Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

1
After igniting an internecine war in the Democratic Congressional Caucus between Nancy Pelosi and the Old Guard, versus the new, young "Squad", Dowd, who pretends to be a liberal but is really a reactionary with a distaste for the most reactionary ideas, doubles down on her attack on AOC, and Progressives in the Democratic Caucus, citing of all people, that disgusting POS, Rahm Emmanuel, who, if he wasn't a Democrat would be a Trumpist.
Scaling Wokeback Mountain
By Maureen Dowd
WASHINGTON — I was feeling on edge. Writing a column that sparks an internecine fight among the highest-profile women in the Democratic Party is nerve wracking.
So I went to the gym. Alex Toussaint, the digital Peloton instructor inside the little screen on my spinning bike, had some wisdom for me — the kind of New Age bromide dispensed in spin classes everywhere:
You climb the mountain to see the world. You don’t climb the mountain so the world can see you.
I only wished A.O.C. was cycling alongside me to hear it as well.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ensorcelled me from the start. I loved the bartender-makes-good Cinderella story, the shake-up-the-capital idealistic dreams, the bravado about how the plutocrat president from Queens wouldn’t know how to deal with a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx.
And I imagined the most potent feminist partnership in American history: Nancy Pelosi as sensei, bringing her inside game, and A.O.C., the Karate Kid with a wicked Twitter game.
But instead, the 79-year-old speaker and the 29-year-old freshman are trapped in a generational and ideological tangle that poses a real threat to the Democrats’ ability to beat Donald Trump next year.

Pelosi told me, after the A.O.C. Squad voted against the House’s version of the border bill and trashed the moderates — the very people who provided the Democrats the majority — that the Squad was four people with four votes. She was talking about a legislative reality. If it was a knock, it was for abandoning the party.
That did not merit A.O.C.’s outrageous accusation that Pelosi was targeting “newly elected women of color.” She slimed the speaker, who has spent her life fighting for the downtrodden and who was instrumental in getting the first African-American president elected and passing his agenda against all odds, as a sexist and a racist.

A.O.C. should consider the possibility that people who disagree with her do not disagree with her color.
The young lawmaker went further, implying that the speaker was putting the Squad in danger, asking why Pelosi would criticize them, “knowing the amount of death threats” and attention they get. Huh?

A.O.C. pulled back and said she wasn’t calling Pelosi a racist. But once you start that ball rolling, it’s hard to stop. (You know how topsy-turvy the fight is when the biggest defenders of Pelosi, who has endured being a caricature of extreme liberalism for decades, are Trump and the Wall Street Journal editorial board.)
The A.O.C. crew threw down the gauntlet in a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post by The Intercept’s Ryan Grim. He wrote that when Pelosi and other Democratic mandarins try to keep the image of the party centrist, they are crouching in “the defensive posture” they’ve been in since the Reagan revolution.

Corbin Trent, a spokesman for A.O.C. and co-founder of Justice Democrats, the progressive group that helped propel her, told Grim: “The greatest threat to mankind is the cowardice of the Democratic Party,” with the older generation “driven by fear” and “unable to lead.”

Message: Pelosi is past her prime.

Except she’s not.

And then there’s the real instigator, Saikat Chakrabarti, A.O.C.’s 33-year-old chief of staff, who co-founded Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress, both of which recruited progressives — including A.O.C. — to run against moderates in Democratic primaries. The former Silicon Valley Bernie Bro assumed he could apply Facebook’s mantra, “Move fast and break things,” to one of the oldest institutions in the country.

But Congress is not a place where you achieve radical progress — certainly not in divided government. It’s a place where you work at it and work at it and don’t get everything you want.

The progressives act as though anyone who dares disagree with them is bad. Not wrong, but bad, guilty of some human failing, some impurity that is a moral evil that justifies their venom.
Chakrabarti sent shock waves through the Democratic caucus when he posted a tweet about the border bill comparing moderate and Blue Dog Democrats — some of whom are black — to Southern segregationists in the ’40s.

Rahm Emanuel told me Chakrabarti is “a snot-nosed punk” who has no idea about the battle scars Pelosi bears from the liberal fights she has led.
“What votes did you get?” Emanuel said, rhetorically challenging A.O.C.’s chief of staff. “You should only be so lucky to learn from somebody like Nancy who has shown incredible courage and who has twice returned the Democratic Party to power.

“We fought for years to create the majorities to get a Democratic president elected and re-elected, and they’re going to dither it away. They have not decided what’s more important: Do they want to beat Trump or do they want to clear the moderate and centrists out of the party? You really think weakening the speaker is the right strategy to try to get rid of Donald Trump and everything he stands for?”

