Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/11/already-paying-for-it.html
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Speaking of AOC, we have yet another example of “backfiring right wing propaganda that accidentally portrays leftists as kick-arse and cool”:
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This shouldn’t surprise anyone The people of Iowa are the same people who in 2008, were strongly behind Obama’s candidacy, giving him a strong lead in the caucus and a thumping 10% lead in the general election.
That desire for a changed nation is still there, and it’s still waiting to be tapped into all over the country.
Sadly, it seems that the greatest success of the Republican party’s attempt to split the electorate with cultural wedge issues is that the Democrats have been convinced that people in parts of the US are inherently unreachable, and have given up trying (or, more cynically, they know that the way to appeal to these voters is through appealing to the common cause of the 99%, but their big corporate donors don’t like that.)
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I hope that her performance has the GOP establishment pissing their pants and the Dem establishment getting a bloody clue to what 70% of the country actually wants.
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“Created by Mohammed bin Salman” has to be the stupidest part of that video, since he is a Trump ally and a close personal friend of Jared Kushner.
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AOC really plays in Iowa EVERYWHERE
Fixed that for you @doctorow
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I hope not. I want the GOP to remain blissfully ignorant, and to stick to their current strategy of screwing everyone except billionaires while lying about it. The ammosexuals may never vote blue, but everyone else with eyes is finally seeing how screwed they’ve been.
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I wouldn’t say that they’re ignorant so much as at a loss for how to attack her outside the Know-Nothing 27% and the greedpig 1%, who are already on-side with them. Yelling “Commie, Commie, Commie!” in response to every reasonable, well-articulated suggestion she makes for reducing inequality isn’t working as well as it has with others in the past.
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Cept in the parts of Iowa that have sent Steve King back to Congress since 2003.
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There’s a hell of a breeze blowing through that Overton window now.
Let’s hope it’s more than a gust and gets to gale force and then hurricane strength.
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Yeah yeah, Not All Iowans.
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I have some bad news for her.
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The state party chairman Jeff Kaufmann called her “Doctor Ocasio-Cortez”
Maybe it’s my effete European upbringing, but I don’t understand how calling someone a doctor is an insult?
Is it just anti-intellectualism? “hurf durf you’re capable of treating diseases so there must be something wrong with you”?
I’d have thought some kind of “them city folk just don’t understand us” insult would be more effective.
*edit Does he mean to call her Doc AOC (ie a pun on Doc Ock from Spider-man)? Because that still sounds cool.
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That part also confuses me.
She isn’t a doctor. She’s a bartender, as her detractors love to point out, because fuck the working class I guess 
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You haven’t known anti-intellectualism until you have had to deal with a germ theory denialist.
Yes, there is a lot of crossover with anti-vaxxers, why do you ask?
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I guess it’s considered that by people who don’t know much about Iowa. People who do know the state generally consider it to be a politically split swing state, with only a slight conservative leaning. It went for Obama twice, and was represented in the senate by a Democrat and a Republican between 1985 and 2015. It is quite possible it will go blue in 2020—the Dems would have had a much better chance there in 2016 if Bernie was the nominee. Saying it’s “generally considered a conservative, red-state kind of place” is just wrong, and makes it sound like Alabama. It isn’t.
Seriously, if you look at how the state has gone for the past 30 years, it looks quite purple to me:
ETA:
Ugh, I’m still upset by Cory’s ridiculous mischaracterization of Iowa.
Look, currently 75% of the House reps from Iowa are Dems!
It’s really not hard at all to ascertain that Iowa is politically complex, and not simply a red state.
Whoever “generally considers Iowa to be a conservative, red state kind of place” is someone whom I generally consider straight up ignorant about Iowa, and it’s only someone like that who would be surprised to learn many people in Iowa like AOC. Folks who actually know the place don’t find it surprising at all.
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Perhaps “know-nothings” is a bit harsh. Some people have been trained from birth to respect leadership, and to them it’s simply impossible that a charlatan could have hornswoggled them.
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I can’t tell if it’s a particularly dumb right-wing attack or a savage left-wing mockery of how dumb the right-wing attacks are. Awkward elements like that make me think it’s the former, but it’s pretty competently put together, which makes me think the latter. Though the “Professor Chink” bit (apparently mispronouncing Cenk [Uygur]) heavily weighs in on the “right-wing attack” side; lefties aren’t so likely to mispronounce a name, especially for accidental racism.
Presumably they’re simultaneously ironically referencing her working-class past, while also engaging in anti-education prejudice. I.e. being elitist and “anti-elitist” (since they conflate that with anti-education) at the same time.
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I’m not sure what conclusions we’re meant to draw from the fact that people who attend Bernie Sanders rallies like Bernie Sanders. Unless the thinking is there isn’t a single liberal in Iowa because reasons this really doesn’t tell you anything.
With a econmics degree from a particularly good economics program.
And went 10% for Trump in 2016. But hey. People who already support Bernie didn’t light AOC on fire. So everything has changed.
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