The Great Progressive Collapse - Don't believe the hype (by Noah Rothman) commentarymagazine.com/politics-ideas…
Twenty-eight-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pulled off an amazing feat. No, not emerging victorious in her candidacy to represent New York’s 14th District in Congress, an area that favors Democrats by almost 30 points.
.@Ocasio2018's real accomplishment was how she managed to navigate several months of intense media scrutiny without ever formulating a coherent response to how she intends to bridge the financial gap between hopes and dreams and their 13-figure price tags.
In this high-wire act, she had the help of willing accomplices in the press. How should the country pay for the estimated $32T it would cost to nationalize the health-insurance industry, Ocasio-Cortez was recently asked. “You just pay for it,” she averred to credulous nods.
National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar and the Nation contributor Sean McElwee put together a list of 8 of the country’s most progressive candidates in challenging races to gauge just how receptive the public was to the modern progressive message. Today, we have the answer: not very.
And of course, the great hopes of Democrats for the 2018 cycle—Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke and Georgia’s Stacey Abrams—both (as of this writing) went down to defeat.
Like Ocasio-Cortez, they suffered from a national media culture that was deeply invested in buying what they were selling. That contributed to their stagnation as candidates.
They entered the race as unabashed progressives keen to appeal to the mercurial passions of liberal grassroots activists, and they never tailored that message to their states.
Friends of progressivism do their movement no favors by filling its champions’ heads with the false notion that they are popular.
The failure of these office-seekers to understand and acknowledge the obstacles that center-right states and districts place before them leads to hubris, bravado, and a lack of seriousness.
In such a comfortable environment, the progressive left’s most foolhardy aspirants are tempted to say out loud what they actually believe. It’s clear now that, even on a good night for Democrats, that kind of honesty represents a grave error in judgment.
