Yes, it seems like a joke, but Michael Starr Hopkins, who says he is an “experienced Press Secretary with a demonstrated history of working in the media industry,” is dead serious: in an op-ed in The Hill on Tuesday, Hopkins argues that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Would You Like An Olive?), who is already renowned for her wisdom and intellect, is the Democrats’ best hope to take on the evil Trump and prevent him from forcing another pause in their ongoing efforts to destroy the United States as a free and sovereign republic.
Yes, Hopkins is serious; so serious, in fact, that he dares to compare the winsome AOC to the light-bringer himself: “When Barack Obama came out of nowhere to win his Senate seat in 2004, it almost felt preordained,” Hopkins writes. “As if he was the person we had been waiting for to breathe fresh air into the Democratic Party. Flash forward to 2018, and the meteoric rise of a 29-year-old bartender from Queens feels eerily similar.”
Maybe Hopkins has a point. Both Obama and AOC seemed to be celebrated beyond a level that would be justified by their talents and abilities. Hopkins indulges in quite a lot of that in his op-ed, boosting his heroine in terms that would never have occurred to a rational human being. AOC has, Hopkins insists, “been unafraid, unapologetic and unwilling to bend to the will of Washington. She is a force to be reckoned with, and in 2024 Democrats are going to need her force to reckon with Republicans.” Yes, because they’ve created so many disasters with their policies, what better thing to do than get behind an avowed socialist who wants to create even more?
But AOC, Hopkins says, “is less of a personality and more of a movement.” Then he goes on to refer to her as “the smart, photogenic congresswoman.” OK, come on, now, Hopkins. Smart? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is legendary for saying things that indicate that she isn’t all that bright. Last February, she attempted to explain away skyrocketing crime rates in New York City by saying, “The surge in violence is being driven by young people, particularly young men. And we allow the discourse to make it sound as though it’s, like, these shady figures in the bush, jumping out from a corner. These are young men. These are boys. We’re also not discussing the mental-health crisis that we are experiencing as a country as a result of the pandemic.” Ah, you see? It’s a mental health crisis, not a crime crisis.
AOC added, “The child-tax credit just ran out, on December 31st, and now people are stealing baby formula. We don’t want to have that discussion. We want to say these people are criminals or we want to talk about ‘people who are violent,’ instead of ‘environments of violence,’ and what we’re doing to either contribute to that or dismantle that.” New York City council minority leader Joe Borelli called those statements “Pulitzer-level stupidity, for someone who’s got a career in making awfully stupid things said quite frequently.” American Majority’s Ned Ryun said on another occasion, “You expect stupid people to say stupid things, and Comrade Cortez never disappoints.”
Related: WATCH: AOC and Other House Dems Fake Being Handcuffed at SCOTUS Protest
The thing is, her core constituency is just as dim as she is, so they neither notice nor care that she keeps going around saying things that reach “Pulitzer-level stupidity.” Accordingly, as Hopkins notes, she is “the face of the rising progressive movement,” and, he says, “she is also the future of the Democratic Party.” He claims that she “could out-Trump Trump like no other politician has been able to.”
Warming to his topic, Hopkins takes full flight into I-want-to-date-her territory: “If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the Godfather, Ocasio-Cartez [sic] is Michael Corleone.” She has, he claims, “the ability to tell the story of her generation.” Not only that, but “she’s Barack Obama if Barack Obama was an actual progressive.” She “represents the possibilities and opportunities that make our country great.” She is “a symbol for her generation,” and indeed, “the face of a generation.”
Why is The Hill publishing this fan fiction? Wouldn’t Hopkins’ time have been better spent if he bought a bouquet of flowers and showed up at AOC’s office, pleading with her to call off her engagement and marry him instead?
He does, however, finish up with a marginally serious point: “In the age of social media and quick sound bites, no Democrat is more prepared to embarrass a bully like Donald Trump or Florida governor Ron DeSantis and return some chutzpah to the Democratic Party. There will be no going high when they go low anymore. It appears the only rule is there are no rules, and AOC is ready to enter the cage and fight for our democracy.”
That is likely true: AOC would be much more effective debating a patriotic America-First candidate than one of the Democrats’ tired establishment hacks. But much as I hate to deflate young Hopkins’ love-bubble, she wouldn’t really be offering anything new or fresh, but just more (and more and more) of the same old tired America-Last big-government socialism.
And that leads to the real question: It isn’t “Does America need an AOC presidency?” It’s “Would America survive an AOC presidency?”
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