“The CIA couldn’t do a better job of discrediting the American left,” writes Matt Taibbi about the apparent succession of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to the role played to the hilt by that consummate actor and radical left American socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Sanders has always touched something deep and needy among left-wing radicals. He has always been unapologetic about his belief in the absolute correctness of his cause. That certainty is what the left has always craved, especially today, as Democrats wander to and fro in the wilderness, looking for the path to power.
But Sanders is 82 and ready for retirement. His national speaking tour with Ocasio-Cortez is a clear sign of who he wants to succeed him in being America’s most ridiculous leftist.
America’s children had been trending left in the last few decades until recently. The realities of being a grown-up often disabuse the young of their silly, unrealistic pretensions about socialism.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country has lurched to the right. That’s the voting part of the country, so Donald Trump won in 2024.
The perfect outcome in the future is if “angry” Democrats like AOC ascend to the top rung of the Democratic establishment. It would be a dream come true for Republicans. Unless there’s a massive shift toward the center by Democrats, there’s a real possibility the Democrats will set themselves on fire with their anger and flame out.
Packing venues all over the country — in Nebraska, Iowa, Arizona and Colorado — Mr. Sanders appears more popular than ever. His core message hasn’t changed in decades, but it’s hitting harder now. In hours of interviews with all kinds of people at the Nevada rally on Thursday, two unbroken trends emerged: Everyone I met was having money problems. And all of them were frightened, some for the first time, that the country they’d always counted on was sliding away because of President Trump.
If ordinary people are frightened, it’s because the New York Times and other media outlets have been hysterically exaggerating what Donald Trump is doing. No court has declared what he’s doing “unconstitutional.” Trump has said that if a court tells him so, he will not defy a federal court. He has done nothing illegal. But scaring people is all the Democrats and the media have to try and fight what Donald Trump is doing.
AOC and Sanders have been a one-two-punch road show, generating huge crowds and making them “angry.”
“This movement is not about partisan labels or purity tests,” AOC told a crowd in Las Vegas. “It’s about class solidarity. The thousands of people who came out here today to stand here together and say, ‘Our lives deserve dignity, and our work deserves respect.’”
Cue the men’s choir singing “The Internationale.”
AOC as a choice to replace Bernie would make sense to a Democratic Party consultant, who’d see woman, woman of color, and 12 million Twitter followers and think all boxes were checked. The original idea of a Sanders run, though, was a substance-over-style rebuke of party orthodoxy. Now Bernie is DNC-izing his own movement. Legacy outlets are already boosting the notion of AOC as a 2028 contender, which itself should scare Sanders, but somehow doesn’t. Why would the same press goons who smeared him for years suddenly embrace his successor?
Answer: AOC sanitizes the Bernie movement for traditional Democrats by bringing what the New York Times calls “a contemporary flourish to their shared progressive politics.” In other words, she’s replaced whatever hard edge Sanders ever had with woke gibberish.
That and 12 million followers on X make her the front-runner for 2028 in a party that’s apparently willing to listen to the loudest, most annoying, angriest voice rather than the American people.
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