I was skeptical at first, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has grown into the job.
During the last election cycle, we saw a new generation of representatives elected to office - with some seriously mixed results. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed to be one of the people, even as she was raised in tony Westchester County, New York (and not the Bronx, as often claimed). Her initial appearance was anything but impressive. She went online to complain that her "Bougie" new apartment had a (gasp!) garbage disposal! Oh my, what do those rich folks do - flush all their garbage down the drain?
Needless to say, I wasn't too impressed - at first.
Around the same time, we were treated to two young Republicans from Northwest Georgia and Western Colorado, respectively, Ms. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert. Both came out with guns blazing, quite literally with respect to Ms. Boebert, whose claim to fame was running a bar and restaurant that didn't serve beer, but had all the waitresses well-armed (no doubt, to keep angry customers in check, when the found out the place had no liquor license).
Since those days, a lot has changed. Ms. AOC can't claim to have accomplished too much, as a freshman Representative, but at least her rhetoric has improved somewhat, and she's managed not to embarrass herself with any more garbage disposal videos. In fact, she has grown into the job and appears to be far more mature and contemplative than when she was initially running for office. There is a good chance she will be re-elected next year.
Meanwhile, Lauren Boebert has lost her restaurant and her husband, and has disgraced herself time and time again, not only on the floor of the House, but in movie theaters where she apparently had a little nookie with her Democratic boyfriend - in front of children no less. Got her ass tossed out, too. It appears that she may be booted from office next year, as even conservatives are tired of her pointless antics.
Ms. MTG, on the other hand, may see her fortunes improve, even as she tweets about "Peachtree Dishes" (this is Georgia, after all, and every other street in Atlanta is named "Peachtree"). The hillbilly district she runs in is full of folks with "Summer Teeth" - some are there, some are not. These folks root for the sort of name-calling and highschool hallway antics that Ms. Greene is famous for. Elect a clown, expect a circus. The plebes eat this shit up.
Contrast this with Ms. AOC, who started out as a wrecking ball, but realized quite quickly that was not a real path to power and change. She seems to have carefully studied how Congress works and is playing the game by the rules and studying the strategies quite carefully. This is how you win. Lauren Boebert and Ms. MTG seem more interested in getting hits on their Twitter feed than actually accomplishing anything.
And maybe this is what it has come to. After all, the mold was set by Donald Trump - say one outrageous thing after another, keep your name in the news cycle, distract people from your failures, and never actually accomplish anything of merit. Other than Supreme Court nominees, it is hard to remember anything of consequence that Trump accomplished in four years.
Of course, the media eats this shit up. The biggest hits I ever got in my blog were leading up to the election of 2016. Anything about Trump - good or bad, gets clicks (and today, Musk). Newsweek is now a Trump channel - publishing one outrageous and pointless article after another. The latest is "a lawyer says Trump's properties will be auctioned off!" which is just a guy speculating on what might happen. Speculation - it's almost like real news!
Or take the one recently about Musk's "bankers"(the Saudis?) threatening or thinking of "foreclosing" on Twitter. It is telling people what they want to hear, rather than what they need to know. Love him or hate him, people click on stories about him - or Trump, or MTG, or whoever. It means nothing, however. The real shit going down never gets reported, only the loudmouths and their window-dressing.
So when MTG says something outrageous, the hill people of Northwestern Georgia rock on their porch chairs and spit out some chaw and giggle and laugh. "You go Margie! Tell those woke lib'ruls what for!" And they think this means something is getting done, when nothing really is.
Ms. AOC, on the other hand, is playing the long game. Get re-elected, get on the right committees, get seniority. Despite all this hoopla about "term limits" (which means nothing, other than "term limits for the other guy, but our entrenched politician should stay on until death!") the real movers and shakers in DC are not the newbies making a big splash, but the lifetime politicians who pull all the real strings.
It is a lesson lost on Boebert and Greene - and the freshman class of "tea partiers" from 2008 who burned hot, burned out, and faded away without accomplishing anything significant.
Ms. AOC is smart - whether you agree with her politics or not. Boebert and Greene have demonstrated they are idiots who really don't care about the process or care to learn. I suspect they expect to disappear from office in short order, having had their lark and fun and return from the rock they crawled out from.
Ms/ AOC, on the other hand, might make a career of this.
UPDATE: And then she had to go and spoil it all by defending Hamas.... Oh, well. Back to the garbage disposal!
