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June 22, 2019

Another AOC stumble ignored by pergressuve Dems

And, yes, that spelling is deliberate, and may become a feature around here, just like "librul."

The latest Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stumble that's not being gut-checked by many?

AOC has called for Congressional pay raises.

Nope, nope, nope. Fix the three-day Congresscritter work week, and fix the issue behind that by passing federal campaign financing for Congresscritters, then we'll talk about pay raises. Congresscritters currently get $174K in base salary plus franking money and other expenses. Howie at Down with Tyranny calls out Steny Hoyer for pushing this without mentioning AOC's name. And, unlike him, I do NOT count the money Congresscritters are given to hire staff, because those salaries have to be paid. (That allowance, of nearly $1 million on the House side, includes other expenses as well as hiring staff, to boot. More here on what's false and what's true on what Congresscritters make.) Howie knows all this, too; he wrote his whole piece as a Hoyer smear. That's why I commented there about AOC supporting it, too.

And beyond the triple-nope as an actual item, how can she get this wrong politically? Running as an outsider, a real progressive, an everyday Jane, etc., and then six months in her first term, and taking some criticism over her DC digs, and more criticism over dollar matters involving her chief of staff, to be tone-deaf on another anti-populist type financial issue, one of several financial issues on which she has stumbled? (As well as stumbling on hamburgers and cow fart hypocrisy for Ms. Green New Deal 2019.)

Even if she's not that pergressuve, it's still a bad-optics stumble that leads me to continue to question some of her political savvy.

That said, on other things, including halfway talking out of two sides of her mouth on BDS, she's got plenty of political savvy.  And in spinning a good, albeit somewhat mythical, personal story.

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