Ocasio-Cortez And The Far Left Are Poisoning Democrat Policy
Ocasio-Cortez And The Far Left Are Poisoning Democrat Policy. When it comes to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez her repeated gaffes and nonsensical statements becomes easy targets for the right to go after policy positions. Ocasio-Cortez was paraded around by Democrats so much that she became to prominent for her experience level. Thus we see it again and again. Twitter flame wars, nonsensical gaffes, and a mainstream media that enjoys calling her out as much as Conservatives and Republicans do.Her policy positions and rhetoric is speaking to a tiny minority of the US. If Democrats want to see change and bipartisan support for certain bills they need to recognize the damage Ocasio-Cortez does to these plans.
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When it comes to policy positions, I actually agree with Ocasio-Cortez on many issues.
The problem is that she's a gaffe queen, and she repeatedly says false or nonsensical statements that makes it hard to present good ideas for moderate or bipartisan support.
Even PolitiFact and the Washington Post have had to call her out for saying things that make no sense.
And it's not just true of Ocasio-Cortez, but for many people associated with the far left and the new progressive members of the Democratic Party.
They don't know how to communicate their ideas to moderates and Republicans, and they're actually a small percentage of the American population.
This means when it comes to good ideas like the Green New Deal, we can't get any support for it in Congress.
According to a poll from Yale, 81% of people support the idea of a Green New Deal.
So why is it then?
That in Congress, there is no support, there's no bipartisan support for this bill.
In my opinion, it's because these fringe members of the Democratic Party and the far left have no idea what they're talking about or how to present good ideas, and it's damaging to those of us who are liberal and want to see these things pushed forward.
So today, I want to talk about what's going on with the Green New Deal, why they aren't getting support, and why I think the far left and Ocasio-Cortez are poison for moderates and the Democratic Party.
But before we get started, please head over to TimCast.com forward slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
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Let's start by talking about some important policy from The Guardian.
The Green New Deal.
What is the progressive plan and is it technically possible?
The idea, central to Ocasio-Cortez's campaign, aims to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but lacks key political support.
Before I read through the story, I want to make one important point.
Aims to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution immediately speaks to progressives and not to moderates or conservatives.
And thus, already we can start to see the ineffective communication skills of the far left and Ocasio-Cortez's campaign.
Most U.S.
voters would support a Green New Deal for the country to transform its infrastructure with a rapid shift to clean energy.
But while the idea is gaining attention on Capitol Hill, it lacks key political support.
According to a survey from the Yale Climate Change Communication Program, 81% of voters backed its description of a Green New Deal.
Similar plans vary in detail, but all are inspired by the New Deal that Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched to battle the effects of the Great Depression.
The idea was central to the high-profile campaign of Ocasio-Cortez, the young Democratic Socialist from New York who won a U.S.
House seat in November.
Ocasio-Cortez and the youth-led Sunrise Movement are encouraging Democrats who will retake the House majority in January to produce a blueprint.
Their Green New Deal would center around creating new jobs and lessening inequality, aiming to virtually eliminate U.S.
greenhouse gas pollution in a decade.
It would be radical compared with other climate proposals.
It would require massive government spending.
Dozens of Democrats have signaled support, including potential 2020 presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker.
This month, New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo said his state would launch its own Green New Deal seeking carbon-neutral electricity by 2040.
The story goes on to say, With enough money and political will, the U.S.
electrical grid could make major changes.
Currently, the U.S.
gets 70% of its power from renewable energy, and less than half of that is from wind and solar, the quickly growing renewable sources, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Nuclear power, which uses mined uranium but is carbon-free, makes up 20% of the grid.
Turning to all renewable power would require large amounts of battery storage, for when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, the technology is not available but it is advancing.
They ask, is it politically possible?
Republicans are unlikely to support any Green New Deal, which would require acknowledging the threats posed by climate change and increasing spending to avoid them.
The proposal could be divisive among Democrats, too.
Much of it goes beyond addressing climate change and invokes more of the progressive platform.
And this is my main problem with how they present these ideas.
Their version of a Green New Deal talks about making the economy fair.
What does that even mean?
Just?
What does that mean?
They talk about eliminating carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Now, that I like, right?
I believe that climate change is a real issue.
However, I understand, based on common understanding of political debate in this country, conservatives tend not to see things that way.
In fact, there are many moderates who aren't convinced climate change is man-made or that it's going to be a huge problem.
Thus, you cannot frame your argument in a way that only speaks to 8% of the population.
And yes, I mean that specifically.
From this report called Hidden Tribes that was produced a little while ago, progressive activists make up only 8% of the population.
