Western countries want real change, and they will vote for anyone who seems to not be like a status quo politician and for any promise to overturn the status quo. Like a wolf in a leg trap, they’re so desperate to escape from a future of eternally lowering expectations, one in which they can’t afford a home, can’t afford kids, can’t afford holidays, and are even told not to buy expensive coffees.

Trump doesn’t come across as an establishment politician, so many people voted for him. Corbyn’s wave was based on this. Brexit was based on “ever since we’ve been in the EU things have gotten worse for ordinary people in Britain.” Yes, the EU wasn’t the reason (though it is a pile of garbage, it’s a less rancid pile than British pols who wanted out of it), but that didn’t matter. “Get ground into the dirt slower, peons” doesn’t sell any more.

So people will vote for Britain’s Reform, or Canada’s Conservatives, or LaPen, or Germany’s AfD. Nasty piece of shit fascists, all of them. But they act differently from establishment politicians, and people will vote for that, even if their likely policy are vile and stupid and cruel.

It isn’t just Mamdani who won yesterday, ever major race outside Texas when Democrat, and all the Democrats ran on affordability issues.

Now one of the tropes is that young men have gone right wing in most countries. There’s some truth to it, but less than it appears:

NBCNews exit polling on young men (18-29) in VA, NJ and NYC VA: Spanberger +14 NJ: Sherrill: +10 NYC: Mamdani +40

If young men were solidly right wing, this wouldn’t have happened. What they want is change. They’ll take right wing change if that’s all that’s on offer, but just as Bernie was projected to beat Trump in a direct competition, they’ll take left wing change preferentially, because left wingers offer hope (free stuff) that right wingers just refuse to match. The right wing offer is “we’ll kneecap your peer competitors: women and immigrants, so you do better.” The left wing offer is “we’ll help everyone and we’ll actually give you shit and actually stop prices from increasing.”

The left wing offer is better just on straight up self-interest. And a lot of people hate the rich far more than they hate immigrants, so the “and we’ll soak the rich” left-wing offer goes over well. It’s also more realistic because it is the rich who actually destroyed America’s prosperity, and to the extent immigrants contributed, it’s because the rich used them force wages lower: the classic strategy of “pit one half of the working class against the other half.”

Alright, so that’s why Mamdani won. But what now?

New York city is a “creature of the state”. Kathy Hochui, the governor, and the NY State legislature have veto power over essentially everything Mamdani wants to do. Hochui endorsed Mamdani, BUT while she agrees with his policies, there’s one big exception: she doesn’t want to increase taxes on the rich and corporations, and she effectively has a veto.

So what’s likely to happen is that she kneecaps Mamdani by making it so he can’t get the money to do all that he wants to. (Saying you agree with Mamdani while making sure he can’t deliver isn’t actually agreement. It’s an attempt to pander to the left while still getting rich by actually protecting the oligarchy.)

Trump has said that he will cut funding to New York and we can expect the standard ICE and border patrol invasion.

Mamdani’s going to face to tidal wave of elite opposition to what he wants to do. If he’s to be successful, and the first exemplar of a new wave of left wing politicians in America (America’s only chance of a decent future) he has to figure out a way to still deliver on enough promises (rent freezes, for example) so that New Yorker’s feel better off AND he needs to frame his losses as because of enemy action which can be defeated in the future by electing his allies as New York state governor, to the state legislature, and to federal offices. He needs to become the linchpin of a larger movement. He cannot be seen as a failure, he must appear as a fighter who has some victories and part of a movement which can win overall.

All of this is possible. People hate, hate, hate the elites in America. Attacking landlords, health insurance executives and politicians who cover for them and want them to get even richer is popular. Taking action against them in whatever ways are possible is adored. Mamdani is lucky in this: his enemies are loathsome parasites who aren’t satisfied being the richest rich the world has ever seen, they want MORE and they want to take it from everyone else.

Mamdani knows a fight is unavoidable, so he’s squaring up and framing the fight as a mass fight against a corrupt bully. (From his victory speech.)

So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up! We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.

New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this. To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.

What Mamdani represents is America’s last hope. If the movement he exemplifies loses, America’s future is to slowly un-develop, becoming more akin to Brazil or India than to developed nations. Vast numbers of homeless, desperate workers, extended new slums and people absolutely desperate for food, healthcare and housing. In this he is similar to Corbyn: the last chance for America to turn it around before the shit hits the fan. If this movement fails, America fails. It may be able to get back up again, sure, but it will be far harder to do in twenty years than in three or seven years.

