Is this the way of the future for politics on the left?
Neither McManus or Ocasio-Cortez obey the conventions of political debate, and progressives love them for it
EARLY in the evening of the day that she was appointed secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, in March 2017, Sally McManus sat down for her first interview on the ABC’s flagship nightly current affairs program, 7.30.
An interrogation by Leigh Sales is an important ritual for any emerging political or social leader, providing a national platform to discuss their agenda and their beliefs.
The interview was going along fine for McManus, who although a little awkward and stiff in studio make-up and hair, dutifully paid homage to the reigning queen of current affairs TV and dealt easily with the opening questions until at the 2:45 mark, Sales asked: “Do you believe in the rule of law?”
McManus paused for a moment, and you could see her mind ticking over as she pondered the trap that was being laid for her. “Ah… yes,” she responded warily.
Sales then asked if the ACTU, under McManus, would distance itself from the militant Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, which has faced dozens of court proceedings for what has been deemed under Australian laws as illegal industrial action.
McManus replied that the peak body would stick by the union, and sought to explain that when the union took action, it was often for safety reasons.
But, Sales persisted, McManus had just said she believed in the rule of law.
“Yeah, I believe in the rule of law where the law is fair, when the law is right,” McManus said. “But when it’s unjust, I don’t think there’s a problem with breaking it.”
There was an almost audible collective gasp around the nation from the hundreds of thousands of people tuned into the interview at that moment.
McManus, in her first day in the job, had just said what no serious national union leader for decades had dared to utter: that bad laws are there to be broken.
The immediate media and political consensus said this was a classic “gotcha” moment, that the new ACTU leader had committed a terrible mistake which she would need to correct by repudiating her comments.
To some, it was the result of nerves and inexperience in dealing with a tough media interviewer, and she would need to lift her game. To others, more harshly, it was confirmation that McManus was out of her depth and did not have the capacity to lead the union movement.
The then-Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, condemned the comments, saying McManus was defending thuggery and he would be unable to work with her. Another government minister, Christopher Pyne, called for her to resign, and business leaders joined the chorus. Even the Labor Party leader, Bill Shorten, distanced himself by rejecting McManus’ comments.
But then a strange thing happened. Instead of apologising, or seeking to correct her comments, McManus doubled down. And people loved it.
In subsequent interviews in the following days, she repeated her belief that bad laws were there to be broken, and held firm that unions should not resile from taking action when workers’ health or safety, their welfare, or the democratic rights were under threat.
To diehard unionists, this was music to their ears to have a leader who was prepared to publicly stand against what she viewed as unjust. To others on the left, this was the kind of honest straight talking that was missing from the bland timidity of most political figures who had been trained to say as little as possible and to never steer away from pre-approved talking points.
And so, the cult of Sally McManus was born.
ON 6 January this year, the iconic CBS program 60 Minutes devoted a segment to profiling and interviewing Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old first term Congresswoman from New York’s Bronx.
The fact that someone who had only been sworn into Congress for the first time a few days earlier was considered worthy of a standalone 60 Minutes interview was news itself, although Ocasio-Cortez had already made history as the youngest female Representative in history, defeating the heir-apparent to the Democrat leadership in the process.
Ocasio-Cortez did not waste her opportunity on one of the most watched programs on the weekly US television schedule, prosecuting the case for a ‘Green New Deal’, paid for through a 70% top marginal income tax rate. She flatly declared that Donald Trump was a racist, and took on her own party establishment saying she would happily wear the mantle of a “radical” if necessary.
“I would rather lose on my values than win on compromising who I am,” she said, adding “If we can radically change the conversation, then we can potentially accomplish more in two years than many people are able to … in 10.”
Just a fortnight into her Congressional career, Ocasio-Cortez — or AOC as she is popularly referred to — is probably the second most talked about politician in Washington, after Donald Trump. She already has 2.4 million Twitter followers — half a million more than Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and is an Instagram sensation.
