Can socialist policies help build the Meso-Space-Mountain?

I like AOC. I think she is smart, principled, and mostly practices what she says from everything I have seen. I could see myself changing that from a mostly to an entirely — but it is nearly impossible to do that without meeting a person or being around someone directly.

Still, my intuitive sense is that I trust her, which is a lot for me to say given the events of the last couple years.

Representative AOC is very nuanced and precise in all the positions that I’ve heard her take. I started listening to her more intently recently, after beginning a search last year to find young political leaders to support. I almost always find myself, after listening to her recent talks over the last year, realizing “OK, actually what I’m hearing Alexandria say is that the deeper problem is this other thing” and finding that the problems she is identifying are important and the solutions she is already pointing to are worth investigating. I almost always have more commentary and questions, but I have that for everyone.

That brings me to the reason for writing this post, which is seeing a few clips today of AOC’s appearance at The Strokes concert last night, who were playing in Queens, NY, just adjacent to her district. The clips I saw of her short speech weren’t odd or unexpected, but what I did find strange is that she did not introduce the Strokes directly, but rather introduced Bernie Sanders first.

Why was Bernie at the concert? Was he already visiting NYC? Why did she walk off the stage after introducing him, when she was at (or right nearby) her district and it would not be unusual to stand on stage at the same time? That interaction did not feel right at all.

AOC has made a recent set of appearances across NY State that seem to signal her wider aspirations for either a Senate seat or the Presidency. I’ve already stated that I think she will win the Presidency (if she decides that she wants to run), and I stand by that. She has such solid fundamentals and some early momentum.

But she will not win the Presidency with Bernie. There are far too many people, both Democrats and Republicans, that do not trust Bernie. I do not trust him either. I will not get into a full critique here, but Bernie has been in Congress for far too long with mixed results. And principally, the way AOC has lived her life publicly seems to fit much more closely with the principles that she espouses, than the way Bernie fits with the principles that he espouses.

That doesn’t mean Bernie may not get some traction with some voters if he were to run for President, as he has done for many years as a career politician.  But I think that is the clear problem, that he is a career politician and I do not trust him to deliver on his promises or to connect with a wide enough audience.  AOC is young enough that she can still bridge into many different communities that Bernie cannot reach well. 

And that brings me to another important point, which is that the stupid selfish socialism of someone like Bernie Sanders will not be able to achieve the Meso-Space-Mountain. Worse, Bernie’s style of aggressive scapegoating socialism will uselessly devour many of the stable positions and people and companies that we have and need in order to build, slowly or quickly, into space to reach a massive economy that can actually pay for some of the unrealistic policies that someone like Bernie tries to sell to benefit himself.

I am not entirely against socialist policies. In narrow cases they can resolve important problems. I was supportive of Mamdani in his run for Mayor of NYC, with the caveat that I thought that if he didn’t sit regularly with and listen closely to the business community and adjust some of the policies he pitched initially, then he would have many unhappy citizens on his hands. Mamdani is categorically different from Bernie because Mamdani has to see the citizens he serves constantly. So strangely, I’d actually trust the feedback loop of socialist policy tests in a place like New York City more than I would at a statewide or countrywide level (where it would be easier for cover-ups to occur). My position was that either Mamdani would learn and adapt quickly, and bring exciting new young energy to NYC. Or, that Mamdani would not adapt, and that an entire generation of young people would find out what happens when a politician cannot meet the pitches that they make. Either way he was a good choice for NYC for this time. That seems to be proving out to be correct.

Even the short messages of AOC versus Bernie at the concert were telling. AOC smoothly mentioned fighting fascism and genocide, raising wages, and guaranteeing healthcare. These are issues that everyone can grapple with, and that almost all voters across different parties view as important. Bernie then hobbled out with a much more complex message that started with economic justice and racism. Those two points alone are far too complex and too filled with holes for a wide voting block to grasp onto, especially when debates and media campaigns ramp up.

I am not saying that racism is not an important issue. Although the accusations of racism were likely overheated and overused in the late 2010s and early parts of this decade, the issue of racism is under-discussed today (though I will say that racism or slavery-based economic reparations are a very bad idea across the board). I am also not saying that economic improvement for all US citizens is not important.

What I am saying is that I do not trust Bernie, who is talking about economic justice in a hardline socialist way, while self-admittedly owning three houses. And I am saying that if Democrats focus their messaging on an overly complex frame of economic justice and racism by candidates who do not have true identities and experiences with both, then they will lose.

These might be small unimportant details to some political analysts, but they are glaring differences to me and to a lot of young people.