Political scribe: Ocasio-Cortez is the left’s Trump
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the “most interesting” politician since President Trump — which is no coincidence, suggests The Week’s Matthew Walther, since she is “a distinctly Trumpian figure.” By which he means that both of them struggle with the facts and their appeal “is a matter of rhetoric and personality, not of policy acumen or relevant experience.” In fact, “to put it kindly,” AOC is “not good with numbers.” Like Trump, she “exaggerates constantly” and is “fixated on urban legends.” And for her, “all conflicts and disagreements are intensely and indeed almost exclusively personal.” What she offers her online fan base is “the chance to watch a cool young superhero defeat an axis of Boomer male arch-villains single-handedly.” And she speaks to a generation whose political grievances “are as numerous as their personal shortcomings.”
Campaign desk: Dem ‘harvesting’ flipped 7 GOP seats
Thanks to a recent change in California law that allows anyone to collect and turn in someone else’s completed mail-in ballot, Democrats flipped seven GOP-held House seats long after voting ended, reports William Patrick at The Epoch Times. Indeed, California’s election system is now one that’s “no longer decided on Election Day, but in the weeks after.” The change, called ballot harvesting, allows “activists and political parties to deliver ballots to targeted would-be voters, solicit a completed ballot and return it to a voting site without a secure chain of custody.” In California, which allows unlimited harvesting and where fully 40 percent of the midterm votes were counted after Election Day, the results skewed “exclusively for Democrats.”
From the left: Was Mueller probe really worth it?
For many Robert Mueller watchers, “the air these days is electric” as “people sense big shoes are about to drop,” says T.A. Frank at Vanity Fair. But once heart rates have slowed, much of what we’ve learned so far “seems to be based on nothing at all.” Yes, “those who hope that Mueller reveals a shambolic operation with a lot of rascals engaged in sleazy and embarrassing behavior will be happy with the fruits of his labors.” But “those who hope for an unveiling of indictments” linking Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin “in a grand conspiracy have no more reason to celebrate than they did a week or a month ago.” Mueller seems to have “fallen prey to the same state of mind that warped Ken Starr — namely disgust over the people you’re investigating and a desire to justify the sunk capital.”
Foreign desk: How to annoy Europe — cancel Brexit
The European Court of Justice is “highly likely” to rule that the UK can cancel Brexit unilaterally, according to Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky. And while both Prime Minister Theresa May and the Labour opposition have pledged to honor the 2016 referendum, “anything is possible in the current political environment.” Moreover, “whether it’s really desirable for the EU to keep the UK within the fold is another matter.” Fact is, the UK has never been popular within the bloc and enjoys the least political support. Canceling Brexit would give the UK “a wonderful opportunity to stick it to the Germans, the French and the Brussels bureaucracy” by undermining “every attempt to bring EU member states closer together” and “remaining as a perpetual headache for everyone Brexiteers despise.”
Activist: Rebooting New York City’s GOP
Democrats enjoy a 7-to-1 registration edge over Republicans in New York City. Worse still, suggests Brooklyn GOP leader Joel Acevedo at Gotham Gazette, to the vast majority of city voters, “the Republican Party has become synonymous with callousness and corruption.” If the GOP hopes to reassert itself, it must “get back to basics and start reconnecting with local communities” and minority voters. That may mean “adopting some liberal ideas, or compromising in order to codify a kinder,” gentler society. But “empathy and conservative principles are not mutually exclusive,” and it can be accomplished “without sacrificing our core principles of fiscal probity, free enterprise, personal freedom, individual responsibility and self-government.” The GOP needs to “figure out what we’re offering in an urban environment like New York.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann