House Dem blasts 'juvenile' AOC, chief of staff, as feud among liberals hits new level
By Sam Dorman, Chad Pergram | Fox News
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Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., added to the mounting Democratic criticism of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slamming her "inappropriate" suggestion that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is singling out the New Yorker and her "squad" of fellow freshman because of their race.
Speaking to Fox News on Thursday night, Clay hammered Ocasio-Cortez's suggestion.
"It was such a weak argument to say she was being picked on and that four women of color were being picked on by the speaker," he said.
"It tells you the level of ignorance to American history on their part as to what we are as the Democratic Caucus.
"It is so inappropriate. So uncalled for. It does not do anything to help with unity. It was unfair to Speaker Pelosi."
Clay continued his broadside, saying the comment exposed how much Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., have to learn when it comes to being "effective legislators".
"It’s going to take a process of maturing for those freshman members. They will have to learn to be effective legislators," he said.
"It shows their lack of sensitivity to racism. To fall back on that (trope) is a weak argument. It has no place in a civil discussion."
The lawmaker closed his remarks by suggesting the four freshmen could hurt Democratic chances in upcoming elections.
"It shows they have no sensibility to different members from our caucus. Some come from red districts and those are the ones who gave us the majority. We need them all," he said.
His comments followed a feud between Pelosi and freshman congresswomen, like Ocasio-Cortez, that involved racially-charged criticism.
Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, previously compared moderate Democrats to racists -- prompting Pelosi, at the request of some of her members, warn House Democrats not to attack each other on Twitter.
"You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just ok," she reportedly said. On the same day of that caucus meeting, Ocasio-Cortez called out Pelosi for what she sees as the speaker continually targeting her and other freshmen lawmakers of color.
"Their ignorance is beyond belief," Clay also said while in the Speaker's Lobby, according to The Hill.
Clay wasn't the only one to attack Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday. "The View" hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg criticized her's and others' decision to attack Democrats like Pelosi. "I think this is more BS," Goldberg said of Ocasio-Cortez's comments on race.
Pelosi, meanwhile, refused to provide further comment on the feud while discussing it during her weekly press briefing.
“I've said what I'm going to say…What I said in the caucus yesterday had an overwhelming response from my members," she said.
"Because they know what the facts are and what we are responding to. We respect the value of every member of our caucus. The diversity of it all is a wonderful thing. Diversity is our strength. Unity is our power."
Dems lose patience with ‘complete fraud’ AOC, rally to Pelosi’s side
By Brooke Singman | Fox News
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House Democrats and their aides are quickly losing patience with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her office's nonstop sparring with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other long-serving members, suggesting the speaker's dismissive comments toward her may represent the view of a growing section of the caucus.
“She is a complete fraud,” one senior Democratic source told Fox News on Friday, succinctly summing up members' frustration.
The last straw, for some, was the lawmaker's claim that Pelosi was uniquely disrespectful to minority congresswomen. One senior lawmaker, who is black, scorched Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday for allegedly using the race card against the speaker, calling her comments "so inappropriate." Some lawmakers have even turned the tables, arguing that a group aligned with her is targeting black lawmakers for potential primary challenges in questioning those comments.
“Her peers do not take her seriously,” the senior Democratic source said Friday, adding: “They think it is absurd to call the speaker racist. Offensive and absurd.”
The source said Ocasio-Cortez, who won her seat after a stunning primary victory over longtime House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley, has “no power” -- despite her immense Twitter following and unique ability to at times command the news cycle.
“She is a nobody. She is a freshman member of Congress with no power. She is not worth the speaker’s brainpower,” the source said -- accusing her of starting "needless distractions from serious issues," and skipping meetings and conference calls in favor of media interviews, tweets and "glamour."
“In this building, it is about how many others you can bring along to your side. She maybe has two members—sometimes four,” the source added.
The comments come as prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) side with Pelosi.
“It was such a weak argument to say she was being picked on and that four women of color were being picked on by the speaker,” Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., a member of the CBC, said Thursday night. “It shows their lack of sensitivity to racism. To fall back on that [trope] is a weak argument. It has no place in a civil discussion.”
Clay added that “it’s going to take a process of maturing for those freshman members. They will have to learn to be effective legislators.”
The feud between Ocasio-Cortez and Pelosi escalated after Congress recently passed a border funding bill that Ocasio-Cortez, and freshmen Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., all opposed.
In an interview last weekend, Pelosi told The New York Times that “all these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”
Ocasio-Cortez then told The Washington Post this week that the “persistent singling out” by the speaker was “outright disrespectful” and affected “newly elected women of color.”
But on Friday, when asked by Fox News how she would respond to criticism of playing the ‘race card’ against Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez fired back: “What? That’s stupidly untrue.”
