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The big tent of Democrats is only too big to small minds

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

"DINOs?" I don't think so.

But don't get me wrong. Unlike some commentators, I don't want to dislike AOC. I think she brings a youthful energy and excitement to national politics on the left that provides a much-needed counterbalance to the barnstorming extremism of President Donald Trump on the right.

Unfortunately, she also brings with her ideology an all-or-nothing attitude that can get in the way of her achieving her own goals. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom she has endorsed for president, knows the value of compromise enough to vote with the Democrats in the Senate and run for president in their primaries.

For examples of how extremism can backfire, she need look no further than her Republican colleagues. The tea party movement rose up on the heels of Obama's 2008 election with a zeal for spending cuts -- which all but evaporated after Trump's election.

The federal government's budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced in October. That's the fourth year in a row of deficit growth, despite a sustained run of economic growth. Apparently, deficit spending is only a sin to Republicans in Congress when Democratic presidents do it.

Ocasio-Cortez bristled in the New York profile at the suggestion that her movement is following a tea party model. "For so long, when I first got in, people were like, 'Oh, are you going to basically be a tea party of the left?' " she said. "And what people don't realize is that there is a tea party of the left, but it's on the right edges, the most conservative parts of the Democratic Party."

 

Yet, she expressed frustration that her fellow Democrats haven't been more candid about that. "It's like we're not allowed to talk about it," she said. "We're not allowed to talk about anything wrong the Democratic Party does. I think I have created more room for dissent, and we're learning to stretch our wings a little bit on the left."

Indeed, but try to avoid getting them clipped. At the risk of sounding like the pragmatic old man that I am, I think Ocasio-Cortez should learn from her faction's successes but avoid the hazards of overreach.

As the left-progressive Rev. Jesse Jackson preached to fellow Dems during his two presidential runs in the 1980s, "It takes two wings to fly" -- a left wing and a right wing. Right on, Reverend. Right on!

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)


(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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