Will Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be a future leader for the Democratic Party??

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Well you WERE concern trolling about how it'd be SOOOOOO BAD for AOC to win because it'd be embarrassing for the Democrats to lose a member of leadership or something.

Actually, my main concern (as I said repeatedly) with AOS prior to her weird post-primary meltdown was that Crowley losing increased the chances of us getting stuck with Speaker Hoyer and there’s nothing which has happened since to suggest that I was wrong to be worried about this, but thanks for playing

No the FIRST thing you said is it'd be embarrassing for that reason.

I think my post speaks for itself (especially in regard to what I was most concerned about), despite your best efforts to misrepresent it.

Remind me again, why are we supposed to suddenly hate Crowley?

He's a bland machine hack who voted for the Bush tax cuts and Iraq War. Comparable to Feinstein. Not the worst Democrat in the House but no reason to not support a far more progressive challenger over him.

Yeah, but the optics of a member of leadership losing their primary would be awful.

Eric Cantor losing was utterly disastrous for the Republicans in 2014 after all.

It was a pretty embarrassing black eye for a week or two, IIRC.  Democrats have a hard enough time staying on message and navigating infighting as it is; there’s no sense making the situation worse.  Although this is all kinda moot since Crowley is probably safe.  

AOC has every right to challenge Crowley and make her case. She’s a resident of the district and is presumably older than 25. Let her, like Ayanna Presley in Massachusetts, make the case for why she’d be better for the constituents of NY-14 than a potential future Speaker of the House. Will she be better at constituent services? Perhaps!

In the same vein, Crowley has been around for 20 years. He owes his constituents reasons to keep him there, other than “muh Machine.”

I’m personally not sure what the great crimes of Joe Crowley and Mike Capuano are, other than being old white guys in districts with changing demographics. They aren’t Dan Lipinski - hell, they’re not even Stephen Lynch. Part of the notion that a woman of color is automatically better seems a little overly focused on identity and ignores that people like Lydia Velazquez exist.

Maybe it’s just that NY Dems are terrible in general

I agree although in fairness, Capuano is one the best Congressmen in the House and we’ve seen with Al Franken a great example of the difference it can make if there are more women in Congress (that’s the only reason Franken was forced to resign, same with Conyers btw; Kihuen would’ve been gone anyway as folks already figured out he was just a much lazier version of John Edwards).  While my sense is that Crowley’s gotten significantly better since 2008 and has probably been one of the “less bad” (b/c none are ideal) NYC machine bosses, there are admittedly legitimate policy reasons to that one can cite for distrusting Crowley although they mainly come from the Bush era.  These days, Crowley is more of a generic D.  

I’d much prefer Tim Ryan who (from what I’ve heard, at least) has gotten much more disciplined and is without question generally even more progressive than his rhetoric suggests when push comes to shove and sticking with Pelosi would likely be better than Crowley (she is amazing at whipping votes and would probably get more credit for this were she a man).  However, Tim Ryan isn’t really an establishment guy and he’s both stylistically and geographically the type of Democrat whom many National Democrats (and the elitist East Coast donor class) are always looking down their noses at so he may simply not be able to win.  

Thus, we want to have at least one remotely acceptable establishment Democrat to block Hoyer if there aren’t the votes to make Pelosi Speaker (highly unlikely, but not impossible).  Crowley is the least bad choice in that regard, I think (Chris Van Hollen would’ve been a perfect post-Pelosi House Democratic Leader *sigh*).  Often politics isn’t about perfect solutions so much as it is about the best/least bad of the available options.  As a result, we might want to keep the Crowley option open  

On the bright side, there should be at least one open leadership post in 2020.  Take with a hefty grain of salt, but I’ve heard from a pretty reliable source that Clyburn is gonna retire in 2020 so his kid can run for SC-6 in hopes that the Presidential candidates will all pander to him by endorsing her over Barkai Sellers in the primary.  I certainly hope so b/c Clyburn’s disgusting racially-charged smear campaign against Conyers has made it clear he’s the one of the worst members of the House Democratic Leadership.  Hoyer’s bad for policy reasons, but Clyburn is just a horrible person.  

At least Rahm Emmanuel is out of the House or else he’d probably be the one being talked about as a future Speaker rather than Crowley *shudder*  But I digress...

