AOC's Chief-Of-Staff Wears T-Shirt Featuring Nazi Collaborator

[PatrickforO]

163. Wow. I don't know what to say - you really seem to despise her.

Sorry for that, because I don't. I like the way she's speaking truth to power about things like the tax code, and climate change and healthcare. I liked the dance video. She's a year younger than my youngest child.

Like all people in their twenties, she lacks the experience to go with the fire inside. But I'll tell you this - letting her burn is a bad, bad idea. Circling the wagons as if she's the enemy and not Trump, McConnell, Miller and the billionaire Republican donors who created think tanks like ALEC is a really bad move. Believe me, the right wingers - the smart ones who are billionaires - are laughing heartily at our little battle here.

Yeah she should fire Chakravarti. For sure.

But in the meantime, consider the 86 million millennials who are now of voting age. And the Gen Z who are just becoming of age - their oldest is 23 years at this time. Those are the generation of the Parkland kids. Let me just ask you what they have to be grateful for from the two-party system? Crushing student debt? School shootings? Not being able to afford a car or an apartment? Working in jobs with low pay who gave their employees a $400 bonus to celebrate the tax cuts when they spent millions buying back shares (my son's company) - oh but he got a gift card, too!

This is what I've been saying all along. We need to be working with these kids and not squashing the first ones of them in Congress. Because they have little to lose. They've been screwed by the system every which way but loose, real cash cows. In my state we have 733K people, mostly millennials and Gen Z, who owe an average of over $33K in student loan debt. They can't start businesses, buy a house, and every year their average remittance of student loan payments takes about $24 billion out of the state's economy - money that will not be used to buy local goods and services. But they were told they had to go to college to get the crappy jobs they have now.

This generation is 86 million strong, and begging for someone who can energize them, motivate them, set a vision they can believe in. They don't get that and they won't show up. And, they will turn against this party. Don't say 'we don't need them,' because we do. Really bad. And we are the natural party for them to go to.

But what kind of operational message are they getting? From the Republicans, a simple Fuck You, we don't need you. The Republicans have circled their wagons around old white men.

From the Democrats? We all ought to be thinking about that. Our wisdom literature says the people perish without a vision. Whoever we run in the upcoming election, at whatever level, needs to be talking about a vision - a vision of healthcare, good roads, jobs that pay enough, affordable housing, affordable, debt-free college and a healthy, cool earth their children and grandchildren will inherit.

Piling on AOC, Tlaib, Omar and Pressley isn't helping that. And if we don't set the vision and then DO what we say we'll DO, we risk losing this whole bloc of new voters, many of whom have never cast a ballot.