Dem Infighting Worsens, Public Shots Taken at Touring AOC and Bernie

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to make hay while the sun is shining and to potentially become her state’s next senator.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, having recently been promoted from the lower to upper chamber by Michigan voters, wants AOC to know that crowing about getting more progressive sounds great until you, like, have to actually get things done.

So, it’s ambition and wishful thinking vs. pragmatic realism on the Democratic side, yet again. Alas for Slotkin, it’s been my experience that, while the latter wins at the ballot box, the former wins the hearts and minds of the activist class.

A bit of background: For those if you who missed it, and you’re a blessed sort if you did, AOC is joining independent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders on his “Fighting Oligarchy” barnstorming tour.

Up until the western leg of the tour, Sanders’ journey has been mostly about rallying the progressive base in the face of the most resounding loss for their cause at the national ballot box since 2004; not only did Kamala Harris not win a single swing state, Republicans took several Senate seats (and were close in a few other states they weren’t even supposed to be competitive in), and managed to retain control of the House of Representatives.

However, now that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has become a recent convert to the asperities of pragmatism when he realized he didn’t have the votes to force any sort of meaningful debate on a continuing resolution to keep the government open, the western leg of the tour has become a venue for the faithful to chant “Primary Chuck,” according to an NBC News report.

There’s an obvious carrot in this for AOC: “The move enraged the base and prompted some of Ocasio-Cortez’s House colleagues to encourage her to mount a primary challenge to Schumer, her fellow New Yorker, in 2028,” NBC reported.

And don’t think she isn’t making the most of it: “This isn’t just about Republicans. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too,” she said in a stop in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“But what that means is that we as a community must choose and vote for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.”

Gosh, wonder who that might be. Anywho, we also have Slotkin — one of those new Democratic senators who won her state despite the fact that Trump carried it.

Never mind that the election to fill the seat being left by Debbie Stabenow was one of the ones that was much closer than anticipated and caused no small amount of sweating in Democratic National Committee headquarters on election night.

The point is that she’s the new face of pragmatic moderate liberalism — and, after AOC began going viral for her rants against Schumer, she noted that both Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have crowed a lot about their priorities but get little done legislatively.

According to The Hill, Slotkin told Michiganers during a town hall meeting this week that her state’s politics “require me to be more than just an AOC.”

“I can’t do what she does, because we live in a purple state and I’m a pragmatist,” she added.

“Everyone you mentioned has a lot of words, but what have they actually done to change the situation with Donald Trump?”

No response yet from AOC, although I’d like to think we’d see a reprise of her repartee with GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia during a bellicose House Oversight Committee hearing last year:

Oh, Slotkin, Sen. Slotkin, don’t. even. PLAY!

However, rest assured we’ll see some rhetorical subtweeting by AOC in the coming days which references not just Schumer but Slotkin, as well.

After all, as the U.K. Daily Mail noted regarding the Michigan senator’s remarks, this all comes as the Democratic Party tries to rise from the electoral ashes through desperate spasms of rebranding, none of them especially successful:

While AOC and Sanders are on tour, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has launched a podcast where he regularly argues with Republicans and is seemingly reforming his hyper-liberal stances to more moderate positions. 

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, has recently fallen from grace after not opposing a Republican-led spending package in recent weeks.

Many in his party, like AOC, have ripped him for not stopping the bill, an action that would’ve forced a government shutdown. 

As for the previous administration, Biden and Harris have gone quietly away, for now. 

That last paragraph is the only good news for the Democrats; the last thing anyone needs — especially the left — is the doddering former flesh-puppet-in-chief and his perpetually tipsy-seeming replacement/veep cluttering the landscape to remind us all of what we don’t miss.

That being said, none of the other parts are good. Bernie/AOC are traipsing through America haranguing us about going even further left than we already did, Gavin Newsom’s podcast is the funniest skit “Saturday Night Live” has cooked up in years (except it appears to be real, weirdly enough), Schumer has the party calling for his head, and Slotkin is trying to remind the rabid base that they don’t get anywhere by ripping the moderates limb from limb as they get ready to go full French Revolution on the party elites.

As Biden would have said to Slotkin on one of those rare days where he had enough control of his faculties to spit out his favorite platitudes, lots of luck in your senior year on that one.

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