While it is in everyone’s interest, including over 90% of Americans for the American Empire to end, having America become a failed state, its likely prospect if current trends continue, will be horrific.

Avoiding that is, to a remarkable degree, on one Muslim social democrat’s shoulders.

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Does Zohran Mamdani Matter?

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On June 26, 2025

19 Comments

So, Democratic Socialist (ie. has politics a 70s liberal would have agreed with, but is less racist) Zohran Mamdani has won the nomination as the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor.

The best analysis I’ve read of this is definitely from Matt Stoller. He says this win helps define this as a “system-defining election,” that is, an attempt to not just to change who runs a system, but how that system is run. Read the article.

I’ll point out here that there have been a few such attempts. Stoller writes about Lamont’s challenge to Lieberman, in which Lamont won the primary, then Lieberman won the election. It’s similar to what will be tried here: The oligarchical part of the Democratic party will align behind another candidate, possibly even the Republican one. Those who don’t will try to co-opt Mamdani, and turn him into a centrist left-winger.

Mamdani is more radical than Sanders; he isn’t a Zionist, for example. But he’s basically suggesting policies than no Democrat during the 50s, 60s, and even into the 70s would have found extraordinary.

What Stoller calls system-defining elections, I call sub-ideological revolutions. FDR changed the form of capitalism practiced in the US, so did Carter and Reagan. Mamdani, for all the screams from rich operatives like Larry Summers and various oligarchs, isn’t a radical — any more than FDR was. He doesn’t want to switch to economic Communism (i.e., worker ownership of the means of production or Soviet-style central control), say, or a single-party state. He wants real changes in how capitalism is practiced, and some changes to who has power in Democracy.

Sanders’ runs in 2016 and 2020 were an attempt at a sub-ideological revolution, or, system-defining elections. This is why Obama intervened and lined everyone up behind Biden, a nearly unprecedented step.

Likewise, Corbyn represented such an attempt, except Corybn got further, winning the Labour leadership. It’s not an accident that (and we have receipts, so don’t argue) Labour operatives actually sabotaged him in two elections to ensure a Conservative win. They wanted the old ideology/system to keep running more than they wanted their party to win. And once Corbyn was removed, his successor, Starmer, purged the party of the democratic socialist left. Once in power, Starmer doubled down on austerity and politics no different in substance, but actually more punitive, than those followed by the Conservative party.

The Reform Party in the UK is now coming on hard.

Be clear that sub-ideological transitions/system changes can be bad. Neoliberalism was a bad change. In the UK, if Reform sets the new system/ideological norm, it will be awful.

This is one reason why I said that Corbyn was the UK’s last chance: If the left failed, the right would then get its shot, and what the right wants to do is beyond awful.

It’s why Germany is beyond hosed: Doubling down on military Keynesianism (which won’t work in a corrupt, neoliberal system), while cutting social welfare will simply lead to the new-right getting into power. Their policies will make most people worse off, not better.

As for Mamdani, he’s a good sign. The fact that men, as well as the youngs, went for him is also excellent, because it shows that men and youngsters aren’t really “right-wing” in any way that matters. Yet. What they want is change. If they are offered good change, they’ll take it. However, they’re so desperate that if all that’s on the menu is shitty change, or the status quo, they’ll take shitty change.

This was obviously going to happen. I wrote years ago that we wouldn’t see real change until the mid-2020s, at the earliest, because it required generational change as well.

Mamdani tells us that what sort of change will finally win in the US is not yet decided. It doesn’t have to be MAGA stupidity and meanness.

So if you want something better in the US, if you want a chance at a New New Deal, get behind Mamdani and people like him — hard.

There still remains a question of whether Mamdani can deliver, even if he is elected. Will he be be co-opted? Will he run into opposition from enemies so powerful he either can’t overcome them? Or will he use them as a rallying call? Is he competent enough to create and run a new system like the one he’s suggesting?

This is a chance because, if Mamdani wins and then improves New Yorker’s lives, he’ll be copied. And if you’re in a position to do something to improve the chance of this happening and then working, I suggest you do so.