TL;DR: Yes, Crowley wasn’t great in the Bush years, but he’s been generic D since 2006-2008 or so.  Are there folks I’d rather see as the post-Pelosi House Democratic Leader?  Sure.  However, Crowley may well be the main non-Hoyer alternative to Pelosi and Hoyer (who, IIRC, actually tried to whip votes for either the Iraq War or the Bush tax cuts on the Democratic side, I forget which one) would be significantly worse.  Say what you will about Crowley, but Hoyer is far more corporatist than him.  That alone should give progressives who want to replace him with a random some dudette pause, even ones who might otherwise be inclined to support a primary challenge here.

On a different note: Not gonna lie, I have no problem with politicians sending their kids to DC/NoVA/MontCo schools.  If you want to be able to be there for your kids and take some semblance of an active parental role, you’d almost have to do so, especially if they’re on the younger side.  

Yeah as I said, that was the first thing you brought up. You didnt even bring up the other stuff until you realized it was a stupid reason and you needed something stronger.

[MAINEiac4434]

I love how a genuine leftist appears to have triggered half the Democrats on this forum.

It is absolutely amazing.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Well you WERE concern trolling about how it'd be SOOOOOO BAD for AOC to win because it'd be embarrassing for the Democrats to lose a member of leadership or something.

Actually, my main concern (as I said repeatedly) with AOS prior to her weird post-primary meltdown was that Crowley losing increased the chances of us getting stuck with Speaker Hoyer and there’s nothing which has happened since to suggest that I was wrong to be worried about this, but thanks for playing

No the FIRST thing you said is it'd be embarrassing for that reason.

I think my post speaks for itself (especially in regard to what I was most concerned about), despite your best efforts to misrepresent it.

Remind me again, why are we supposed to suddenly hate Crowley?

He's a bland machine hack who voted for the Bush tax cuts and Iraq War. Comparable to Feinstein. Not the worst Democrat in the House but no reason to not support a far more progressive challenger over him.

Yeah, but the optics of a member of leadership losing their primary would be awful.

Eric Cantor losing was utterly disastrous for the Republicans in 2014 after all.

It was a pretty embarrassing black eye for a week or two, IIRC.  Democrats have a hard enough time staying on message and navigating infighting as it is; there’s no sense making the situation worse.  Although this is all kinda moot since Crowley is probably safe.  

AOC has every right to challenge Crowley and make her case. She’s a resident of the district and is presumably older than 25. Let her, like Ayanna Presley in Massachusetts, make the case for why she’d be better for the constituents of NY-14 than a potential future Speaker of the House. Will she be better at constituent services? Perhaps!

In the same vein, Crowley has been around for 20 years. He owes his constituents reasons to keep him there, other than “muh Machine.”

I’m personally not sure what the great crimes of Joe Crowley and Mike Capuano are, other than being old white guys in districts with changing demographics. They aren’t Dan Lipinski - hell, they’re not even Stephen Lynch. Part of the notion that a woman of color is automatically better seems a little overly focused on identity and ignores that people like Lydia Velazquez exist.

Maybe it’s just that NY Dems are terrible in general

I agree although in fairness, Capuano is one the best Congressmen in the House and we’ve seen with Al Franken a great example of the difference it can make if there are more women in Congress (that’s the only reason Franken was forced to resign, same with Conyers btw; Kihuen would’ve been gone anyway as folks already figured out he was just a much lazier version of John Edwards).  While my sense is that Crowley’s gotten significantly better since 2008 and has probably been one of the “less bad” (b/c none are ideal) NYC machine bosses, there are admittedly legitimate policy reasons to that one can cite for distrusting Crowley although they mainly come from the Bush era.  These days, Crowley is more of a generic D.  

I’d much prefer Tim Ryan who (from what I’ve heard, at least) has gotten much more disciplined and is without question generally even more progressive than his rhetoric suggests when push comes to shove and sticking with Pelosi would likely be better than Crowley (she is amazing at whipping votes and would probably get more credit for this were she a man).  However, Tim Ryan isn’t really an establishment guy and he’s both stylistically and geographically the type of Democrat whom many National Democrats (and the elitist East Coast donor class) are always looking down their noses at so he may simply not be able to win.  

