To some of you, there’s no getting around one indisputable fact. By certain standards, I’m old.
Forget how I believe I tend to think, which is often through the lens of how someone else thinks. Decades of training listening objectively to people in thousands of focus groups and disseminating reams of survey information from all walks of life to help determine the best paths for billion dollar companies affords me some degree of ability to do that. But the hard fact is in the eyes of so many because of what the last two digits are on the ID I give at my Rite Aid for one of my six prescriptions, I’m a dinosaur and a relic. And based upon my recent track record, an awful lot of those who think that way apparently have jobs in human resources.
They also apparently have seats in Congress, or wish they did. And if you’re to believe the pundits and researchers at CNN, one in particular has been resonating of late. Witness what THE WRAP’s Stephanie Kaloi reported on Sunday morning:
A recent CNN poll showing Congresswoman Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez is gaining popularity among Democrats does not come as much of a surprise, Axios reporter Alex Isenstadt said on “Inside Politics Sunday” this morning. Isenstadt explained that in some ways, AOC’s political rise “reminds me of what happened to Republicans after Obama’s election in 2008.”
After he was asked if there is “a path for AOC in 2028,” Isenstadt said, “Well, if that’s what the party wants, then potentially … you know, her rise kind of reminds me of what happened to Republicans after Obama’s election in 2008 where it was the loudest voices of the Republican Party, the Tea Party, that really gained traction at a time when the Republican Party was lost. “And maybe Democrats now find themselves in a similar situation and AOC maybe she best represents Democratic voters on it,” Isenstadt added.
I don’t doubt there is a groundswell of dissatisfaction festering within a party that literally can’t stop rehashing what happened in November and strongly feels their worst fears are being realized on practically an hourly basis. It certainly explains the degree of vitriol and consternation that was hurled at its leadership, specifically minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is now under fire for being perceived as yet another knee-bender to the new administration. In his mono-rant on Monday night’s DAILY SHOW, Jon Stewart valiantly tried to capture the mood:
Stewart focused most of his wrath on Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who essentially paved the way toward the passage of the Republicans’ proposed funding bill despite his party’s opposition.
“Senator Schumer, no disrespect, but you are a disgrace to Jewish stereotypes about financial negotiations,” Stewart said, playing a clip of Schumer giving in without asking for anything in return. “I thought the whole point of us is that’s what we do. But you’re out there, ‘How much is it? $5. How about I give you $7?’ Like, what are you doing?
Stewart then played another news clip of Schumer claiming Democrats were going to “keep at it” until Trump’s polling falls below 40 percent. “At what?” Stewart shouted. “This was it! This was the it you would have been keeping at!” The host added that Schumer’s plan was fundamentally flawed since Democrats themselves are only polling at 27 percent.
When I start seeing numbers, my attention span gets focused. When roughly three of every four people like what you’re doing, that’s fairly conclusive. Way more conclusive, for example, than the “mandate” that the current administration was handed with less than 50 per cent of all voters and barely half of those who actually voted enabling Fat Orange Jesus and friends to wreak havoc.
But then I returned to the poll that got Isenstadt so excited and the clickbait headline that declared Ocasio-Cortez as the growing savior and looked at the numbers which Kaloi regurgitated:
A new SSRS poll released March 16 revealed the majority of Democrats polled believe the party needs to do more to “stop the Republican agenda,” CNN revealed. When asked to name “the Democratic leader they feel ‘best reflects the core values’ of the party, 10% of respondents named Ocasio-Cortez (9% named former vice president Kamala Harris, 8% named Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and 6% named House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries).
Go ahead and call me Carl from UP, but has anyone from this world actually heard of the phrase statistically significant? A one percentage point advantage over a candidate that just lost the election? A two percentage point advantage over an octogenarian that the party could not bring themselves to endorse when he actually was beginning to resonate as a challenger just as the afterglow from the decension from the golden escalator was starting to wane? And, most of all, the reality check that 90 per cent of those surveyed actually don’t seem to feel Ocasio-Cortez is the next anointed one? Isn’t that percentage more befitting of the term “mandate”?
And since I’m persistently urging those who seem to revel in misleading headlines like these as justification for their own rants on the “felon-in-chief” and “Plumpy Dump” to amplify voices that are actually in a position to matter I was pleased to see Stewart give a national stage to a somewhat more seasoned and articulate Democrat who made more than a few strong points with Stewart, as REAL CLEAR POLITICS’ Tim Hains recounted yesterday:
Sen. Chris Murphy said the Democratic party is not taking enough risks, allowing Republicans to take the mantle of “government reform,” and has become “a little bit too addicted to incrementalism.”
“How on earth are we going to ask the American people to take risks for us when there’s a five-alarm constitutional fire and we need them to be out on the streets, not with hundreds, not with thousands or tens of thousands of people, with hundreds of thousands of people, if we’re not willing to show courage and take risks?” Murphy wondered.
“It shouldn’t take ten years to build a bridge, it shouldn’t take five years to get permits for a subdivision. Government is not working for people right now,” he said. “When I first got into politics, the Democratic Party every single day was talking about reforming government, reforming democracy, getting big money out of politics, strict ethics reform. Somewhere we lost our way. At some point, that went from a top three issue to like a top 20 issue, and that allowed the Republican Party to become the party that was actually aggressive about reforming government.”
Like Sanders, Murphy is a senator from New England–in this case, Connecticut. He’s somewhere in between Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez in age. And yes, he’s a white male who isn’t doing Tik Tok videos or wearing demonstrative pink blazers or holding up auction paddles or refusing to clap for a 13-year-old cancer survivor.
In other words, perhaps someone we all should be paying a little more attention to. And if the bar for face of the party is merely set at cracking double digits, and being the leader in the clubhouse south of 30 per cent, he may not be all that far off from either of those goals.
As for AOC, she continues to use her outsized pulpit to vent and bitch, much like so many of her fellow TikTok lovers do. Here’s what Kaloi cited as her reaction to Schumer’s inaction:
“I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal and this is not just progressive Democrats — this is across the board, the entire party,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters Thursday. “I think it is a huge slap in the face.”
To her credit, AOC is at least offering a reaction. Had more of her generation actually turned out to vote last fall, even to the extent they did during the 2022 midterms, it’s entirely possible Madame Nine Percent might actually be occupying the White House. But at her current water level, there’s to this old man little reason to think Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is the heir apparent.
I’m old enough to remember a time when generational change brought the spiritual ancestors to Ocasio-Cortez and company to the streets. We may indeed be heading toward that time, or at least we should. But as Murphy reminds, they’ve got to be willing to have enough ambition to do that. Right now, their track record isn’t all that encouraging.
Down the road, who knows? People grow and mature. In my case, we arguably get a little overripe. AOC will eventually reach an age and level of experience to perhaps be meriting of deeper consideration–though it remains to be seen if she can win an election beyond the very limited reach of her native Bronx and my old neighborhood in Queens. Maybe helping her party rather than her brand might give her such opportunity. Down the road.
Until next time…