Socialist unseats NY Democratic Congressman
Less than a year ago, she was serving tacos and drinks at a restaurant in Manhattan.
Now, she's likely to be elected to Congress.
And she's a socialist.
Fromt the Washington Post:
[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez’s politics are substantially to the left of most of the party, and even Sanders. In her campaign videos and posters, designed by friends from New York’s socialist circles, she came out for the abolition of ICE, universal Medicare, a federal jobs guarantee and free college tuition. The ads also made it clear that she was a different candidate — a young Latina from the Bronx, not a white man from Queens. The posters, which she said were designed to look “revolutionary,” were bilingual and centered her face; her viral campaign video, created by a socialist team called Means of Production, began with her saying that “women like me aren’t supposed to run for office” over an image of her getting ready for the day in a busy apartment building.
“The only time we create any kind of substantive change is when we reach out to a disaffected electorate and inspire and motivate them to vote,” Ocasio-Cortez told the left-wing magazine In These Times, in one of many interviews she gave as her campaign seemed to surge in the final weeks. “That is how Obama won and got reelected, and that’s how Bernie Sanders did so well.”
She upset Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY), who was being eyed as a potential Speaker of the House if Democrats could win a majority.
Her campaign began with phone banks that targeted thousands of unaffiliated voters, informing them that they needed to register as Democrats six months before the election if they wanted to vote in the primary. It purchased the Democratic voter list, but Ocasio-Cortez’s team found the built-in technology to be too clumsy, so they built their own app and handed it to volunteers.
The Democratic Party has a serious problem on its hands, unless it prefers to go full socialist. (Of course, many on the right believe this what the Democratic Party has been for quite some time.)
I suspect Bernie Sanders' run for president was the triggering event for the preference cascade.
I know I've been using the term a lot recently, but it seems to explain so much.
It comes from a political scientist named Timur Kuran who developed the theory along with Obamaite Cass Sunstein. [emphasis added]
In articulating preferences, individuals frequently tailor their choices to what appears socially acceptable. In other words, they convey preferences that differ from what they genuinely want. Kuran calls the resulting misrepresentation “preference falsification.” In his 1995 book, Private Truths, Public Lies, he argues that the phenomenon is ubiquitous and that it has huge social and political consequences. These consequences all hinge on interdependencies between individual decisions as to what preference to convey publicly. A person who hides his discontent about a fashion, policy, or political regime makes it harder for others to express discontent.
One socially significant consequence of preference falsification is thus widespread public support for social options that would be rejected decisively in a vote taken by secret ballot. Privately unpopular policies may be retained indefinitely as people reproduce conformist social pressures through individual acts of preference falsification.
In falsifying preferences, people hide the knowledge on which it rests. In the process, they distort, corrupt, and impoverish the knowledge in the public domain. They make it harder for others to become informed about the drawbacks of existing arrangements and the merits of their alternatives. Another consequence of preference falsification is thus widespread ignorance about the advantages of change. Over long periods, preference falsification can dampen a community’s capacity to want change by bringing about intellectual narrowness and ossification.
The first of these consequences is driven by people’s need for social approval, the second by their reliance on each other for information.
This lasts until something or someone breaks through the silence.
Like Donald Trump.
Like Bernie Sanders.
And then the "cascade" begins...
The concept of the Preference Cascade is credited to Turkish economist Timur Kuran. Glenn Reynolds described the idea in a 2002 op-ed, Patriotism and Preferences.
In short, average people behave the way they think they ought to, even though that behavior might not reflect their own personal feelings. Given a sufficient "A-HA!" moment when they discover that their personal feelings are shared by a large portion of the population their behavior may change dramatically. An example of this is the British colonists before and after publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. A year before the Declaration of Independence, America was full of patriotic British convinced that things could be worked out with King George, but on July 4, 1776 the colonies were full of Americans determined that they needed independence.
This is why revolutions and regime collapses catch people by surprise.
Like Joe Crowley last night.
And like the GOP in 2016.
Republican National Committee highlights violent leftist rhetoric
I think this is a smart move by the RNC - to show how far the base of the Democratic Party has drifted towards violence. I want to believe most Americans find this kind of behavior unacceptable.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters demonstrated at the restaurant that asked the White House Press Secretary to leave.
From the Daily Mail report:
Police in Lexington had to cordon off the portion of the road in front of the Red Hen restaurant, where an estimated 75 protesters brought signs, waved flags, and chanted slogans on Tuesday.
One unidentified individual even hurled chicken feces toward the restaurant, which landed on the sidewalk.
Classy.
NC firefighters save the day!
But, wait! There's more!
The Citizen-Times reports that the I-26 connector project could be running into more roadblocks. Again.
Pew Research finds: "Republicans thought 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual, while the actual number was about 6 percent. Democrats estimated that 44 percent of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year. The actual share was 2 percent."
Mitt Romney won the Utah GOP primary for US Senate.
The Supreme Court says a pro-life group doesn't have to direct women to get abortions.