In the age of Trump, there is no more stupid proposition than that Nancy Pelosi is the problem. If A.O.C. and her Pygmalions and acolytes decide that burning down the House is more important than deposing Trump, they will be left with a racist backward president and the emotional satisfaction of their own purity.
Dowd did her very best to get Trump elected, with weekly columns constantly attacking alternately Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while ignoring the obvious monstrosity of Trump. She even let her fascist reactionary brother write her column each November. Now, she's figured out Trump really is catastrophic and is doing her reactionary best to undermine the energy and lifeblood that won in 2018--the activist Progressive Left.

Emanuel isn't just a shit. He's wrong. Pelosi's been wrong in her predictions of House gains time and time again. She even predicted winning 25 seats and taking back the House in 2016--ask Paul Ryan how that turned out!

Pelosi IS a brilliant parliamentarian--no doubt about it. But, like all people in power she's lost the humility that HER power and fortunes are not indivisible from both her her party's power and fortunes, and the nation's. She's fallen into the "I'm the Indispensable Person" trap, justifying all sorts of machinations to protect her power, position and iron fist. In the minority, she was brilliant at that. In the majority, the flaws are blatant.

While Republicans gleefully gerrymander and suppress voters, Democratic so-called "Leaders" swoop in to districts to pick the candidates THEY want in Congress, not the ones the people in the district want. I live in NJ-11 and we lived through that. The DCCC swooped in, picked a good-looking, hits-all-the-checkboxes woman who DIDN'T EVEN LIVE IN OUR DISTRICT to help "flip" it.

But the DCCC didn't make NJ-11 flippable. They've been writing us off since 1984 (9 years before we moved to NJ and NJ-11). And they wrote us off for 2016. But NJ District 11 for Change, and Indivisible for NJ-11 got out and went after Rodney Frelinghhuysen, with weekly demonstrations at his office in Morristown, with constant phone calls, post cards, emails, and PR that he wasn't holding town halls, wasn't meeting his constituents, and the polls began to show that his usual 2:1 margin had slipped to a horse race or even a losing effort.

Only THEN, after WE did the heavy lifting, did the DCCC swoop in and dump Mikie Sherrill on us. Yes, she was a navy pilot (or was it army) was a prosecutor, married with kids, and tall, trim--a TV candidate all the way. And the first tough questions I and others asked her...she waffled and diverted. Since then, she's been a "reliable" Pelosi/leadership drone, keeps her head down, speaks out "boldly" on issues where there's no REAL controversy...and we'll probably be stuck with her unless the GOP flips NJ-11 back.

One could say that Mikie Sherrill's at risk whereas Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not, and that's true. But Katie Porter, from CA-45 squeaked by with an even narrower win to flip that district, doesn't fit the "appearance quotient" that Sherrill does, but has more guts, more spine, and more willingness to ask nail-em-to-the-wall questions that has made her an admirer in myself, and Laurence O'Donnell.

I had HOPED for a Katie Porter in NJ-11 but got stuck with Mikie Sherrill. Contrast these 2 freshmen and you'll see EVERYTHING wrong with the Party Leadership, determined to take us down the WRONG path again to possible defeat, as they did starting in 1952, and following in 1956, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2016.

Those who keep repeating the same course and expecting a different result....you know the rest.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

2
Pelosi is the Democratic female version of Mitch McConnell. When she looks into a mirror she sees McConnell. Her leadership style is My Way Or The Highway. No Change Pelosi. She is stuck wanting to continue the Corporate Democratic platform and ideas of Bill Clinton. She has the monied support of the DCCC corporate backers that fight against change as much as the Reptilian Party. Pelosi sees herself as the new Sam Rayburn running the House and the Democratic Party as she wants.

As for Dowd, years ago I liked reading her columns but that was before Clinton was President. She has shifted to far right to be worth reading. She is not the liberal columnist as the NYTimes and others label her.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

3
It's party politics, John Boehner and Paul Ryan were tortured by the Freedom Caucus on the right wing of the Republican Party when they held the speakership. Pelosi is a great parliamentarian and she also realized that to win a majority, all Democratic members of the House wouldn't be from bright blue districts. Maxine Waters was an iconoclast when she was elected to the House in 1991, but she also had prior elected experience as a member of the CA Assembly which many of the new Dem members don't have. With seniority and experience, members of any legislative body learn how to get things done and build bridges and not blow them up. Dems supported Boehner and Ryan when they were attacked by the Freedom Caucus, it served their purpose just like Trump and Reps supporting Pelosi does. Dowd has skewered many, AOC and others are just the latest. Purity tests, bruised egos....
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

4
Maureen Dowd can go f*** herself! Out of pure spite because Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton never gave her the "proper" deference she "deserved" she attacked and attacked and attacked them.
She always knew what Trump was--she's a New Yorker working for the Times, fer crissakes!
And only after he was (illegally) installed in the White House and started pissing all over the Constitution did Dowd FINALLY start writing about what a monster he is. Though she knew he always was a monster.
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

5
True Dowd had the means, she's a NYT columnist and has a pen. I think she drank the same Kool-Aid as other Dems and believed that Donnie could never win the WH and she missed an opportunity. I've had it with all the manufactured drama, a drama queen and in the WH and drama queens in Congress, like those stupid "reality shows" that are just manufactured drama.
Last edited by highdesert on Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

6
I've noticed that a lot of these supposedly "moderate conservative" writers are starting to spread the poison recently.

