Comment by Answerawake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Answerawake | Hacker News Reader

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>I'm worried that insurgent candidate like those in 'the squad' were only allowed to succeed as an olive branch to the left-populists for the purposes of maintaining a coherent anti-trump coalition.

I don't buy that but happy to be proven wrong. I was following AOC's race closely before she won her election (any before anyone had heard of her). They went out of their way to work with and endorse her competitor. It was AOC's hustle and innovative techniques that made up for her huge money disadvantage (~300k at the end of the election vs ~3mil) as well as the fact that her rival was appointed the seat through a loophole (and so never really learned how to run a campaign) that resulted in her win.

The opposition spent 10+ million trying to unseat her since then.

I really do hope you're right about that. My understanding is that the squad came up with without the consent of the party establishment by running an exceptional ground game during their primaries, in districts that were safe blue, and had politicians who'd become too comfortable where they were at.

They were an unknown threat before.

Caruso-Cabrera did raise quite a bit of money to unseat AOC, but most of the endorsements I can find seem to be from conservative organizations looking to score some kind of moral victory against the Justice Dems. My estimate is that a political novice with (some) name recognition tried to take her down of her own accord, and AOC's pissed off enough corporations and conservatives that she incidentally (or deliberately) walked into a money pit in doing so.

I may have missed it, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that the DNC has spun up its machinery to truly run a full-throated opposition opp against her.

I'd have to do more research on the rest of them, but I don't believe the squad's faced the kind of push-back that the party's capable of yet.

The DNC doesn't have full throated machinery to win. They are specialized in losing and conceding ground. Their "machinery" is a huge number of corporations grifting a profit. They have lots of funds, but they also have lots of pockets to grease just to get some ads out or promote a few tweets or pay an army of strategic consultants that are paid massive salaries despite only having lost races.

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