I believe it was only yesterday when Ed Morrissey described New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “the gift that keeps on giving.” Well, the giving continues today and it’s only getting better. (Editor’s note: The phrase “better” may only apply if you are a conservative.)
She gave an interview to Democracy Now! this week where she set forth some of her agenda for her swelling army of socialist supporters on the Democratic left flank. Rather than focusing on new progressive policy initiatives or getting out the vote, Ocasio-Cortez called on the unwashed masses to take to the streets in the fashion of Occupy Wall Street, but relocate their forces to “occupy” the nation’s airports, all of the ICE offices and “the border.” I’m not sure how one “occupies” a border but at least she’s thinking outside the box. (PJ Media, emphasis added)
Democrat candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made a huge splash since trouncing incumbent Democrat Joe Crowley in the NY-14 primary, calls herself a socialist and is big on activism, if not geopolitics.
So big on activism, in fact, that in an interview with Democracy Now! on Monday, she called for the “occupation” of airports and ICE offices as part of the effort to “mobilize” the so-called Resistance…
“We have to have a rapid response,” she said. “And I think every day that we go on, especially a day when something that heinous happens, we have to occupy all of it. We need to occupy every airport. We need to occupy every border. We need to occupy every ICE office until those kids are back with their parents, period.”
“We have to show people that we’re willing to walk the walk,” she said.
This should have Democrats shaking in their boots like nothing else. They created this Frankenstein by launching her as the new face of the Democratic Party before anyone really knew anything about her. Now she’s taking that role to heart and sucking all the oxygen out of the Democrats’ midterm strategy, replacing it with this kind of talk. The Dems should have learned some lessons from the Occupy Wall Street era, which saw an issue which many people could sympathize with to some degree turning into a backlash against the activists. I’ve never seen anything create a public condemnation of protests like the closure of critical infrastructure.
Whether people might tend to naturally agree with a particular group of protesters or not, once you start blocking the interstates and shutting down the airports (which are miserable enough places for travelers to be stuck in to begin with) you become the enemy. If this is seen as the new “strategy” of the Democrats going into the midterms, they may as well stay home on election day.
We saw the same thing with Black Lives Matter when they began to conflate “disruption” with free speech and peaceful protesting. Marching along on the sidewalks with banners, signs and chanting may catch the attention of passers-by and perhaps even get them interested in your cause. Amassing on the highway and causing commuters to be late to work or picking their kids up from school will get their attention for sure, but it will only stimulate an interest in cursing your name and calling for you to be arrested. Similarly, when BLM shut down the Minneapolis Airport and the Mall of America in 2015 it did not lead to support for their movement. People were simply outraged and wanted them to go away.
Now the Democratic leadership is faced with a problem. Do they support the “occupy” calls of their new superstar and own the results or start another internal war with her on a very public stage? Either way, this is looking more and more like a surefire way to turn a blue wave into a blue quagmire.
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