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Both The UK and Germany Are Going to Go Full Anti-Democratic or Full Trumpian

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On May 9, 2025

16 Comments

So, Starmer continues his massive austerity program, just kissed Trump’s ass with a terrible trade deal, and:

Meanwhile, in Germany:

Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz has been confirmed as Germany’s new chancellor. His grand coalition is off to a rocky start — and its call on Germans to swallow austerity is sure to make things worse…

… Merz’s cabinet completely sidelined the more socially conscious “Christian-social” wing of his party. New SPD head Lars Klingbeil initially promised a complete turnaround, a “generational change” for the party after the failures under previous chancellor Olaf Scholz. No one from the left wing of the SPD is represented in government…

What they’re going to try is some military Kenesianism. It won’t work.

So, the AfD, Germany’s right wing Trumpist style party will either wind up in charge soon, or it will be banned or lawfared into the ground.

Centrists spent generations crushing the left. Starmer purged Labour almost entirely of the left after he became leader. But a lot of ordinary people want centrists out. Since the left is usually not viable, they go right, and by right I mean damn near Nazi.

Anyway Merz is a ‘tard, the last gasp of the centrists: “give the rich even more money. More! More! More! Hurt ordinary people to pay for it!” Then come the fucking Nazis. Or, if they refuse to let them win, democracy effectively dies, and violent resistance will begin.

Absolute morons, so blinded by neoliberal ideology and greed that they refuse to ever really help ordinary people, with predictable results. I only hope that when the right does get in power, instead of lining up the trans, gays and socialists first they say hello to people like Merz and Starmer and they get to reap as they have sowed.

Oh, and those people supporting parties like the AfD and Reform who aren’t rich fascists? You’re idiots. Fools. Poltroons. Morons. They will betray you and hurt you, just as Trump has done to the majority of his supporters. Go left, or be destroyed. Your choice and most of you are making the wrong one.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – Mencken

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Liberal Party Wins Canadian Election

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On April 28, 2025

24 Comments

Canadian Flag

Canadian Flag

Update: minority Liberal government which will require help from the NDP to survive non confidence motions. Hopefully the NDP will be smart and tough enough to hold out for electoral reform in exchange.

The left-center NDP is being slaughtered and seems likely to lose its official party status.

Five months ago I would have said, and did say, that the Conservatives would form the next government, with Poilievre (a Trump figure) as Prime Minister.

Fortunately, Trump truly is a Christ-like figure, and raised the Liberal party from the dead. Poilievre mishandled Trump’s threats, saying that Trump had a point and so on. Living in an right wing echo chamber he thought that Canadians aren’t patriotic, and most are. This was an unforced error. Ontario Premier Ford did the opposite: he ran against Trump, called a surprise election and won handily. I despise Ford, but he’s a smart politician. Poilievre, on the other hand, is just an attack dog, and a true believer in Trumpist style right wing politics.

This isn’t to say I like the Liberals or Carney. Carney has the dubious honor of haveing beeen in charge of Canada and Britain’s central bank, and is the only central banker to blow housing bubbles in two countries. As for the Liberals, they were a terrible government and the only good things they did were forced on them by the NDP, whose support they needed to stay in government.

Trudeau’s liberals let in record numbers of immigrants and the result was massive increases in rent and a smother of wage gains.

The mistake that Canadian Conservative voters made, which Trump saved Canada from, was the assumption that Poilievre would be better. He would have been far, far worse. There was even talk of creating a Canadian “DOGE.”

Canada, much like America, needs a proportional vote system, so that the two and a half party monopoly can be broken up and a Trump-like figure locked out of government unless they can achieve a genuine majority.

We’ll see how Carney does. Though I don’t like his record, he has said some very sensible things about re-industrialization in Canada, including proper vertical integration. There’s almost no mineral resource Canada doesn’t have, if we want we can easily re-industrialize. He’s also talked some sense about the housing market.

Whether he carries thru remains to be seen. He won’t be fantastically successful, he’s still a neoliberal and committed to policies like low taxes on the rich, but as neoliberals go, he may turn out not too bad.

Fingers crossed.

Update 1: Looking like Poilievre may lose his own riding. For context, Poilievre is an MP in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, where the largest employer is the Federal government. Poilievre said he would gut the civil service and even threatened to DOGE it. Truly in the running for stupidest politician in the world.

 

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AOC Is Bernie’s Heir Because She Was Loyal When It Mattered

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On March 28, 2025

27 Comments

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:

  1. 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.
  2. Elizabeth Warren accused Bernie of being a sexist liar.

As I wrote back in 2020:

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.

 

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