Spoiled AOC's Meltdown over Unpopularity Worsens as She Lashes Out at Voters She Needs the Most
A recent Gallup poll showed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable rating on the rise. This probably should have been expected — she’s no longer a fun underdog story but an actual lawmaker, one whose Green New Deal has proved incredibly divisive.
Ocasio-Cortez could have decided to take this as it was.
If she believes in policies like the Green New Deal and “Medicare for all,” time will prove her right and people will come around.
She’s certainly not in any danger of losing her seat. And unless Kirsten Gillibrand wins the presidential election, gets picked as vice president or joins a Democratic cabinet, there’s not going to be a senatorial seat open in New York for some time. And even if Gillibrand’s seat did open up, Democrats might be leery about giving the job to someone who will have just turned 30 by then, the minimum age to take a seat in the upper chamber.
So the Gallup poll, which showed Ocasio-Cortez with a 31 percent favorable rating and 41 percent unfavorable rating, didn’t really mean anything unless she wanted to make a big deal out of it. And this being Ocasio-Cortez, she did, railing against “subconscious bias,” racism and Fox News for dragging down her poll numbers.
Given that rant, I wouldn’t be halfway surprised if she tweeted that it was some sort of conspiracy betwixt the Illuminati, Judge Crater and the second pollster on the grassy knoll.
Or what she could do is shoot herself in the foot by going after the voters she would need most if she wants to move up in the world: Centrists.
So, first, the original poll. Gallup found that while she was surprisingly well known, she was “underwater among most groups.”
“Despite some increase in her favorable ratings, Ocasio-Cortez’s unfavorable ratings grew at a greater pace since September among most groups,” a Gallup news release read.
“The congresswoman is viewed negatively by most Republicans, of whom 73% have an unfavorable view of her — up from 52% in September. Only 5% of Republicans view Ocasio-Cortez favorably — resulting in a net favorable rating of -68 among this party group. The fact that Republicans are more likely to have an opinion of her than Democrats helps explain her overall net-negative rating.
“Ocasio-Cortez is also underwater in her net favorable ratings among men (-24), whites (-24) and adults aged 55 and older (-22).
“On a net basis, Ocasio-Cortez performs best among Democrats (+41), of whom a majority (56%) now view her positively, and nonwhites (+20). Meanwhile, her net ratings are slightly negative among independents (-5) but slightly positive among women (+4) and Ocasio-Cortez’s own age cohort of adults aged 18 to 34 (+5).”
And here was the congresswoman’s response:
If you want to know what subconscious bias looks like, it’s a headline saying “AOC is underwater with every group EXCEPT women, nonwhites, and 18-34 year olds.”
So older, conservative white men are considered “everyone” and everyone else is discounted as an exception.
Cool 👍🏽 https://t.co/qkwTknMYhC
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 16, 2019
The reason people know more is bc Fox News has turned into “AOC TMZ” (no offense to TMZ), so awareness is growing w/ GOPers.@JaneMayerNYer has reported deeply on this propaganda machine + it will be aimed at any Dem they want. Nothing changes that.
We can’t be scared by that.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 16, 2019
Yes, it’s subconscious bias and Fox. Apparently, the votes of white men don’t count and therefore the fact they contributed to a disapproval rating 10 points higher than her approval rating should be completely discounted.
A second poll that showed that her role in helping kill the Amazon deal that would have brought the tech giant’s second headquarters to New York hadn’t gone over so well.
“By a 67-21 percent margin, New Yorkers say that Amazon canceling its planned second headquarters in Queens was bad for New York. By as nearly as large a margin, 61-30 percent, they support the deal in which Amazon would receive up to $3 billion in state and city incentives and create up to 25,000 jobs if Amazon reconsiders, according to a new Siena College poll of New York State registered voters released today,” a news release for the poll, released Monday, stated.
In the release, Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said that “voters say the biggest villain was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Only 12 percent call her hero, while 38 percent label her a villain.”
“Ocasio-Cortez, with a negative 31-44 percent favorability rating, is as well known to statewide voters after three months in office as Gillibrand is after 10 years as senator. While Democrats view Ocasio-Cortez favorably, independents view her unfavorably more than two-to-one and Republicans view her unfavorably, 68-6 percent. She is viewed slightly favorably in New York City but strongly unfavorably upstate and in the downstate suburbs,” Greenberg added.
So, Ocasio-Cortez decided to retweet a writer who said that “(i)t’s interesting to see centrists suddenly downplay or ignore the effects of racism, sexism and Fox News targeting when discussing @AOC’s overall approval ratings” and use it as a rant against centrist voters.
When “centrists” care more about the GOP base than the Dem base, bigotry gets legitimized.
This is *the* playbook. GOP does it w/ virtually every Dem figure who isn’t a white male: otherize, demonize + splinter.
It’s vital that we adapt & dismantle this approach, not cow to it. https://t.co/dKlzflqZVn
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019
Just a pro tip, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez — you may want to stay away from the word “cow” for a while. Just a suggestion.
Nevertheless, she persisted:
We can’t gloss over it, or quietly consider that the “shrewd” thing to do is nominate someone who won’t be subject to bigoted attacks.
Morally, we can’t give a pass to this dangerous tactic.
But even politically, the Dem base is all the people you demoralize by not standing up.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019
This is different than being moderate on policy. I may disagree w/ approach (keeping the ACA as-is w/small tweaks, etc), but at least that’s a policy convo.
But to make decisions based on the political efficacy of a bigoted argument gives that bigotry power, & that’s a problem.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019
So the moral of the story here is (I think) that centrist policies may not be bigoted, but centrists themselves are, at least if they don’t support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez has been in office a grand total of two and a half months. She’s not running for anything for another two years. If she wanted to become senator, which is unlikely — well, she probably shouldn’t have worked hard to kill the Amazon plan, among other things. But she should think long-term, not attack every passing poll in which the electorate doesn’t reaffirm how awesome she is.
As for attacking centrists as bigots, well, what has she ever done for them?
She killed the Amazon deal. Her Green New Deal could cost America up to $93 trillion. And now she’s saying if they’re not on board with this, they could be racists.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the highest-profile Democrats there is at the moment. She can turn that into something major. Instead, what she’s doing is alienating the very voters she needs to move on up in the world.
In short, if she wanted a blueprint to self-destruct, without a sex scandal, I couldn’t come up with anything worse than this.
The sad thing is, I think she discovered it completely by accident.
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