On Friday, I wrote about how the Congressional Black Caucus played the “let me show you how it’s done” game with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) after she insinuated in a Wednesday interview that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) was singling out the Queenie Quartet because they were “women of color.”
As it turns out, all this race card playing back and forth has really upset New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, whose interview with Pelosi a few weeks ago was what set off the AOC firestorm.
We’ll get to that in a minute, but first, a brief recap of what went down Friday – via The Hill:
Congressional Black Caucus members are furious at Justice Democrats, accusing the outside progressive group aligned with firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) of trying to oust lawmakers of color, specifically African American lawmakers.
[…]
“It just seems strange that the social Democrats seem to be targeting members of the Congressional Black Caucus, individuals who have stood and fought to make sure that African Americans are included and part of this process,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), a senior CBC member, told The Hill.
“I don’t know what that agenda is, but if they want to come after members of the Black Caucus, it’s two ways,” warned Meeks, the Queens Democratic Party boss who clashed with Justice Democrats in a local district attorney race last month.
Meeks’s “it’s two ways” comments were in reference to Ocasio-Cortez playing the race card against Pelosi just two days prior:
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Post.
“But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color,” she added.
In response to the escalation in the public infighting between the two camps, Dowd wrote a column Saturday in which she noted she had suddenly discovered how harmful leveling false accusations of racism against someone is:
Pelosi told me, after the A.O.C. Squad voted against the House’s version of the border bill and trashed the moderates — the very people who provided the Democrats the majority — that the Squad was four people with four votes. She was talking about a legislative reality. If it was a knock, it was for abandoning the party.
That did not merit A.O.C.’s outrageous accusation that Pelosi was targeting “newly elected women of color.” She slimed the speaker, who has spent her life fighting for the downtrodden and who was instrumental in getting the first African-American president elected and passing his agenda against all odds, as a sexist and a racist.
A.O.C. should consider the possibility that people who disagree with her do not disagree with her color.
Gee, ya think?
Dowd continued, condemning another tactic frequently used by the Queenie Quartet: The “You’re putting my life in danger with your dissent” tactic:
The young lawmaker went further, implying that the speaker was putting the Squad in danger, asking why Pelosi would criticize them, “knowing the amount of death threats” and attention they get. Huh?
[…]
The progressives act as though anyone who dares disagree with them is bad. Not wrong, but bad, guilty of some human failing, some impurity that is a moral evil that justifies their venom.
It would be truly touching if Dowd had come to these conclusions out of a sincere desire to bury the offensive tactic of falsely playing the race/woman/danger card to silence your opposition. She’s not. The only reason why the accusations from AOC towards Pelosi offended Dowd was because they were a distraction from what she feels should unite them both: Defeating Trump:
In the age of Trump, there is no more stupid proposition than that Nancy Pelosi is the problem. If A.O.C. and her Pygmalions and acolytes decide that burning down the House is more important than deposing Trump, they will be left with a racist backward president and the emotional satisfaction of their own purity.
In other words, it’s ok to play the race card as long as your target is a Republican or conservative.
Liberals are nothing if not predictable.
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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –
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