So, I woke up today to AOC being absolutely slammed by progressive forums for "selling out" on the issue of giving additional defense aid to Israel. As we know, the progressive community has made this a purity test as of late, and a lot of parties are flopping on it. Yang got ripped to shreds over supporting Israel in his mayoral run and now it's AOC's turn.
Apparently, the controversy comes from her changing her initial no vote to present. She supposedly originally she voted no on it straight up, but then Pelosi said something to her, she looked like she was on the verge of crying, and switched to a "present" vote.
This seems to be a moment of Pelosi potentially blackmailing AOC. She was going to vote along with her principles, but she instead took the more neutral "present" vote. Of course the actual context isn't known. It's been floated that maybe she backed down because she's being redistricted into a district with more Jewish constituents, who wouldn't want her to take a strong stance against it. Still, it's quite clear she is against it so I'm not sure how present changes any more. You wanna know what I see when people vote present on issues I care about like medicare for all. basically, they're voting no, but don't want to be on the record of voting no, so they essentially abstain instead. And I generally treat present votes as "no" votes in a sense. So to see her do this is the same kind of politically correct weasel way of voting no fake progressives often use against progressive legislation when they don't want to be on the record for their stance.
That said I can't say this is selling out. It seems to be a weasely way of voting no, but it's not like she voted yes. AOC did comment on the matter on her twitter, but largely avoided the subject of why she didn't just vote no. Something is up that she can't talk about, but we don't know what.
Okay, look, here's my take on this. This is what happens when progressives try to work within the democratic party. The party basically either kicks you out, or corrupts you over time. You're not allowed to vote on principle, and if you do the weight of the establishment will come down on you and you'll be sabotaged and thrown out of office. It will be like what happened when Nina Turner tried to go against the establishment. In politics, you either seem to die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
I don't fault AOC for what she does. I believe she's trying her best to navigate this hostile environment while keeping her ideals intact, but she does need to sometimes make questionable moves in order to maintain her seat. You can criticize her all day, even she seems to understand people are going to be disappointed in her on this, but she probably had something leveraged against her where she couldn't.
Don't judge AOC too harshly. or Bernie for that matter. Yeah, I know I came down hard on bernie too. But really, this is why I'm thinking we need Yang's third party. Im watching these people try to change the democrats from the inside and it's not working, the democrats are changing them more than they're changing the democrats. In order to really maintain independence and clarity of vision and ideals, people need to operate outside of the party, because the party seems to foist all kinds of bad options of people that they're forced to take or else be seen as not a team player. It's a lot like going up against a boss in capitalism, you can't unless you have enough organized labor to strike. Individual people can't do much. You need an organized effort against the system in order to leverage it. It's just how it is.
Maybe in 10-20 years progressives will have more power. I would like to believe that but given the democrats increasing reliance on white suburban moderates as an intentional political strategy, it seems like the name of the game is deny progressives a real voice in government. That said, we need to abandon the democrats and form our own party or parties through which to leverage the change we want. Huge reason I'm so gung ho on the forward party idea.
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