Doing nothing will cost much more than passing the Green New Deal, investing in renewable energy, and preparing our infrastructure for a rapidly changing climate. pic.twitter.com/1LRkaflOFJ
Election Day is tomorrow, Tuesday, November 2. NYC voters can visit https://t.co/e0ZdOe2GW8 or @NYCVotes to find their polling place and learn more about the candidates and proposals that will be on the ballot. pic.twitter.com/Xk4KqT4zPX
Hillary Clinton wanted to become the first female President Of The United States so bad that she decided on the self-goal of not putting Elizabeth Warren on the ticket. Donald Trump did not make her do it. She did it herself.
A Clinton Warren ticket would have been the Clinton Gore ticket. It would have won in a landslide. But, hey, hooray for self goals.
These four are the real squad. But they don't know how to get along to go along. They don't know how to join forces. Only one will run for office. And we know ultimately it is about running for office. If you don't run and win, you are left petitioning.
Just like Hillary needed to put Warren on the ticket in 2016, these four need to merge their two organizations Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement into one organization to be called Green New Deal Nation and they need to really organize. This requires accepting AOC as the mascot. She is first in class. She is the natural political leader. And she is ready.
The planet is not going to run on your schedule. So you better run on the planet's schedule. The time is now. It is already late.
These three firebrands run around like headless chickens. They don't realize their work becomes so much easier if they can only learn to get along.
AOC's committee work in Congress is death by a thousand cuts. She needs to get out there, and she needs to get out there in a big way.
Political leadership is not about saying I have written the most research papers, or have read them, it is not about saying I have organized the most rallies, or even addressed them. That is where the other members of the squad come in.
Political leadership is saying I ran for office and I won. That is AOC.
“You say...that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that, because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil, and that I refuse to believe.” pic.twitter.com/SA06P4bXZ7
It is good so many people are running. It is good that both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, one a socialist, another not a socialist, are running. It is extremely good that it has become normal for a woman to run for president. Two of them are showing really good numbers so far: Warren and Harris.
But the big deal is the Green New Deal. First AOC said a 70% tax on incomes over 10 million. Makes sense to me. It is not that you pay 70% on your entire income when you make 10 million. You only pay 70% for income past 10 million. I don't know about you, but I think that would be a nice problem to have. Why is anyone complaining? Then Warren proposed a wealth tax. Is it 2%? That is minuscule. Long past due. Bernie proposed yet another.
It is capitalism, not socialism, that asks that the gap between the rich and the poor not get too wide. Too wide and the wheels don't grind like they need to.
Trump is looking suspect. Will Mueller merely be background noise for the next two years? Or will Trump be toppled and Pence be beaten in 2020? He almost lost the Senate on the Wall and shutdown issue. It happened fast. If enough Senate Republicans nod, he is gone.
His handling of the shutdown reflects upon the trade war with China. If you were going to take the December deal anyways, why engage in the shutdown? If you were going to take the Chinese offer to get them to buy more soybeans (and a few other things), why create the drama?
Will Trump be impeached? If not, will he be beaten? Which Democrat will win? Will it be a Warren-Harris ticket with Sanders helping hone the basic message? AOC will loom large without even running. If she can get the young people to vote, the Democrats win easy.
Too young to run in 2020, AOC is going to be the most exciting figure in 2020. I can see her crisscrossing the country on behalf of the ticket once the primaries are over. If it is a Warren-Harris in 2020, AOC gets 2028 for Green New Deal 2.0.
AOC represents a generation that did not contribute to the global warming crisis but is set to suffer all its consequences. Howard Dean did not become president. But Deaniac Obama did. Bernie is not going to win, but AOC will carry his torch. It is not capitalism, it is not socialism, it is not this or that. It is a new label. It is a bartender millennial rising up to the challenge. It is a new political outlook (not even ideology) that is to herald the new Age of Abundance.
Harris is Left Coast.
Women have been kept away from the White House for so long, it feels like one woman getting in for one time is not going to be enough. Warren, Harris, and AOC are three generations of women.
The Green New Deal is a bold plan to shift our country to 100% clean and renewable energy. We do not fight this fight for our generation alone but for generations to come.https://t.co/Mzi2Y2LZg0
When your #GreenNewDeal legislation is so strong that the GOP has to resort to circulating false versions, but the real one nets 70 House cosponsors on Day 1 and all Dem presidential candidates sign on anyway https://t.co/BbHIn8cu0f
It wasn’t all me! It’s us. Our team’s perspectives, conversations, arguments, examples, humor, and bravery give me the tools to draft these lines of questioning.