Thus, we want to have at least one remotely acceptable establishment Democrat to block Hoyer if there aren’t the votes to make Pelosi Speaker (highly unlikely, but not impossible).  Crowley is the least bad choice in that regard, I think (Chris Van Hollen would’ve been a perfect post-Pelosi House Democratic Leader *sigh*).  Often politics isn’t about perfect solutions so much as it is about the best/least bad of the available options.  As a result, we might want to keep the Crowley option open  

On the bright side, there should be at least one open leadership post in 2020.  Take with a hefty grain of salt, but I’ve heard from a pretty reliable source that Clyburn is gonna retire in 2020 so his kid can run for SC-6 in hopes that the Presidential candidates will all pander to him by endorsing her over Barkai Sellers in the primary.  I certainly hope so b/c Clyburn’s disgusting racially-charged smear campaign against Conyers has made it clear he’s the one of the worst members of the House Democratic Leadership.  Hoyer’s bad for policy reasons, but Clyburn is just a horrible person.  

At least Rahm Emmanuel is out of the House or else he’d probably be the one being talked about as a future Speaker rather than Crowley *shudder*  But I digress...

TL;DR: Yes, Crowley wasn’t great in the Bush years, but he’s been generic D since 2006-2008 or so.  Are there folks I’d rather see as the post-Pelosi House Democratic Leader?  Sure.  However, Crowley may well be the main non-Hoyer alternative to Pelosi and Hoyer (who, IIRC, actually tried to whip votes for either the Iraq War or the Bush tax cuts on the Democratic side, I forget which one) would be significantly worse.  Say what you will about Crowley, but Hoyer is far more corporatist than him.  That alone should give progressives who want to replace him with a random some dudette pause, even ones who might otherwise be inclined to support a primary challenge here.

On a different note: Not gonna lie, I have no problem with politicians sending their kids to DC/NoVA/MontCo schools.  If you want to be able to be there for your kids and take some semblance of an active parental role, you’d almost have to do so, especially if they’re on the younger side.  

Yeah as I said, that was the first thing you brought up. You didnt even bring up the other stuff until you realized it was a stupid reason and you needed something stronger.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I love how a genuine leftist appears to have triggered half the Democrats on this forum.

It is absolutely amazing.

Um, sorry to burst your bubble but I don't think people are "triggered" because she is a leftist (many of the same people support Nixon after all) but because she is a jerk.

[Badger]

To respond to the initial question, she needs to grow the f##k up first.

She needs a serious glass of get over yourself juice.

[Bojack Horseman]

Her career will be similar to that of Denise Majette. Her ego will be her downfall. This is what usually happens when someone goes from a bartender to Congresswoman-elect overnight.

[Chief Justice Keef]

Aside from maybe her recent Twitter beef with Crowley, when has Ocasio-Cortez recently come off as inflammatory, arrogant or egotistical? Seems like you all are projecting an image on her that doesn't really exist.

[All Along The Watchtower]

We can only hope. We need more like her, and less like the current corrupt POS hacks leading the party right now.

[136or142]

Irrespective of what Ocasio-Cortez is or isn't, the real elephant in the room is that by my count about 200 of the 239 present Republican members of the House are either social conservative extremists, economic conservative extremists or believers in loony conspiracy theories (not that the three are mutually exclusive), and here is one Democrat who may be the equivalent on the economic left what many present members of the Republican House delegation already are on the right, and somehow the extremist domination of the Republican Party is not regarded as a big deal.

Will Alexandria Osasio-Cortez be a future leader of the Democratic Party? I don't know, the economic conservative extremist Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan is already Speaker of the House, is Ocasio-Cortez really a big deal?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Irrespective of what Ocasio-Cortez is or isn't, the real elephant in the room is that by my count about 200 of the 239 present Republican members of the House are either social conservative extremists, economic conservative extremists or believers in loony conspiracy theories (not that the three are mutually exclusive), and here is one Democrat who may be the equivalent on the economic left what many present members of the Republican House delegation already are on the right, and somehow the extremist domination of the Republican Party is not regarded as a big deal.

Will Alexandria Osasio-Cortez be a future leader of the Democratic Party? I don't know, the economic conservative extremist Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan is already Speaker of the House, is Ocasio-Cortez really a big deal?

She can help with moving back the Overton window from the far right.