Summary
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 35-year-old veteran lawmaker, spoke to NPR about her party’s path forward.
She predicts Republicans will face backlash over Medicaid cuts and federal worker firings.
Despite some Democrats suggesting a new immigration approach post-election, she maintains support for a path to citizenship and recently held a know-your-rights seminar that drew threats of investigation from Trump’s border czar Tom Homan.
AOC told NPR “everything feels increasingly like a scam” for ordinary Americans while government serves the wealthy well.
Unlike Trump, she opposes drastically cutting government agencies but questions programs like Medicare Advantage.
Maybe this is a hot take, but why don’t we just make all the law abiding undocumented immigrants legal and just move the fuck on? We need a party that will focus on healthcare and education the most as those two things will create a better society in the long run. Having these other individuals able to fully participate in society could be helpful in many ways as well.
That’s what Regan and HW Bush did. But they’re all against it now.
bEcAuSe ThAt WoUlD bE uNfAiR tO tHoSe WhO dId It ThE “rIgHt” WaY
Which is, of course, a completely bullshit argument. But it nonetheless gets trotted out any time there’s a proposal to make something easier for anyone middle class or below.
Yeah, I love how that argument completely ignores all the other advantages that come along with ‘doing it the right way’
It’s like being on a cruise ship in the ocean that rescues some sailors in distress, and then someone gets pissed because the rescued people didn’t buy a ticket like everyone else.
That’s a very apt comparison, and I would bet cold hard cash that there are people who act exactly like that on a cruise.
Well, according to Trump, the way they did it isn’t ‘the right way’ either. Otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to block birthright citizenship.
But hey, expecting a Conservative to wrap their head around an abstract concept is… well, let’s just say these are people who need pictures.
“I would explain it to you, but I don’t have the time or crayons to do so”
One of the biggest problems in America is people thinking that suffering is a necessary part of human existence and people having what you have without suffering is an injustice, unless they’re rich.
Every time a conservative sees someone getting help they assume it could have been money in their pockets instead. It’s sick zero-sum thinking and betrays a total lack of understanding of financial appropriations, tax, really everything, reality even.
As a general advertisement, not even asking for money, liberal groups should send “fake checks” to people and say:
Do you think the donors to the democrats would approve?
racism
Without doing any googling to double check, I’m almost certain that I’ve heard that was already kinda sorta tried. Ofc, it didn’t fix the problem because the exploitive system that creates the conditions for illegal immigration remained, and the government has only made it worse since then. Imo, the only true fix that doesn’t involve dumb fucking bullshit is massively loosening our immigration constraints and allowing people to live here as long as they don’t start shit.
To be clear, I’m against immigration controls period, but this is me trying to be practical.
Pathway to citizen hasn’t been tried because it hasn’t been able to get the necessary coalition to pass.