So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on ABC this Sunday and told Jonathan Karl that the new wave of progressives “answer to no master.” Strong words. Rebellious words. The kind of thing that sounds great on a Sunday morning show hosted by a network owned by Disney, which is owned by shareholders who own everything else. But let’s not get into who the masters really are.
Here’s what actually happened this week. A progressive named Abdul El-Sayed won a Senate primary in Michigan, beating a candidate backed by the most powerful Democrats in the state and in Washington. He survived a flood of super PAC money. He won with less than 50 percent of the vote, which the press is calling a “political earthquake” because apparently a plurality now qualifies as tectonic activity. And in two days, Wisconsin might nominate a DSA-backed candidate for governor named Francesca Hong, who has been quietly walking back her old positions on abolishing prisons and canceling Thanksgiving. Ask yourself: if these people answer to no master, why are they already scrubbing their own records before the general election?
Meanwhile, a group of moderate Democrats just announced a multimillion dollar ad campaign targeting the Democratic Socialists of America, calling the movement a “mortal danger for Democrats.” Not a mortal danger to the country. A mortal danger to Democrats. Read that again. They’re not worried about you. They’re worried about themselves. The swamp doesn’t care whether your grocery bill is killing you. It cares whether its grip on the party machinery is slipping. And now that a bartender from the Bronx is polling as the top Democratic choice for president in New Hampshire, the consultants are sweating through their tailored shirts.
US House Office of Photography (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsFunny how the establishment works. When AOC won in 2018, she was a 28-year-old nobody who beat a powerful incumbent. Eight years later, ABC is calling her “the kingmaker of progressive politics.” She went from outsider to kingmaker in less than a decade, and nobody at the table thinks that’s a little fast? The same media apparatus that dismissed her as a fringe radical now hands her the Sunday morning spotlight and calls her the future of the party. You don’t get that kind of promotion unless somebody upstairs decided you’re useful.
And here’s the part nobody is connecting. Trump goes on television the same week and says oil companies are “making too much money” and should “give some of that back to the public.” AOC’s response? She says there’s a “very large gap between what Trump says and what Trump does,” and points to closed-door meetings with oil executives. She’s not wrong about the gap. But she’s doing the same thing every politician does: telling you the other guy is corrupt while asking you to trust her instead. The difference is she says it with better lighting.
The real story isn’t left versus right. It’s the people who have a seat at the table versus the people who never will. The moderates want to kill the progressive movement to protect their donor base. The progressives want to replace the moderates so they can be the ones with the donor base. And the little guy? He’s still paying $5 a gallon and wondering why nobody in Washington ever seems to lose.
Somebody always wins. It’s just never you.