“What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
She has work to do, because if she ran right now, she’d get eaten alive.
Notice that AOC doesn’t do very many hard interviews, and that when she gets a question asked of her that she isn’t prepared for, she stumbles.
AOC has been basically absent from leftwing media while plenty of other very solid progressives are out there putting in reps doing hard interviews in combative environments. AOC doesn’t do that and is only does very controlled media opportunities. That’s not good for someone who wants to be president. I don’t think she’s done the time like others have to be able to weather a primary.
Define “hard”. If you mean antagonistic, that’s because she wisely tries not to waste too much time and energy boosting the false narratives of the billionaire-owned mass media that bear a lot of the blame for how things got awful enough for fascism to return.
As do pretty much anyone. Which is why she and most competent politicians make sure to be prepared for all possible pertinent questions.
It still depends btw: do you call refusing to entertain a deliberately false narrative “stumbling”?
That’s a bit of an exaggeration but she’s not made herself available as much as for example Ro Khanna, I’ll give you that.
Ro and most of the ones making that many media appearances don’t seem as genuine and principled, though.
Whether that’s due to the sheer volume of gotcha questions or because they ARE less principled, that’s not a good look to the ones they need to reach.
AKA contributing to disinformation by accepting their clickbait false narratives as legitimately in the interest of the people.
Yeah, imagine preferring to talk about the REAL issues rather than how everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan are either immature children or dangerous radicals 🙄
I’d argue the exact opposite. If you mud wrestle with a pig, the pig beats you with experience and you get filthy no matter how well you do.
Dude. The way she ENTERED politics was by going from volunteering for Bernie to unseating a 10-term incumbent who was the third ranking Dem representative in two years!
She has since easily beaten more right wing Dems favored by the DNC in primaries twice (and won unopposed except for the Republican nominee once).
If anyone knows how to beat overwhelming odds and win against the experienced establishment favorite, it’s her.
Fox news, Piers Morgon, are both very antogonistic as examples, and I would list Zeteo, any interview with Medhi or Pratt as a hard interview (I personally think Medhi is one of the bester interviewers in medi, hands down).
It’s not a matter of it being time wasting, it’s a matter of putting in reps and communicating a message. It’s about rhetoric and convincing an audience. Bernie finds time for those audiences. Ro Khanna finds time for those audiences. Ilhan finds time for those interviews. And go read the comments under those interviews: MAGA trust Bernie and Ro more than they do most of their own Republicans because Bernie and Ro have put in the reps, done the laps.
And to volley the question back over the net, why does AOC get an accountability pass when all the rest of her squad cohort don’t suffer from this same issue? Its not like they aren’t effective or productive members of Congress, I’d argue quite the opposite. It was not the Cortesse-Massie bill that got the Epstein files released it wash the Khanna Massie bill that did, and Ro found ample time to take his messages and arguments before the people while doing so.
Let’s take the example I gave. AOC got asked by dropsite if she supported her former chief of staff who is trying to oust Pelosi in California. A fairly gentle question from a friendly source about litterally the person who helped get you into Congress. And she fumbled it. Badly. In a way that should give any progressive pause.
When Ilhan Omar was attacked by a maga supporter at a recent event she didn’t back down. She litterally got in the attackers face in a way that should have made national headlines. We’re she running for another seat, it would have.
It’s fair to juxtapose AOC against her cohort, and she is at the back of that pack in my view. The pack is still leagues ahead of other Democrats but that’s beside the point, because now is when we need to make these evaluations.
I think your an utter fool to believe you can get away from hard interviews. I will not support a candidate who can’t handle the pressure of a campaign or read the room or the moment. That’s how you get “Please clap.” Jeb, and “Nothing would fundamentally change Harris”.
These politicians are not your children. It’s not your job to protect them. They need to be held up and have their mettle tested before we need to rely upon them to be a backstop against fascism, not after.
You not only have to be able to get jnto the mud and learn to wrestle with the pigs, you need to be able to do so and win. I’m not interested in someone who hasn’t put the time in to win dirty fights.
The candidate will have to face down Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens, or any one of the innumerable shit birds who have piled up on the right.
Yeah and for the first two years she was a fire brand. Then something happened and she became far more reserved and calculating. She genuinely changed after getting iced by Pelosi for occupying her office. I think it impacted her and she shifted her approach.
I need to see her taking harder more competitive interviews. I need to see her all over leftwing media and safe space interviews. I need to see her in spaces where her team doesn’t control the questions getting asked.
Because there are other progressives who had just as difficult if not more difficult fights than AOC has had, and they don’t seem to have a problem taking in those battles.
But to be fair, when is the last time that is there wasn’t a softball interview or debate? A huge portion of the US population have never seen a real debate lol
There have been softball interviews and debate for liberal/conservative/fascist candidates the corpos like. Leftist candidates, on the other hand, get a hostile treatment or get ignored entirely.
Bernie takes hard debates ALLL THE TIME and uncle is strong because if it.
Ro Khanna also. They take every media call they can and because of that they are very comfortable getting asked tough questions.
AOC got a softball from dropsite about endorsing her former chief of staff who is challenging Pelosi, and she dropped the ball in an utter what the fuck moment.
You gotta be tough to stand up to nonstop events and pressers and interviews that come with a campaign. AOC genuinely hasn’t been putting in the reps and it shows.