Opinion by: Krystal Ball
A tantalizing photo was revealed this weekend of AOC in Vermont meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders. It got a lot of people asking, will AOC endorse Bernie? And also, what is she waiting for?
In certain ways, an AOC endorsement of Sanders seems like a no-brainer. She is perhaps more than anyone the symbol of the widening power and appeal of his movement. She ran with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America, on a platform of revolutionary change and has certainly proven to be every bit as vexing to party leadership as Sanders. You’ll recall that one of AOC’s first acts after arriving in Washington was to join young climate activists in a protest outside of the office of Speaker Pelosi. She’s wielded her online following as a battle ax and inspired a nationwide grassroots movement. AOC’s grassroots army has put the Green New Deal on the map making climate change a central focal point of the presidential race for the first time in history. She’s even inserted the moral question of whether billionaires should exist into the national debate. That grassroots power is of course squarely in the mold of the political change that Sanders believes in and champions.
Now, if AOC does endorse she’s already made pretty clear it would be either Sanders or Warren. Now as you know, I believe that theory of change is more important than any of the policy differences between Sanders and Warren, though those are not insignificant. But because almost everyone in Washington ends up going along to get along, we have so few models of just what that kind of change will look like. Sanders and AOC are the clearest current examples of just how powerful that outside pressure really can be. It’s a model that doesn’t sit easily with the lawfare approach of a Senator Warren, seeking to work the levers of power from the inside and manipulate the regulatory state. To put it simply, Warren tells the Democratic party she’s a team player and Sanders tells the Democratic party he’s an existential threat. So which is AOC?
There are some indications that AOC’s time in DC has softened her aggressive stance.
Most notably, a New York Times profile in which AOC herself mused openly about the best way to get things done. She explained her newly careful approach to backing insurgent primary challengers this way: “It’s not just about being an activist. It forces you to grow. So it doesn’t mean you don’t endorse activists, but it also requires an assessment for a capacity of growth and how you navigate a space like this.”
It’s a hard thing to be a bomb thrower from inside the caucus room. You get to know people. You like them. You don’t want to be oppositional. Everyone around you is telling you that the way to be effective is to work together. Be a workhorse not a show horse. Every tool of coercion and compliance is leveraged by leadership and by the influence peddlers and the career staffers to force you to conform to the proper civility and decorum and level of deference to your superiors. The supposedly sacrosanct ways of Washington are forced upon you and it is all total and utter bullshit. Congress doesn’t do anything anymore. Not really. It’s all an elaborate dance of kabuki theatre, infowars and grandstanding for cable news. Pelosi with her speaker’s gavel has, yes, a certain kind of power, but the commander of a grassroots army? Now that’s real power. Just consider this impeachment situation. Pelosi didn’t want to launch an impeachment inquiry, but the pressure got too hot and so her position collapsed, one of the most powerful people in Washington brought to heel by grassroots demands.
I think it’s fair to say that the way AOC plays this endorsement decision will say something fundamental about how she sees her own role in Washington and what theory of change she really subscribes to. There are good practical arguments for waiting a while on the endorsement, waiting until it’s more clear which way the wind blows of course. Gives you a better chance of ending up on the right team with greater access to the right levers of power. There’s a good argument to be made for endorsing Elizabeth Warren in the near term. She’s rising in the polls and she has been anointed by the media and a lot of corners of the Establishment, but it’s still early. You earn an ally for life if you go out on a limb with them when it’s still risky. At this point, honestly, there’s not a good strategic argument to be made for endorsing Bernie. His support is stable but not rising. The media and the Establishment absolutely loathe him. He’s polling well in several early states, but he appears stuck after the third debate, the momentum elsewhere. But it says something quite deep about a person when they make a decision that is so clearly not the right politically calculated move. Think about Tulsi resigning as vice chair of the DNC. They will never, ever let her back in the club again. Or as a counter example, think about Warren waiting and then when the outcome was clear, lining up behind her ideological opposite, Hillary Clinton.
Endorsing Bernie at this point is not a DC choice; it’s a movement choice, an activist choice. A surefire way to get you disinvited from certain polite segments of DC society and an unjustifiable gamble if you’re playing for short term power positioning. But if your commitment is really to the movement, if you believe that what the Democratic party really needs is a good existential threat and outright hijacking by the multi-racial working class, then the choice is crystal clear.
Most endorsements don’t mean a damn thing these days honestly. Just ask Cory Booker who’s racked them up in state after state only to watch his campaign fail to launch. AOC’s though, it does matter. It matters for the progressive candidate who receives it, but maybe even more so, it matters for AOC. Team player or existential threat. Time to choose.
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