Comment by Uehreka
1 day ago
I’m not sure where you get this impression of AOC. From her Wikipedia article:
> After college, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx and took a job as a bartender and waitress to help her mother—a house cleaner and school bus driver—fight foreclosure of their home.
That sounds pretty “real Bronx” to me.
As for her campaign:
> Ocasio-Cortez began her campaign in April 2017 while waiting tables and tending bar at Flats Fix, a taqueria in New York City's Union Square. "For 80 percent of this campaign, I operated out of a paper grocery bag hidden behind that bar,"
I don’t think there’s an age when you are “ripe” to become a politician. I think that in order to be good at it, you have to maintain contact with ordinary people and listen to their concerns. Elon sucks at it not because he’s 55 but because he thinks he knows all the answers and doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.
You are skipping the part where she moved out of the Bronx at 5 and grew up in Westchester for the entirety of her schooling, graduated cum laude from BU and worked in DC. She only moved to the Bronx to leverage her Puerto Rican heritage after having her political ambitions shaped. When "after college" did she even move to the Bronx? Her registration in 2016 was still Westchester.
I like her, but to pretend that she's just some up-start from the Bronx to go against the grain is absolutely false. She was selected, groomed, and installed because she fit a profile and she is a very manufactured candidate.
Her house in Westchester that people are somehow portraying as a 'rich' upbringing: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DhCMERUXUAAY68Z?format=jpg. It had two bedrooms and sold for only $350k in 2016!
Yeah I get it, Jensen Huang worked at Dennys too (I sound nippy, but I'm not trying to be). I just don't think these people stayed in those environments long enough, but her upbringing definitely sounds "for real". If you are out into national politics before 30 you are out of any normalcy imho. Some people are bartenders for a lot longer if you catch my drift.
I don’t really catch your drift. Part of the reason I’m digging in on this is because you picked a perfect counterexample as your example. AOC came from a working class background, was elected on the basis of grassroots organizing against a guy with a huge war chest, and is widely known for staying involved in her community (to a degree many politicians don’t) so she can best represent their interests. As a result of her local activism and accessibility her constituents love her and as a result she has been able to beat back candidates from both parties running on massive budgets and even has crossover support from Trump voters in her district.
ivape thinks AOC is out of touch, funny how his written assumptions and lack of actual familiarity with her shows that he's the one out of touch. I follow AOC on Instagram (all the haters can now jump to dismiss me as a biased fanboy), and she does things in her area like charity runs, attend local events and organize townhalls...
And she grills "witnesses" of congressional hearings the way a politician who is actually doing her work grills them. Compared to "career politicians" who are probably too busy golfing with rich "campaign donors" to read the briefing and understand the issues they need to deal with..