But what marks Ocasio-Cortez as a significant politician is not the size of her social media following, but the impact she is already having on the way progressive politics works in Washington DC.
She wasn’t the originator of the concept of the ‘Green New Deal’, but she has popularised it to the extent that no serious contender for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 can ignore it as part of their platform. Her comments about a 70% marginal tax rate, made almost as a throwaway remark in the 60 Minutes interview, immediately gained traction with serious economists such as Paul Krugman endorsing them.
Likewise, her explicit description of Trump as a racist is likely to embolden other Democrats to more openly criticise him for his championing of white nationalism and appeals to xenophobia.
Part of this is the media’s fascination with her youth, which is helped by the fact that she is articulate and attractively groomed. But is there something else happening here?
For far too long, it has felt as if the left has almost had to apologise for its views. The terms of the debate have been set by the right, whether on the future of work, trade, taxes or the environment.
SALLY McManus and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez come from very different backgrounds, separated by not only their nationalities but by two decades in age, but they are both doing politics in a fresh way which provides hope for progressives in established democracies around the world.
McManus worked her way up through the union movement over several decades as an organiser and then as a branch secretary, building a reputation as a strong campaigner. At the ACTU, she has led the ‘Change The Rules’ campaign, a far-reaching agenda that extends beyond industrial relations reform into healthcare, education and immigration, and heavily influenced Labor’s platform for the upcoming election. It has captured public attention like no other union campaign since ‘Your Rights At Work’ a dozen years ago.
Ocasio-Cortez, who describes herself as a Democratic Socialist, was inspired by Bernie Sanders’ insurgent primary campaign in 2016, working for him as an organiser before seeking a seat in Congress herself.
They both share a disdain for political conventions and a willingness to speak their minds and are adept at using social media to connect directly with potential supporters and explain their ideas without media filters.
For far too long, it has felt as if the left has almost had to apologise for its views. The terms of the debate have been set by the right, whether on the future of work, trade, taxes or the environment.
But neither McManus nor AOC is prepared to play by these rules of engagement which have effectively neutered the left over the past few decades.
For most of the 20th century, the societies followed a progressive agenda, whether it be improvements in workplace safety and labour rights, the establishment of the welfare state, or belated environmental consciousness.
But in the early-1980s, the right fought back and the left was for the most part forced into a box where it was on the defensive and reacting to the agenda and ideology coming from the right, rather than advocating its own with confidence.
The dominance of the right and the years on the political outer until the early-1990s forced the left to rethink its approach and seek to accomodate the prevailing ideology by presenting itself as the “gentler face of capitalism” whose goal was to smooth the rough edges.
Out of this came the “third way” typified by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, and to a lesser extent, the union-Labor Accord in Australia: pro-business social democrats who maintained the conservative project of dismantling the welfare state, privatisation, free markets and trickle down economics.
We all know how that worked out: the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, years of stagnant wages, the growth of insecure work, and a sharp increase in economic inequality.
THE GFC, which was a product of and which highlighted the failures of late-20th century capitalism, was the turning point.
After showing early promise, Barack Obama was unable to deliver the real change he had campaigned for, although the Affordable Care Act will always be a signature achievement. In the UK, the Blairite project overstayed its welcome and the Conservative government of David Cameron ushered in a new era of austerity which compounded the impact of the GFC. In Australia, it soon became apparent that it would take more than the tinkering at the edges of the Rudd and Gillard governments to undo the damage of a decade of conservative rule under John Howard.
Over the past few years, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders reinvigorated the left with policies that harked back to better days while seeming bold after years of a neo-liberal agenda: healthcare for all, free tertiary education, a living wage, demilitarisation, renationalisation of essential services.