I find myself somewhere in the exhausted majority, though I'm relatively active in terms of politics.
I know that if I want to find some real change and put forth something akin to a Green New Deal, we need the support of moderates, conservatives, and devoted conservatives.
And if they don't agree with your view of the world, you need to figure out what they do agree on, and how you can present something that would be beneficial to them as well, so you can find the bipartisan support you need to pass a bill like this.
There are still a lot of problems that we have to overcome in terms of green technology.
Like, wind isn't always blowing, sun isn't always shining, they mention you need batteries.
Nuclear power is actually pretty great.
It produces a lot of energy for a small investment, but people are concerned about large-scale disasters.
The answer is simple.
We need more investment in new types of energy and more research into new technologies.
Just coming out and talking about carbon emissions is not going to convince anybody on the right to support your measure.
But how about we talk about the economy, which they do mention.
How about we get away from this idea of fairness, because I don't even know what that means.
We can talk about making America's economy grow significantly.
Making America better than it is now by making it more competitive on an international market.
Lowering our energy requirement and energy costs for new industries in this country means a better economy, it means rapid economic growth, and it means we're less dependent on foreign oil sources.
Granted, the U.S.
is, I believe it's the biggest producer of fossil fuels.
The point is, You're trying to sell an idea to a conservative.
Don't just come out the gate with something that only speaks to a tiny fraction of people.
It's never going to work.
There are a lot of policies that I want to see enacted.
I am a social liberal, so I do agree with Ocasio-Cortez on a lot of things.
But I believe that her and people who are aligned with her wing of the Democratic Party are poisoning the party.
I'm frustrated to no end.
By the left who refuses to call her out for these things.
Mainstream media has no problem putting together lists of all of the false statements she's made.
She sounds ridiculously silly.
Just the other day, we saw a story from Yahoo.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked for JLo reference and showing new office plaque.
Now, it's funny that you can kind of be endearing and make silly jokes, but this is not confidence-building for Democrats.
Yahoo is not a conservative hit-rag.
They're not going after Ocasio-Cortez because they don't like the left.
They're doing it because she is a silly person, okay?
And I've seen a lot of people on the left say, oh, Tim mocks Ocasio-Cortez too much.
Yeah, sure, we're not talking about policy.
We're talking about her being a bad representative for progressive policies, and looking silly and making it harder for people like me to have the conversation that needs to be had.
Look, there's just an endless, endless stream of gaffes from Cortez.
We have this one posted to Fox News.
Ocasio-Cortez says Jesus was a refugee in Christmas tweet.
He wasn't.
They point out, Mary and Joseph are not depicted as refugees in the Nativity story.
According to the Gospel of Luke, Joseph brings the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem so that he may enroll in a census ordered by the Roman Emperor Augustus.
The couple are forced to take shelter in a stable where Jesus is born due to a lack of room at the inn.
But it's not just about the gaffes.
It's about the online flame wars.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regularly engages in political flame wars with pundits.
In this tweet, she's talking about how someone's mansplaining to her Michael Knowles from, I believe, from the Daily Wire, and I have to wonder why.
Sure, she earns brownie points with her progressive tribe, but do you think the average American who is concerned about the economy, about their livelihood and their family, is going to be excited when they see that the incoming Congresswoman-elect is this concerned about mansplaining and getting into an argument with someone who's not even a politician?
Don't forget, Ben Shapiro challenged her to a debate, and she said she's not going to debate someone who's not a politician, that she has no obligation to Ben, and then she actually likened it to some kind of catcalling or something.
Obviously, there are people on the right who don't like her actual policy positions.
And for sure, I have some criticisms of her policy positions.
She has one gaffe where she claimed that a $21 trillion accounting error I'd like to see a society where we can provide healthcare to all of its citizens.
I lean in that direction.
I don't know how we do it and the conversation needs to be had.
Listen, I understand we don't have a clear path to Medicare for all.
I like the idea.
I'd like to see a society where we can provide health care to all of its citizens.
I lean in that direction.
I don't know how we do it and the conversation needs to be had.
We need to be adults about these things and say, hey, if I can get you health care, lowering
the cost of health care across the board for everybody, wouldn't that be a good thing?
Can we do it?
Let's make a plan.
That's not what she does.
She gets into flame wars with people from the Daily Wire while simultaneously arguing that she's not going to debate people from the Daily Wire, and it just makes for poison on the left.
This is the graphic I've shown time and time again because it seems to be that people don't understand why this is happening and why someone like me is now a centrist and not considered necessarily on the left by most people.
And it's because the Democrats have spread so far.