I bet that, if anyone actually created a poll, AOC has more support than Pelosi
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

7
K9s wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:02 pm I've noticed that a lot of these supposedly "moderate conservative" writers are starting to spread the poison recently.

I bet that, if anyone actually created a poll, AOC has more support than Pelosi
I wouldn't bet against, even if you gave me odds!
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

8
YankeeTarheel wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:04 pm
K9s wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 1:02 pm I've noticed that a lot of these supposedly "moderate conservative" writers are starting to spread the poison recently.

I bet that, if anyone actually created a poll, AOC has more support than Pelosi
I wouldn't bet against, even if you gave me odds!
I totally agree, Pelosi has been around a long time and won and lost many wars on the political field. Hey, I don't agree with her on everything but she's a very shrewd politician. In a battle between AOC and Donnie, I'd put my money on Donnie as much as I loath him. On individual issues (skirmishes) AOC might win but not the total war.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

9
Now the KKKlukkerNazi in the White House has told the "Squad" to go back to the countries they came from and fix THEM first!

Of course, 3 of the 4 are natural-born citizens, born in The Bronx, Detroit, and Cincinnati! The fourth, Omar, is a naturalized citizen WITHOUT the dubious status both his wife and his 1st wife had (working illegally).

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/p ... gress.html

Fox Nutz thinks this is hilarious!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-and- ... 5a5d5c88f4

While the Trump Campaign insists that it's a lie: Trump didn't tweet what Trump tweeted! (from HuffPo)
The Trump reelection campaign attempted to defuse the intense backlash, with an official insisting ― despite the unambiguous wording of the president’s tweet ― that “anyone who says the president told members of Congress to go back to where they came from is lying.”

Matt Wolking, deputy director of Trump’s “rapid response” team, justified that spin in a tweet of his own by noting that the president told the congresswomen to “then come back and show us how it is done.”

Wolking did not address the inaccuracy of Trump claiming that more than one of the congresswomen he clearly had in mind “originally came” from another country. [/quote}
"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

10
YankeeTarheel wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 2:04 pm Now the KKKlukkerNazi in the White House has told the "Squad" to go back to the countries they came from and fix THEM first!

Of course, 3 of the 4 are natural-born citizens, born in The Bronx, Detroit, and Cincinnati! The fourth, Omar, is a naturalized citizen WITHOUT the dubious status both his wife and his 1st wife had (working illegally).

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/us/p ... gress.html

Fox Nutz thinks this is hilarious!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-and- ... 5a5d5c88f4

While the Trump Campaign insists that it's a lie: Trump didn't tweet what Trump tweeted! (from HuffPo)
The Trump reelection campaign attempted to defuse the intense backlash, with an official insisting ― despite the unambiguous wording of the president’s tweet ― that “anyone who says the president told members of Congress to go back to where they came from is lying.”

Matt Wolking, deputy director of Trump’s “rapid response” team, justified that spin in a tweet of his own by noting that the president told the consswomen to “then come back and show us how it is done.”

Wolking did not address the inaccuracy of Trump claiming that more than one of the congresswomen he clearly had in mind “originally came” from another country.
Donnie the drama queen has to keeping churning up his base, he feels ownership rights on the WH and does not want to lose it. Lies, lies and more lies...that's what history will remember about Donnie and his family.
Last edited by highdesert on Sun Jul 14, 2019 2:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Maureen Dowd Doubles Down on AOC

11
Trump has been watching too much Tucker Carlson. He just parrots what these media neo-Nazis say. Trump hasn't had an original thought since... can't think of any.

Dowd, Rubin, and the rest of these "conservative" writers are part of the propaganda strategy. They want McConnell in charge of the Senate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maureen_Dowd
A 2017 study which examined sexualized shaming of Monica Lewinsky in mainstream news coverage noted that in Dowd's extensive coverage of Monica Lewinsky, she repeatedly "mocked and disparaged her." A 2009 study of sexism towards Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the 2008 election noted that Dowd had disparaged Palin as a "Barbie" over her pageantry past.

Numerous other commentators have criticized Dowd for having an obsession with Bill and especially Hillary Clinton. During the 2008 Democratic primary, Dowd published an article titled "Can Hillary Clinton Cry Herself Back to the White House?", which a 2016 study said "[serves] to reinforce the stereotype that tears and visible emotions are feminine traits and signs of weakness".

During the 2016 presidential election, Dowd penned a controversial New York Times op-ed, titled "Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk."[
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: TrueTexan and 3 guests