Ray Cardello April 6, 2021

The Main Stream Media loves Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and her gang because they fit a perfect narrative when they hit the scene in such a big way a couple of years ago. They were young, Progressive, women of color and most importantly, they all hated Donald Trump. Because of their gender (assumed to be female) and their ethnic backgrounds, they were difficult targets for President Trump to fight back against without falling into the Racist Misogynist Trap. It was believed that these women were taking charge of the Democrat Party and were giving Nancy Pelosi a run for her money in a “cat-fight” power struggle. It appears after two years and the re-election of the three squad members, that the only things these three women are good at is social media presence and making noise on the hill. They may be the Progressive Queens of Twitter but far less successful at lawmaking.

The New York Post has reported the findings of a study conducted by the Center for Effective Lawmaking which was a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. This study determined the effectiveness of each member of Congress and ranked them by party, Of the 240 Democrat members of the House, they ranked AOC at 230th, Ilhan Omar at 213th and surprisingly, Rashida Tlaib at 92nd. That score for Tlaib was high based on 3 of her sponsored bills actually signed into law while Omar and AOC have yet to have anything with their name on it passed. In the meantime, the famous Green Deal that was introduced by AOC and Senator Ed Markey looms over Washington like a bad storm cloud and let’s not forget the thousands of good paying jobs she cost her district when she chased Amazon out of New York.

Some may say that she does not have to pass bills to be effective, her presence on network and cable news is second to none. She pokes the Republican Bear and actually has forced her own party further to the left than anyone could have imagined. No one can deny the need for young blood in Congress where many have lived on the public dole for decades but the ability to tweet cannot be the only reason that someone is in Washington. She has shown, on many occasions, when her sound bites hit Facebook, Twitter or YouTube that she knows little about the big picture of Washington Politics. Sometimes it is quite obvious that just a few short years ago, AOC could be found crafting Margaritas and drawing 16oz drafts. How she got elected in the first place is anyone’s guess but is is painfully clear how difficult it is to beat an incumbent so AOC may occupy her seat for as long as she wants or maybe until she decides to take a bigger bite of the apple. There have been rumblings of her challenging Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat and that might me a monumental battle of the old and new money and power of today’s political scene. I think that is a battle many would love to see but that nobody might end up winning, certainly not the people of New York.

AOC and her squad are evidence of the mess we are in with the House and Senate. We either have lifetime DC dwellers like Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Bernie Sanders or Mitch McConnell on the one side and AOC and the Squad on the other. In the middle we have a Congress that is at a crossroads and broken. The only hope we have is that the American voters will at some point wake up to the quagmire that we have created and expect better. That may just be too much hope to ever ask for.