Claire McCaskill, On Her Way Out the Door, Insults Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Loses Remaining Dignity
Photo courtesy of Getty Politics Features Claire McCaskill
Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill won her first bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate largely because her 2012 opponent, Todd Akin, said that women who fell victim to “legitimate rape” didn’t often get pregnant. A tight race became a cakewalk, but six years later, after serving as one of the most conservative Democratic senators in the chamber, her opponent avoided absurd gaffes, and she lost by six points. That means, come January, she’s gone…but she is not leaving quietly. No way. Before she goes, she wants to attack the real scourge of D.C. politics:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Hmmm?
It’s true! In a final interview with CNN McCaskill let loose on AOC, the incoming congressional rep from New York, with some extremely bitter sound bites:
“I don’t know her,” McCaskill said when asked if she’d consider Ocasio-Cortez a “crazy Democrat” like the ones she decried on the campaign trail. “I’m a little confused why she’s the thing. But it’s a good example of what I’m talking about, a bright shiny new object, came out of nowhere and surprised people when she beat a very experienced congressman.”
McCaskill added, “And so she’s now talked about a lot. I’m not sure what she’s done yet to generate that kind of enthusiasm, but I wish her well. I hope she hangs the moon.
“But I hope she also realizes that the parts of the country that are rejecting the Democratic Party, like a whole lot of white working class voters, need to hear about how their work is going to be respected, and the dignity of their jobs, and how we can really stick to issues that we can actually accomplish something on.”
And she concluded: “The rhetoric is cheap. Getting results is a lot harder.”
This is extremely rich coming from McCaskill, who epitomizes as well as anybody the tepid centrist (practically Republican, in her case) Democrats who distinguished themselves primarily for not getting things done and for ignoring working class voters to the point that we now have Donald Trump as our president. The rejection of the Democratic party is down to people like her, and the only reason AOC even won her primary against an alleged Super-Dem in Joe Crowley is that people are searching for a cure. They like AOC because she speaks to them and for them, and they don’t like McCaskill because she won’t. Simple.
But to McCaskill, “the way you get things done here is by reasonable negotiation and compromise.” If that sounds like an outrageous thing for a Senator to say after watching the cynical, cutthroat modus operandi of the Republicans for 12 years, well, that’s capital-D Democrats for you!
As Waleed Shahid pointed out, this comes less than two months after she basically echoed Trump’s rhetoric on the immigrant caravan:
Sen. McCaskill says @Ocasio2018 and other freshman Dems are too “far left” and too focused on being “pure.”
McCaskill (10/29/18) on migrant ‘caravan:’ “Stop them at the border. I do not want our borders overrun. And I support the president’s efforts to make sure they’re not.” pic.twitter.com/EYHtG6GjEM
— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) December 20, 2018
The audio in that tweet comes from a podcast McCaskill did with the NYTimes, in which she echoes the same concerns about “purity politics” and says that politicians need to emulate “the candidates who beat Republicans.” Which, if you’re keeping score at home, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did and Claire McCaskill did not.
I want to pause here, briefly, to really reflect on the fact that despite bending over backward for conservatives, McCaskill still lost…as all Democrats seem to lose, when they pretend to be half-Republican. You’d think that maybe, just maybe, she’d have an epiphany and realize that you win the hearts of working class voters by standing up for actual leftist ideals and presenting a real contrast. Instead? Not a chance. The accumulated wisdom of a dozen years in office has lad her to the provably wrong belief that Democrats should keep emulating her and all the other losers who have ceded the country to the GOP. It’s really unbelievable.
As an added bonus, Natalie Shure transcribed an excerpt from a New Yorker podcast in which McCaskill goes beyond self-parody and basically implicates herself as a Republican while revealing the rank incompetence of Chuck Schumer in the process:
Just listened to this Claire McCaskill interview and paused to transcribe this quote. She’s praising Schumer specifically because he doesn’t pressure Democrats to vote a certain way. Needless to say, Schumer sucks and a Republican would never do thishttps://t.co/QBGYpSbiHZpic.twitter.com/D15g92xJy9
— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) December 11, 2018
This “farewell tour,” as Shure called it, is really just a vile mixture of sour grapes and the same rotten political instincts that have buried the Democrats beneath a pile of their own failures. They should go quietly—they had their chance, they bungled it badly—and these last shouts into the void are potentially harmful and definitely pathetic.