All Technology is Politics

Watching Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) volunteer at a food bank in Texas last weekend (while also raising millions of dollars for disaster relief), I thought of the legendary Tip O’Neill. In 1982 (when I was five years old), O’Neill was trying to get a giant infrastructure bill passed. The Republican Leader of the era, (Robert H. Michel, R-IL), opposed the bill… so the ultimate Bostonian O’Neill traveled to Peoria, Illinois to give a speech in Michel’s district where he explained how the bill would repair the local infrastructure (bridges, etc), wreaking havoc on Michel’s re-election prospects. All politics is local, and government can be good for people’s lives. That is a narrative for the ages.

I’ve written in the past about the danger of letting the margins drive our politics:

We must get away from politics decided on the margins and towards a politics decided by a more fundamental shift in worldview… How do we tell a different American story, one that reshapes the political landscape so we’re not chasing vanishing slivers in an ever-shrinking world?

AOC, that despised New York City liberal, headed to Texas to work at a food bank while ostensible Texan Ted Cruz headed to the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. This should be a high chance for a clear cut narrative victory, but instead Cruz used the right-wing grievance-media complex to turn this mistake into a victory, callously boasting about it at CPAC as a badge of honor. While the reliable right-wing media lionized Cruz’s Cancun victimhood, the so-called…