Think Big or Go Home
Why whiny pundits like Max Boot are missing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s point
“I feel a little guilty writing this column,” conservative Washington Post columnist and unrepentant hat-wearer Max Boot wrote yesterday, “because [New York Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] has already gotten more publicity than she deserves.” Ignoring his own column’s first sentence, Boot then proceeded to devote the rest of the piece—nearly 900 words—to Ocasio-Cortez, who we’ll refer to for the sake of brevity here as AOC.
Let’s get the subtext out of the way immediately: Boot’s column is egregiously condescending. He labels AOC “a person of little significance” and calls one of her comments on 60 Minutes “word salad.” (Her comment—that we should incorporate the failures of America’s broken health insurance system into the total economic cost of healthcare in America—made perfect sense, by the way.)
And then Boot rolls out the unabashed sexism: “In some ways, Ocasio-Cortez reminds me of Sarah Palin, a comparison neither woman will appreciate.” Boot specializes in national security issues, so it’s unclear why he believes that he has the credentials to determine that AOC, who minored in economics from Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, has a “lack of knowledge” when it comes to economics.
It should set off your irony detectors when you recall that Boot worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign — the same one that decided to forego standard vetting procedures for vice presidential nominees, thereby putting Palin on the ticket. It takes a lot of nerve to use the imbecile that his campaign recklessly promoted to the global stage as a warning for AOC. I mean, this is a breathtaking bit of concern-trolling from Boot:
Instead of studying up, Palin gave up any pretense of seriousness and has now disappeared from the debate. This is a cautionary tale for Ocasio-Cortez. She is a politician of immense gifts who can have an outsize impact — but only if she masters the intricacies of policy and curbs her fatal attraction to political celebrity and vacuous soundbites.
Firstly, let’s be clear: even though newspapers and TV news sites love to run hand-wringing pieces by old white men, Democrats must ignore the advice of concerned conservatives. I guarantee you that even if AOC were to take a vow of silence for a whole year to immerse herself in every major economics text published across the ages, Boot would shamelessly level a new criticism at her the minute she reappeared—perhaps she’d be an “out-of-touch elitist” for retreating from society.
But most importantly, Boot’s criticisms of AOC aggressively miss the point. He cuts one of her quotes in half to make it sound like she’s cavalier with the facts, when in fact she was discussing the difference between being accidentally inaccurate and actively lying. She argues that the American middle class is endangered and he replies by saying it’s not. (Nearly half of all Americans have no safety net, which doesn’t resemble any definition of the great American middle class that I’ve ever heard from a politician.)
That’s the core of what conservatives are trying to do to AOC right now. She’s throwing out a ton of great ideas—the Green New Deal, the 70 percent marginal tax rate, and Medicare for All—and orthodox forces are trying to “yes, but” them to death.
When it comes time to enact policy into law, details are incredibly important. But there’s a long road between the promotion of an idea and the process of developing that idea into a law. Since Republicans still hold power in the Senate and the White House, Democratic leadership can take this time to think big and debate the merits and weaknesses of the many different ways to supply quality health care to all Americans.
And the good news is that many Democrats are already doing that! Politicians around the country (including Governor Jay Inslee here in Washington state, Governor Gavin Newsom in California, and Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City) are already seriously considering ways to establish healthcare as a right and not a privilege. Then, after they’ve put their big ideas through the crucible of debate and examination, Democrats can bring their policies to the American people. Polling indicates that voters will be very receptive to those policies.
This is how American democracy is supposed to work: someone puts forward a big idea, that idea gets hashed out through debate and through smaller experiments in states and cities, and then—if that idea works—it eventually becomes the law of the land. (And it’s truly wild to me that Republicans, who passed a disastrous tax cut for corporations and the wealthy into law last year even though their own data indicated it would fail, have the gall to accuse AOC of being unserious on policy.)
In the end, the only litmus test I need for a politician is this: Has AOC misspoken since she won her primary back in June? Yes. Does she correct herself when she makes mistakes? Absolutely. Not every politician—I’m thinking here especially of the Senate Majority Leader and the President of the United States—can leap over that spectacularly low bar.
All the hand-wringers on the left and the right are likely betting that their nitpicking will put a halt to AOC’s tremendous momentum. But here’s the thing: Democrats, happily, seem to understand that the time for incrementalism and trickle-down tinkering with the existing system has passed. Even establishment Democrats like former Obama cabinet member Julian Castro have embraced raising the marginal tax rate to AOC-approved levels.
Inequality is out of control and the American Dream is in peril. We can’t fiddle with the dials anymore and pretend that everything will go back to normal. It’s time to let a new generation of policymakers have their chance. It’s time to stop listening to people like Boot who already had their time at the levers of American power and fucked up in the most disastrous way imaginable. It’s time to think big and set the agenda for the next fifty years.