Could AOC inspire the 18-28 crowd to vote in the same ratio as the 60-80 crowd? That is the question. Could AOC inspire that crowd to run for office in similar proportions? There are all kinds of offices to run for. There are numerous offices at the local level that do not ask you to quit your day time job.
AOC's challenge is not what committee assignment she can get herself in Congress. It is what she can inspire at the grassroots level nationally and globally. The digital natives have to come out in full force. The generation for whom climate change is existential has to take the lead on doing something about it.
I believe AOC has the option to take the Green New Deal idea to the Netroots Nation, and I don't mean the organization. I mean the digital native crowd who have never not known the Internet. Done right the Green New Deal becomes centerpiece legislation no matter which Democrat gets elected president in 2020. Senator Elizabeth Sanders has already endorsed it. And many say she is the frontrunner. She also leans towards the same end of the political spectrum as AOC.
AOC represents a paradigm shift in politics. America saw its greatest phase of prosperity when the top tax rate was indeed in the 70% range. And America was still called capitalism then. And back then, in the heat of the Cold War, pun intended, capitalism was not just an economic system, it was also a political ideology. It was life or death on the nuclear tip.
The Green New Deal will not get enacted over the next two years. So fighting for some kind of a congressional committee is a losing proposition. But that fight can be used to go to the netroots nation. See, the Congress is not responding, not at scale, not at speed. Get involved. Shape the 2020 agenda.
The Green New Deal is not one thing you do. Just like the New Deal after which it is named, it is sweeping. It is a fundamental realignment.
This is not about let's create a Facebook group. This is not about, can we get more Twitter followers. New digital tools are needed. This is about building an actual organization with local chapters, and locally elected leadership. This is about a political organization that raises funds. Somebody is going to have to pay for AOC's travels. Let a PAC do that. This is about crowdsourcing the drafting of actual legislation. How do you get a million people (at least) to take part in the drafting of legislation? And it has to feel meaningful. I myself am not clear how. The Green New Deal will not be drafted by a committee Speaker Pelosi agrees to. The Green New Deal rough draft will be crafted by a million members of the netroots nation.
Building an organization .... I am thinking, how about Green New Deal Nation for a name? GNDN. The short form sounds right on the lips. It will have to create its own software. That is not a big challenge. Anyone can sign up. You sign up with your email address, phone number, name, and zip code. Basic stuff. It is both a website and a mobile app. Then the software organizes you by zip code, 10 people to a group. The 10 closest people to each other, geographically speaking, form the basic group. Anything larger and people run the danger of not getting heard. You insert your address, and that finds you the group closest to you. The group is a monthly house party. But even on the website and in the app, each individual has the option to start solo. There is a form you fill out where you say what are the political and economic goals that are most important to you. As that moves from one person to a 10 person group, the leader of the group brings it all together. It starts with a list of all that team members want. Then the team votes, so there is a priority list as a second step. And it keeps going up. 10-10-10-10 could keep happening. As a second step, 10 team leaders come together, if not in person, then virtually. And so on. That is a bottom-up thing that must happen.
And then there is a shopping mall concept. The top thinkers in the Green New Deal camp (and many might be academics) make the best case they can make to throw out ideas. The netroots goes shopping among those ideas. These are ideas that have been thought through in terms of technology, in terms of budget numbers, and so on.
You don't need 10 years to build a think tank. You need a split second.
The thing is, this is a cost-effective path. Most people might not have to go any further than their nearby house party. Let the average donation be a glorious $5. Skip the coffee. Donate instead.
This done for a year will make the Green New Deal the centerpiece legislation for any Democrat who might end up in the White House in 2020.
Once Green New Deal 1.0 has been drafted, going back and forth between the netroots and the leadership and the shopping mall of thought leaders, then the leadership has to take it back to the netroots. You participated in the crafting of it, now sell it to the population at large. Canvass. Vote.
And there you have it. Momentum.
That conversation is the democracy. Google is not just some small town library gone digital. People ask Google questions that were never even asked. And on any given day, one third of search queries on Google are new.
This digital conversation will be unprecedented. It just has not been done before.
When you yourself are drafting legislation, that leaves little room for apathy.
