Posted on 08/08/2018 9:51:44 PM PDT by Louis Foxwell
The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Model Loses in the Midwest If socialism is so popular, why aren’t the socialists winning? August 9, 2018 Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism.
"Abdul El-Sayed’s Campaign Is a Test for Leftism in the Midwest," New York Magazine declared.
That was on Sunday.
On Monday, ThinkProgress called El-Sayed’s campaign one to prove “Democratic socialism can win in the Midwest.”
On Tuesday, socialism and leftism failed the Midwest test.
Bernie Sanders, socialism’s confused grandpa, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, socialism’s new model, had flown out to campaign for El-Sayed’s gubernatorial campaign in Michigan. A Guardian article sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation had dubbed the Muslim socialist candidate, “The New Obama”.
El-Sayed had run on socialized medicine under its current misleading brand of “Medicare for All.” It had proven financially unviable everywhere from Vermont to California. And Michigan’s finances make it an especially terrible candidate for socialized medicine. But socialism is having a moment. Or is it?
Bernie Sanders, Linda Sarsour and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the entire left, couldn’t manage to drag El-Sayed over the finish line in a state with a large Muslim population. And El-Sayed didn’t just lose.
He lost badly.
The media had been trying to build up El-Sayed as another Ocasio-Cortez while repeatedly claiming that there was a tight race. The election showed that there had never actually been much of a competition.
El-Sayed isn’t socialism’s only Midwestern misfire. A few days ago, the New York Times was touting Cori Bush as the woman to pull off Ocasio-Cortez’s playbook in the “heartland”. Like El-Sayed, Cori Bush was running on a $15 minimum wage, “Medicare for All” and free college.
Bush was a Black Lives Matter organizer. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to campaign for her. Like Cortez, Bush was supposed to beat Rep. Lacy Clay, a CBC hack welded to his seat by identity politics, by applying the same insurgent tactics that had allowed Cortez to beat Rep. Joe Crowley in New York.
There was just one huge problem. Cortez had beaten a white guy who lived in Virginia in a Latino district. Clay is black. And so Cortez’s playbook of running against a white guy proved utterly useless.
Cori Bush lost by nearly as high a percentage as Abdul El-Sayed.
Bernie’s people supported Bush. And she had the endorsement of Democracy for America. The left had tried to turn El-Sayed and Bush into the poster candidates for socialism. Despite socialism’s supposed moment, its candidates have been consistent losers outside of a few super-lefty enclaves. That was why the media had built a cult of personality around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Had El-Sayed or Bush won, there would have been three examples, two in the heartland, instead of only one New York fluke.
Mainstream Democrats had argued that socialism wouldn’t appeal to the average American.
The Midwest had become the left’s obsession. If the socialists were ever going to be taken seriously, they had to win outside leftist bicoastal bubbles. El-Sayed and Bush tried to replicate Cortez’s campaign of cloaking socialism in identity politics and then claiming their win as a victory for socialism. The plan was to expand on Cortez’s victory among Latino voters with Muslim and African-American voters.
Once again the media had created a false narrative, inflated the chances of marginal candidates with no real support outside radical circles, acted as if they were likely to win, and then forgot about them just as quickly. The same media narrative which rewrote Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory as inevitable will just as quickly erase Abdul El-Sayed, the new Obama, and Cori Bush, the new Cortez, from history.
In a few days, El-Sayed went from socialism’s litmus test to a forgotten failure. But that’s always been true of socialism which has spent over a century burying one failure after another. Compared to the Soviet Union, Cambodia and Venezuela, one failed gubernatorial candidate is a small thing indeed.
And, unlike the last three examples, El-Sayed hadn’t even managed to starve thousands or millions of people to death, shoot them in the streets or torture them to death in secret prisons.
Socialism’s success is inevitable. Its defeats are always inconceivable. And so they never happened.
