No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
I think it's at least partially because everyone else sucks so bad. She's not a great speaker but she gets a lot of coverage from left-wing influencers because there's no one else to promote. She also positions herself just far enough on the left to get their support but she's also close enough to the center to still get coverage in the mainstream media. So she's the face of progressive movent and gets attacked by Fox a lot. So she's everywhere even though she's kind of bland in my opinion (compared with European left at least).
Compared to European politics, the USA doesn't really have any "left".
Most Democrats would be considered center-right in a lot of other countries.
Exactly. I would say Mamdani is "European kind of left" and he's also really good at delivering his message. I totally get why he's so popular. OAC is only OK but he really doesn't have a lot of competition in Congress.
Hard-right even.
Were I live, Portugal, the policies of the Democrat Party are closest to those of a local party called Iniciativa Liberal (Liberal Initiative) who are considered Far-Right ultra Neoliberal (and were started by people with A LOT of money rather than being a naturally growing movement).
In most of Europe the mainstream parties (whether they used to be center-left or center-right) nowadays are Neoliberal, but the version of that ideology of the US Democract Party is harder than even the old center-right mainstream in Europe (which is how even an EU under a majority of the EPP - which are the EU level group of such parties - is still a lot more pro-consumer than the Democrats, though things have been getting worse).
A point about this is it's a specific long-term strategy used by conservative media that worked on Hillary. It doesn't matter what AOC says or does, they'll give her negative coverage. They'll spend years doing this so when she finally does make a run for president their viewers will already have AOC=BAD baked in.
Hillary shot herself in the foot by holding repellent policies and abhorrent views even within her own party. She was pro-war well into the 2010s. She was Tough On Crime in the middle of BLM protest waves. She was chintzy and hyper-bureaucratic on public health care and education while she freely opened her wallet to mass surveillance and corporate bailouts. She demonstrated naked hostility to the LGBTQ community time and time again. She flaunted her wealth, constantly lied about her own historical record, surrounded herself with sycophants and scammers, and was the worst kind of sore loser.
That's why Obama kicked the knees out from under her in 2008. And that's why Donald Trump could casually outflank her on the left in 2016, by mouthing a few anti-war slogans, bullshitting about popular economic reforms, and hugging the Pride Flag. Hillary made the same stupid mistakes as Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 and Harris in 2024. She desperately pandered to the Republican Establishment while expecting everyone to the left of John McCain to reflexively bend the knee.
I'm glad Hillary lost. I'm just sad she had to lose in the general, rather than scrubbing out in the primary a second time.
She's fine. There are definitely better orators. But she stays on message, advances popular policies, and is generally well-received by her constituents. There are plenty of other aspiring AOCs that don't perform half as well. And you won't be able to name them because they don't win elected office - much less survive multiple hostile intra-party primary bids and smear campaigns - or fundraise effectively or get promoted via social media so aggressively.
There are definitely other people to promote. We just watched Graham Platner's star rise largely on his personal charisma and ability to build a crowd. We've seen Al Franken and Anthony Weiner and John Edwards all come and go along similar trajectories. AOC might demonstrate better staying power simply because she's not a giant sex pest.
Compared to Corbyn or Mélenchon or Reichinnek? I'd say she's par for the course.
Absolutely. She's a capable politician and party member. I just don't think she deserved to get the kind of attention she's getting. For example many people talk about presidency and I think she's not even close to this level. There's simply no one else out there.
A lot of it boils down to her fundraising numbers. Among all the members of The Squad, she outperforms to the point that the rest of the party needs to periodically come to her with hands out for a cup of money. That extends her influence within party leadership and allows her to effectively lobby for legislative amendments and rally support in her caucus to vote against certain other bills.
I think she's better positioned to work on her bid in 2026 than Obama was twenty years earlier.
Of course, I also think she'd function better as a candidate for NY Governor. Building a hard base of DSA-aligned Democrats inside New York and advancing progressive policy at the state level sounds much more appealing than taking a stab at the White House, only to get the entire country's problems dumped in your lap.
There's Pritzker in Illinois and Andy Beshear in Kentucky. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Mark Kelly of Arizona are also strong contenders. But, again, anyone taking the Presidency in 2028 is going to inherit an absolute shitshow. I wouldn't want the job and I think you kinda have to be crazy if you do. I also don't think AOC would do well under the degree of pressure the office will apply. You really need someone coming in there with a crowbar and an eye for kneecaps. That's not her style of politics.
I could almost stomach four years of Gavin Newsom if I believed he'd spend his time running down Trump Admin hacks and bankrupting them. Where's Elliot Spitzer when you need him? But I know Newsom would sell out twice as hard as Trump just to prove he's better at it, so that's a no-go.
I don't think there are any good candidates for President in 2028, AOC included. But that's more thanks to the deep endemic corruption of the office and the spinelessness of the Dem Party as a whole. If the only thing you care about is winning a popularity contest, though? AOC's a top contender.
I don't even think she would do well under the pressure of the presidential campaign.
100% agree. Ideally they would the couple of strong contenders for presidency and bunch of AOCs advancing things at a local level. The fact that people propose AOC for presidents shows how bad the state of the party is.