Jeremy Scahill, Matt Taibbi, Naomi Klein, David Yearsley, Ryan Grim… I think of these very good young journalists as young, but they're all in early middle age. I've been listening to Grim's new book as I drive our worldly goods, one carload at a time, from friendly Alameda to sterile Sonoma. “The Squad: AOC and the Hope for a Political Revolution” is a political love letter to Alexandria Cortez.
If you've been really alienated from electoral politics, four lefty women of color were elected to Congress in 2018 and dubbed “The Squad” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. In 2020 Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri and in 2022 Greg Casar of Texas and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania achieved Squad status after getting elected (despite being outspent by corporate Dems funded by the Israel lobby, who will try to oust anybody who sheds a tear for Palestine).
Grim's recounting of the 2020 fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination suggests that if Bernie had deferred to Elizabeth Warren, or if AOC had not endorsed Bernie and Galvanized his campaign, Warren would have gotten the nomination over Biden. Warren, getting desperate, claimed that Bernie had told her and her husband, over dinner at her house, that a woman could not be elected President. It was hardly worth honoring with a denial. Warren should have said “They are not about to let a Jewish leftist from Brooklyn be President.”
I should be divesting but I went into Books, Inc. in Alameda and bought the actual book so I can quote Grim going after a New Jersey Congressman named Josh Gottheimer, a great friend of Israel. Maybe it's time to bring back the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Warren lost a LOT of trust with that BS