El-Sayed and Bush’s defeats mark the end of the Cortez strategy. The left did better with Brent Welder and James Thompson, both white, in Kansas. And despite Cortez’s showboating, their respective performance can’t be credited to her. The left has gone to the Midwest to show that it had broad appeal, it had put forward identity politics candidates, but it actually does best with white voters.
Just not very many of those white voters.
Bernie Sanders lost to Hillary Clinton because black women voted against him. Elizabeth Warren’s deepest appeal is to wealthy white voters. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was so appealing, not just because she was a millennial, but because the socialists had finally cracked the Democrat minority bloc wall.
The new narrative about socialism in the Midwest will have to toss aside the rebranding.
Socialism remains the hobbyhorse of a limited number of white leftists. They have the money and the activists to occasionally win races, usually when their opponents are badly hobbled. It’s not because their ideas are unpopular. Free stuff at taxpayer expense has always been a winning Dem message.
It’s the messengers.
As Bernie Sanders awkwardly limps around the country with Ocasio-Cortez, the oldest and youngest socialists, they will face difficult questions about where the trillions of dollars to pay for their plans will come from and even more difficult questions about why if socialism is so popular, the socialists aren’t winning.
And the answer has to do with their own incompetence.
Both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had become notorious for their gaffes, their inability to explain what anything would cost, and how they plan to keep their promises. Abdul El-Sayed and Cori Bush were no better on the campaign trail. The flagbearers of a new populist socialism tripped over their own clueless rhetoric and landed face down in the mud. Their failure was indeed a litmus test.
Socialists have always been the worst messengers of socialism. Socialism’s best messengers weren’t socialists, but their Democrat opponents. That’s what Barack Obama understood and Bernie Sanders didn’t. It’s why he endorsed Hillary Clinton, not her even more inept and fumbling opponent.
Americans can be tricked into accepting socialism when it isn’t being pitched by socialists.
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Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
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I bet it would succeed in most of California.
To me, her eyes are very scary, as if she is possessed by a demon.
Poor Alexandria. Someone left their cake out in the rain!
Scapegoat time, baby.
At least in the Midwest it begins to look as if the blue wave has turned into a red tide.
Immigrant groups have more complex mentalities here than people realize. Lots of people from former communist situations. - Also Christianity is more prominent in Southern California at least than the East Coast and in my opinion more vibrant than Bible Belt. I'd say overall the state is Hillary Clinton-left, not Bernie Sanders-left. (Maybe pockets up North would be Bernie-land?)
However, it being the home of Hollywood, personality does matter. Our ex governors are actors like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ms. Cortez is very charismatic and has star quality. Look at the mayor of Los Angeles. He gets by on that alone....meanwhile our city is heading down the drain.
BTTT.
Cortez is dependent upon winning in November. If she gets past that point, I think within six years...she’d be a senator. For the standard Democrat, it’s a freak show and they realize it. But for Bernie-supporters....she’s the path to the future.
Lots of people escaped* from communist situations I mean and are not inclined to socialism in principle. Also there are more registered independents in California than most places I head... That says a lot too. The ‘Democrat’ thing is not so set in stone, we just haven’t been blessdd with the greatest candidates yet from the conservative side. And a lot of conservatives don’t bother voting state/locally.
:D
Hey she wanted the crown! Then she wanted the presidency! Instead she’s being schooled in 15 minutes of fame. Upon closer examination there’s no there and what is is ill digested even by lefties.. She’ll bleed out soon enough.
I never thought about that. She’ll become Christmas tree for everything that’s wrong with the Dems since none of their BS has stuck yet. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. /s
Sadly for her she started feeding on not only her own(Democrats). But also putting down the intellect of older, more experienced adults in an arrogant way. To bad she didn’t read the stats. The majority of voters are older. She can talk to young and naive all she wants. They don’t vote.
Ha! Amen!
The coastal areas are ripe for Communism, the main body of Americans stand by the Founding Fathers’ principles - “Don’t Tread on me”...
Go to You Tube. Put in “Outer Limits’’/The Zanti Misfits’. Talk about eyes.
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