Pelosi this week also warned lawmakers against tweeting negative things about colleagues. Asked Thursday about her ongoing spat with the New York lawmaker, Pelosi acknowledged how she recently addressed -- “at the request of my members” -- an “offensive tweet that came out of one of the member's offices” that compared centrist Democrats to segregationists. That tweet was authored and then deleted by Ocasio-Cortez’ chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti.
“Our members took offense at that,” Pelosi said, claiming her comments received a positive response. “I addressed that.”
She added: "I've said what I'm going to say...What I said in the caucus yesterday had an overwhelming response from my members, because they know what the facts are and what we are responding to. We respect the value of every member of our caucus. The diversity of it all is a wonderful thing. Diversity is our strength. Unity is our power."
Even President Trump, who has clashed with Pelosi repeatedly since taking office, sided with her on Friday -- calling Ocasio-Cortez disrespectful, and maintaining that the speaker is not a racist.
Further, Democrats are bristling at the meddling of the Ocasio-Cortez-aligned Justice Democrats—a progressive group looking to primary Democratic members, some of whom are a part of the CBC.
“It does make you wonder what’s going on,” Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., another CBC member, told The Hill. “Some names that have been mentioned all seem to be people of color, and more so CBC members.”
The senior Democratic source, meanwhile, told Fox News that Justice Democrats “don’t have the ability to primary anyone.”
“No one is afraid of those nerds,” the source said, referring to the Justice Democrats.
That organization entered the fray on Friday as well, firing back at an aide who had told The Hill Ocasio-Cortez is a "puppet" and the group is funded by "white liberals."
"If Nancy Pelosi wants 'unity,' she should condemn the appalling comments made by a senior Democratic aide about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," Justice Democrats tweeted.
AOC's chief of staff comments just killed the Green New Deal
In fairness, the Green New Deal always read like socialist fanfic, so it's hard to argue that a totally unrealistic idea with narrow support could actually be "killed." But whatever chance there was for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's big initiative to win over skeptics went poof when her chief of staff said the quiet part out loud: the Green New Deal is not primarily about addressing the climate crisis, but about replacing America's capitalist economy with a more socialist one.
A glowing Washington Post profile of Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti opens with a meeting that he had with Sam Ricketts, the climate director for Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who launched a long-shot 2020 presidential bid centered around a sweeping climate change plan.
The article reports:
Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”
Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued.
“Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
The Green New Deal has always rested on deception. Ocasio-Cortez and her backers have argued that we are facing catastrophic emergency and that if we don't act immediately the looming devastation will be unavoidable. But at the same time, the plan is a wish list of ideas that American socialists would be pushing regardless of the climate issue, and they are in no way necessary to address the global emergency: free college, more union jobs, free healthcare for all, economic security, and "guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States."
The resolution on the Green New Deal, by the way, was co-sponsored by six 2020 presidential candidates: Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar.
Ocasio-Cortez and her allies are of course free to make the case for why the U.S. should move toward a socialist economy. But they don't get to use the pretext of a global emergency to do so. You can make a case that scientists have warned of disastrous consequences without action to curb carbon emissions, and try to shame those who are blocking action. But it's another thing to define "serious action on climate change" as requiring people to embrace AOC's economic vision.
What's fueled climate change skepticism — or denialism, as liberals would put it — is the belief that liberals are just using it as an excuse to implement their economic agenda. Chakrabarti has provided critics with more ammunition to say, "See, we told you so."
In the profile, Chakrabarti makes the argument that the resurgent socialist Left has a different "theory of change" from traditional liberals and centrists within the party.
“The whole theory of change for the current Democratic Party is that to win this country we need to tack to the hypothetical middle," he explained. "What I think that means is, you don’t take unnecessary risks, which translates to: You don’t really do anything. Whereas we’ve got a completely different theory of change, which is: You do the biggest, most badass thing you possibly can — and that’s going to excite people, and then they’re going to go vote. Because the reality is, our problem isn’t that more people are voting Republican than Democrat — our problem is most people who would vote Democrat aren’t voting.”
The errors the AOC crowd makes are to 1.) Overestimate the appeal of radical ideas in practice; 2.) Fail to recognize that national polling does not matter in House and Senate races in more conservative areas.
But even if they could somehow get past these two barriers and magically elect a socialist president, a socialist majority in both chambers of Congress, eliminate the filibuster, and pass the Green New Deal — there's the implementation issue. That is, the proposal calls for a decadeslong economic mobilization. Never in the history of the U.S. has one party controlled all levers of power in Washington for decades. So anything remotely close to the Green New Deal would inevitably be rolled back when Republicans inevitably take power.
If anything is going to be done to address climate change, it will have to be done in a way that's much more narrowly focused on addressing the issue and that has a lot broader support.
