U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) (C) during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol to unveil the Green New Deal resolution. | Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
By Rev. Jesse Jackson
The big guns are out for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the charismatic first-term legislator from New York.
In an apparent swipe at Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump used part of his rambling State of the Unionaddress to say he was “alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.”
Billionaire former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz cited Ocasio-Cortez’s support for a 70 percent tax rate on income above $10 million a year as one reason he may decide to run as an independent for president, and not as a Democrat.
OPINION
The young congresswoman isn’t easily cowed. She called out Trump, saying “I think he’s scared.”
“He feels himself losing on the issues. Every single policy proposal that we have adopted and presented to the American public has been overwhelmingly popular, even some with a majority of Republican voters supporting.”
Ocasio-Cortez is exactly right. Schultz may think calls for Medicare for all are “un-American,” but the vast majority of Americans support it. Consider the following:
Reuters poll: 70 percent support Medicare for all, including 52 percent of Republicans.
Fox News poll: 70 percent support raising taxes on those making over $10 million a year.
Bloomberg poll: 62 percent support tuition-free college.
Kaiser Foundation poll: 92 percent support having Medicare negotiate with drug companies to lower drug prices.
Hart poll: 63 percent support $15 minimum wage.
Yale/George Mason poll: 81 percent support the Green New Deal plan.
There is a wide gulf between the political center and the moral center.
Dr. Martin Luther King used to teach that “cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”
Politicians worry about donors. They hear from lobbyists, from special interests, from corporations that can spend unlimited money in political campaigns without revealing it.
The moral center is concerned with what is right — and what can work.
What is different now is that the moral center — what is right — is also increasingly popular. The political class is running scared because more and more people understand that the rules have been rigged to benefit only the few. So Trump and Republicans and billionaires like Schultz yell “socialism,” “Venezuela,” “extremism,” “radicalism.” They need to spread fear to protect a discredited political center.
Don’t fall for it. Medicare for all isn’t socialism; it’s common sense. A living wage isn’t radical; it’s a moral imperative.
We now suffer an extreme inequality not witnessed since before the Great Depression. It is time for the moral center to make itself heard.
And now a new generation of leaders is rising that just may be ready to take on the fight. Like AOC, they will come under intense fire. They will succeed only if we build a popular movement strong enough to overcome the resistance.
AOC is young and smart and charismatic, and she and her colleagues may help us begin to heal a nation.
Email Rev. Jesse Jackson at jjackson@rainbowpush.org.
Socialist pigs.............both of them
ReplyDeleteAfter reading an especially radical platform agreed upon by the British Labor Party, one Tory wag described it as “the longest suicide note in history.”
ReplyDeleteThe phrase comes to mind on reading of the resolution calling for a Green New Deal, advanced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and endorsed by at least five of the major Democratic candidates for president.
The Green New Deal is designed to recall the halcyon days of the 1930s, when, so the story goes, FDR came to Washington to enact the historic reforms that rescued America from the Great Depression.
And this is how jesse has avoided actual gainful employment for his entire life. In addition to his using black folks to intimidate large corporations.
DeleteShe is a radical progressive (communist) and a danger for America.
ReplyDeleteI read this and then remembered I had the book "Shakedown" by Kenneth Timmerman on my Kindle. Its an interesting path Jesse walked. A fake reverend who never got his doctor of divinity degree until his son, you remember the one with the blonde bimbo he used to fly around with, got elected to Congress. . But one of my favorite Jesse episodes happened after the book, when he knocked up that campaign worker. And then took it upon himself to try to cleanse Bill Clinton of the Lewinsky stain (pun intended). Anyway, every time I see his byline in the Sun Times, I'm thinking he's got some socialist floozy on the string. Never worked an honest day in his life.
ReplyDelete