Last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a 28—a longtime socialist who ran on progressive policies like Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, the human right to housing and the repeal of ICE — defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. Ocasio-Cortez's victory left much of the political world in awe, with observers wondering aloud what the upset means for the ongoing ideological battle between the Democratic establishment and the progressive wings.
People want a fairer distribution of the nation's wealth and resources unmatched in world history, and they want oppression defeated wherever it occurs.
Some, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, dismissed the proposal as silly, over-the-top nonsense. ,“They made a choice in a district,” Pelosi told reporters. ,“So let's not get carried away.”
Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth has the same line. when asked CNN's Jake Tapper If the future of the Democratic Party lies with staunchly progressive candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, Duckworth was quick to dismiss the prediction: ,“I think he's the future of partying in the Bronx, where he's at.”
After quickly calling out Ocasio-Cortez's gifts as a candidate, Duckworth quickly returned to her warning, arguing that while Ocasio-Cortez's brand of democratic socialism might work in New York, taking the message nationally would be a strategic mistake. for Democrats. ,“I think you can't win the White House without the Midwest and I don't think you can go too far to the left and still win the Midwest…you have to be able to talk to the industrial Midwest, you have to listen to the people there.
Duckworth is wrong on at least two fronts.
First, he essentially argues that any candidate who takes the time to listen to the views of the people at the heart of the nation would easily see the disaster that awaits him on the path of democratic socialism.
At the heart of this argument is the mistaken belief that America is, at its core, a politically moderate-conservative country. But this is an old myth supported by weak and widely misunderstood public opinion poll. Once you get past past terms like conservative and liberal and start talking about core policy priorities, it turns out that the country is more on the side of Bernie Sanders than Mitt Romney.
As New York Magazine,'small The highlights of Eric Levitzfor example, there is a strong majority for progressive policies such as Medicare-for-all and federal jobs guaranteeincluding among them in ,“country of flight”. The same is true of health care overall, with polls consistently finding overwhelming public support — including a majority of Republicans — for more federal spending for health care and against Medicaid cuts. There are more. Breaking up the most colossal banks, the ones that are considered ,““too big to fail”? Says a bipartisan majority of voters Do it. How about climate change? According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 72 percent of Americans believe ,“the United States should take aggressive action to slow global warming.”
Because misinformation about the region, as well as Americans' political leanings, is so widespread, it's easy to miss the fact that specific progressive policies—not words we've stripped of all substance—are actually widely popular. And when candidates speak up for them, they can win elections across the country. Ocasio-Cortez is simple moral position that ,“No man in America should be too poor to live,” is a shining example.
On the second front, whether she wants to or not, Duckworth completely erases people of color from the region's history. Juxtaposing the industrial Midwest and the Bronx, he immediately created a split screen of conflicting images. The residents of Ocasio-Cortez's district are overwhelmingly people of color (though she too behaves many of the gentler areas of the region). Meanwhile, the industrial Midwest conjured up in Duckworth's script is the same one that so often engulfs the regional narrative—one of rolling plains and neatly packaged small-town stories that are somehow both innocent and culturally backward. The people in these stories, of course, tend to be white. That's because, as HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter has done pointed out, you can't believe that the Bronx and the Midwest are entirely different creatures without erasing the many Midwestern cities where people of color, mostly black, are the majority — Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cleveland, and more. But it's there. And they care deeply about the decisions that shape their lives.
As does Sean McElwee detailed in the Nation, black voters are perhaps the most economically progressive in the country, with majorities in favor of a federal job guarantee, socialized medicine and minimum wage increases. And across a huge body of poll data, blacks consistently show deep concern about their economic lives and the role racism plays in shaping them. Criminal justice reform also tops the priority list for the vast majority of black voters.
One does not need to be a professional strategist to see how obsessing over these concerns, and refusing to address them, can have a significant impact on elections. Black voters, for example, were a key part of the Obama coalition 2012. However, a disproportionate share of 2012 voters who decided to sit out 2016 they came from the same group. The decline was particularly significant in, as you may have guessed, the Midwest.
There is a strong argument that the Democrats' failure to run on a more muscular progressive platform 2016 it lost them crucial votes, particularly among black voters, without whom the party would be a faded memory. It seems obvious that inspiring these people to return to the polls should be a top priority for Democrats. The policies espoused by democratic socialists like Ocasio-Cortez, with their intense focus on eliminating exploitation and oppression in society, would do more than any other mainstream political platform to improve the lives of black people.
These mistakes, about what policies people think will improve their material lives, are easy to make. This is especially true in a country that pays endless lip service to democracy, giving the impression that people have a meaningful say in the day-to-day decisions that affect their lives. Yet evidence it suggests what most people already knew in their pits: that public opinion has almost no impact on politics, with influence on decisions largely carried by those with the deepest pockets.
But even if almost no one listens to the public, it's important to get the basic details about their political priorities right: the people want a fairer distribution of the nation's wealth and resources unmatched in world history, and they want oppression defeated. wherever it appears.
This includes the poorly understood Midwest.
