Sunday, July 8, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won!


So, in the past 2 weeks the big political news has been that 28 year old first time candidate for New York's 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, won the democratic primary by double digits.

She won to a large extent, not by playing racial identity politics, as had been reported, but by offering a targeted progressive platform that included universal healthcare (which most Democrats either don't want or are too afraid to run on) and tuition free college and trade schools (paid for, in part, by taxing Wall Street speculations).

As reported by the Intercept, she won in the parts of the district that tend to be the most gentrified (read: most white). So to chalk up her success merely to changing demographics is a bit dishonest. It's the narrative many establishment Democrats want to believe is true, since they do not want Ocasio-Cortez's progressive agenda.



I can't say I agree with her entire platform. I'm not on board with the abolish ICE position and the seemingly open borders attitude permissive on most of the Left. As Milton Friedman said, you can't have open borders and a social welfare state. I think Democrats need to have a serious conversation on their position on illegal immigration. They have to ask themselves what level of immigration enforcement are they willing to accept, since many do indeed seem to want open borders.

Aside from that there's much more I agree with Ocasio-Cortez on than disagree, especially on the free college and universal healthcare parts, and the end to our expensive and destructive drug war. It was reported that she's a pretty strong Catholic. But who cares? She's not traditionally Catholic on same sex marriage or abortion—the issues that tend to be the most divisive, and she's thoroughly progressive on every issue. Religion doesn't matter to me. It only does if religion is justifying positions I disagree with, and if it's used to violate the separation of church and state.

So given how blue the 14th district is, she will no doubt win the general election in the  November midterms. I just hope that when she gets to Washington she won't become corrupted. Her stance on not taking money from big donors will hopefully keep her working for the people.

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