I wrote recently about my full expectation that the verbose representative from the Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will join the race for president in 2024. Her continued public antics – like yesterday's hilarious "arrest" scene outside the Supreme Court building – only bear witness to that fact. Cortez will turn the constitutionally required 35 years of age a month before the general election that year, rendering her legally eligible, even if painfully unprepared.
Granted, I don't share much agreement with her policy proposals, find her understanding of world historical and current events gravely superficial, think her proficiencies reside mainly in the arena of community organizing, and find Alexander Hamilton's depiction of an unfit executive – "talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity" – a perfect encapsulation of her public resumé.
But none of that matters anymore. We don't elect competent leaders at the national level anymore – or at least not many. Money, bombast, charisma, and powerful friends are the ticket to power, and AOC has each of those things in spades.
She is adored by young progressives whose political diet consists almost entirely of social media junk food. They see her as a brilliant warrior for their cause-of-the-moment, whether that's LGBTetc, climate activism, wealth redistribution, or abortion on demand – thunderously applauding, retweeting, and sharing her bold proposals.
Even when they are as intellectually humiliating as this recent one:
Good heavens. I don't fully understand the busy schedule of a congresswoman, and I'm quite certain that Cortez's is even busier than most given her high profile and frequent appearances on national media. But how is it possible that no one in her circle, not one of her aids or advisers – not even just a genuine friend – pointed out to her that "stripping the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over abortion" is precisely what the Supreme Court just did in the very case she is so angry about?
It's not as though her own side of the aisle isn't aware of this. The progressive complaint with the Dobbs v Jackson ruling isn't that the Supreme Court exercised judicial power to create abortion law, but the fact that they restrained judicial power from being able to do that very thing. "Supreme Court jurisdiction over abortion" is what led to Roe v. Wade and a 50-year nightmare of disunion and social unrest. The current "conservative" court just wrote that they have no federal authority to make such rulings, surrendering the very power that AOC is demanding be taken from them.
The news has been full of conservative mockery and liberal defense of President Joe Biden's recent teleprompter flub, where he apparently read speaker cues including "end of quote," and "repeat the line." But if it's possible to get passed the silliness of that gaffe, notice "the line" that Biden was repeating. It's a line straight from the Supreme Court's majority opinion in Dobbs:
Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who registered to vote and cast a ballot is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.
President Biden is himself pointing out that the Supreme Court has ceded jurisdiction over abortion law to voters – where women are consistently registered to participate at a higher rate than men. As Biden put it, "That's another way of saying that you, the women of America, can determine the outcome of this issue."
Bingo. That's exactly right. That's exactly what the Supreme Court did in Dobbs. A majority of Americans may believe that President Biden is cognitively impaired, but he managed to grasp that simple fact.
What does it tell us about his daffy, would-be successor from the Bronx that she clearly does not?