But both Corbyn and Sanders had spent years on the fringes as political outsiders and they hark back to an earlier era. Their political beliefs may have struck a chord, but neither of them represent the diversity of contemporary British or American society. Instead, they are as much a part of the past as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
With Corbyn and Sanders having opened up a new debate about solutions to inequality, the way forward will be carried by a younger generation.
AWARE the left has in the past been too accomodating to the right to its own detriment, neither McManus nor Ocasio-Cortez have little interest in bipartisanship, which they regard as a barrier to their goals.
Neither is prepared to accept incremental change through working within a system devised by conservatives and business. They want to drive real progressive change and see the way towards that is by moving the current centre/mainstream to the left so that what was once considered radical or extreme gains popularity and acceptance (what is often referred to as the “shifting Overton window”).
Their approach is to seize the narrative themselves rather than framing what they say on other people’s terms. They are seemingly unafraid of criticism, because they realise this only brings more attention to their own agenda, making it more plausible and helps to identify who is for or against them. Better still, it puts their opponents on the defensive. This they have in common with Donald Trump.
As one commentator recently noted: “In Ocasio-Cortez we see (at last!) what it might look like for lefties to retake control — to begin talking about what we want to talk about rather than whatever nonsense Trump is spewing this week.”
They also recognise that real change begins with large social movements, not insider politics. And just as importantly, they make leftist politcal activism look like fun.
IT IS is a sign of the success of the strategies and tactics of both McManus and Ocasio-Cortez in reframing progressive politics that conservatives have pulled out all stops to bring them down.
Upon McManus’ appointment as ACTU secretary, The Australian assigned one of its most senior reporters to dig into her past. But this backfired, when a story claiming she had faked her CV from her university days was proven to be wrong. Undeterred, the newspaper also published stories linking McManus to the now defunct Communist Party of Australia, while conservative commentator Andrew Bolt labeled her “a boycott Israel bigot” for her support of the BDS campaign almost a decade ago.
None of this has seriously damaged her.
Similarly, Ocasio-Cortez has had to deal with stories about her clothes — the implication was that she wore designer labels which was equivalent to a betrayal of her working class roots. More ridiculously, she was trolled online for an old home video showing her dancing with college mates in homage to the teen movie The Breakfast Club (as if women in their early-20s can’t have a bit of fun). This only served to enhance her popularity and was mocked by Ocasio-Cortez herself when she posted on social media a video of her dancing outside her new office in the Capitol building.
Putting aside the elements of sexism behind these attacks, particularly those on Ocasio-Cortez, what this shows is that conservatives sense a real threat being posed by this way of doing politics. They are frustrated that neither woman wants to play by the “rules” they set, so they resort to attacking the individual.
Tellingly, Donald Trump has virtually ignored Ocasio-Cortez. Perhaps he sees parallels with his own successful assymetric warfare against of the Republican establishment.
WE have become so used to the left’s timidity that the emergence of leaders unafraid to make themselves big targets of the right feels fresh and new.
But it’s worth remembering the old adage that one swallow does not make a summer. It would be premature to declare a major resurgence of the left.
Despite her high profile, Ocasio-Cortez is a junior Congresswoman who holds no substantial positions of office. In Australia, Sally McManus is an annoying thorn in the side of conservatives, but there is much road to be travelled before any of her agenda becomes a reality.
It’s also much easier to be radical voice in opposition, throwing rocks from the outside; much harder the closer the proximity to real power. The reality is that implementing significant change — as opposed to just talking about it — is a slow, hard grind.
If, as expected, Labor wins this year’s Australian election, McManus will have to be able to compromise while keeping the union base happy. No easy task.
As she moves up the ranks of the Democratic hierarchy, AOC will be forced to make her own concessions — or worse still, succumb to political expediency. She won’t always be able to join protesters occupying the office of her party’s Congressional leader.
Nor should we place too much faith in charismatic individuals. Recent history tells us this can only lead to disappointment.
But if nothing else, Sally McManus and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have shown a way forward for the left to be unapologetically radical, bold and progressive.