This is a story from The Economist talking about how the progressive groups lost the overwhelming majority of their primaries.
They say that mainstream Democrats won 71 of 78.
That means out of all of these primaries, only seven progressives got in.
We can see this.
From 1980, conservatives and liberals are actually relatively close with some overlap.
Over time, conservatives actually stay where they are, but liberals start spreading further and further to the left.
Vox ran a story where they showed a chart saying that conservatives are becoming more extreme because they won't work with Democrats.
But I think that's kind of unfair.
There's a simple reason why conservatives aren't working with Democrats.
It's because Democrats are embracing policies that are further and further left, and I honestly have no idea why, but it also sounds like they're ineffective communicators.
I used to do fundraising for Greenpeace.
I would actually go out onto the street, street canvassing, waving to people and ask them to talk to me about signing up to protect the environment.
At the time, I was a big fan of Greenpeace.
Admittedly, I'm not so much anymore for political reasons.
But I'm still a staunch environmentalist for the most part.
I love nature, I want to see pollution reduced, I want to see animals protected, and I like the idea of a Green New Deal because it can make us more competitive, it can better America, but it can also help protect the environment.
It seems like a win-win across the board.
And I get so ridiculously frustrated seeing these ambassadors of these policies sound like they have no idea what they're talking about and actually damage an idea that according to Yale, 81% of people actually support.
The Yale program on climate change communication published this on December 14th.
The Green New Deal has strong bipartisan support.
They say some members of Congress are proposing a Green New Deal for the U.S.
They say that a Green New Deal would produce jobs and strengthen America's economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.
The deal would generate 100% of the nation's electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years, upgrade the nation's energy grid, buildings and transportation infrastructure, increase energy efficiency, invest in green technology research and development, and provide training for jobs in the new green economy.
They say the survey results show overwhelming support for the Green New Deal, with 81% of registered voters saying they either strongly support or somewhat support this plan.
They say when God closes a door, he opens a window.
So as much as Ocasio-Cortez frustrates me in actually making it harder to talk about certain policies, she gives me an opportunity to talk rationally about why these policies probably would make sense.
I think the approach from the far left is not the right way to go about it, which is another problem.
We need moderates to come together and talk about what we can do to improve research and investments into energy technology, which I believe will benefit this country greatly.
It's possible.
that Republicans will actually support this.
You just have to make sure that they have a say in how it is implemented.
We can see that around 40 or so percent of people surveyed would somewhat support this plan.
And that says to me that we've got a lot of people who strongly support it and some who somewhat support it, so let's compromise a bit and do what we can to move in this direction.
Because you're not going to be able to force people who don't see the world the way you do to agree to your fringe, far-left politics.
8% of this country, progressive activists.
You can't just try and sell it to them.
You don't have the support.
It's almost like they don't care about how Republicans and conservatives and moderates feel about these issues.
I certainly do.
And that means I want to sit down and have a real conversation.
I know I've talked about this before, but I want to mention that Ocasio-Cortez got into office through an exploit.
She won a primary with about 15,000 votes in a district of 740 or so thousand people.
When it came to Cynthia Nixon in her district, Nixon, who was the progressive, lost by 30 points.
And as I just showed you in the Economist article, progressives overwhelmingly lost their primaries.
It was a fluke, in my opinion.
But let me know what you think in the comments below, and let's talk about the Green New Deal.
I want to have this conversation about policy because I think we can't... Look, I'm an environmentalist.
I believe climate change is a problem.
I understand conservatives don't agree with that.
What can we do to compromise to find a plan that would be beneficial to those who don't agree and those who do?
And I think it's silly that the left and progressives will just poo-poo the right and say, oh, they're science deniers, they're climate change deniers.
That's not a productive conversation.
That's not going to get you what you want.
And look, you may not want to back down, but you have to recognize other people live in this country too, and they all voted for Donald Trump.
Okay?
Those people you don't like.
So I need to make sure I can have a conversation with them.
And you know what?
Maybe we can't do it.
Maybe we can't.
That just means that our communication is poor.
Let's stop being mean and nasty to each other.
Admittedly, I'm very critical of Cortez.
I apologize for being frustrated.
But I think the conversation needs to be bipartisan and moderate if we want to make any substantive change in this country.
I hope you agree, but you don't have to.
We're going to have a conversation about this.
So comment below.
Let me know what you think about the Green New Deal.
Look, the focus of this video is kind of how I'm frustrated to no end by the far left and how the Democrats just can't come together on core issues.
So comment below and we'll talk about it.
I'll have more videos up on my second channel, youtube.com slash TimCastNews at 6 p.m.
