The criticism that New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has weathered is worse than anything directed at male members of Congress, including House Speak Paul Ryan, R-Wis. — or so says Vox’s Laura McGann.
The only problem with this thesis is that it’s not true. In fact, it’s laughable for anyone whose political memory goes back more than a year.
The idea that the Democratic Party’s socialist wunderkind is the victim of a sexist double standard works only if you ignore that left-wing critics have leveled nearly the exact same attacks — and in some cases, literally the exact same attacks — against Ryan for years, despite his being a demonstrably more knowledgeable and experienced figure in politics.
McGann writes that Ocasio-Cortez’s answers to questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the cost of “Medicare for All” aren’t “all great; she misspeaks, or she just gets things wrong.”
Characterizing Ocasio-Cortez’s botched remarks on Medicare, tax reform, military spending, etc., as “misspeaking” or merely getting “things wrong” is an awfully generous way of saying the candidate has no idea what she’s talking about. Because that’s manifestly the case. And Ocasio-Cortez’s lack of knowledge doesn’t seem to be an obstacle to her speaking, either. You can’t say that about Ryan. Even if you want to argue that he’s twisting or distorting the facts, as Democrats so often do, you can’t deny that he has a clear command of what he’s manipulating.
McGann goes on to defend Ocasio-Cortez by stating that “many politicians” are guilty of misspeaking or simply saying things that are wrong.
The difference, she claims, is that “no one demands those politicians go back to school, or shut their mouth for a few years until they’re more seasoned. The standard in Washington allows politicians to say things that are untrue without harming their reputation as a serious policy thinker and political operator.”
“For example,” McGann writes, “Paul Ryan’s been fact-checked for years and he’s still considered an ideas man.”
This is where the Vox article takes a face-first dive into an alternate reality, as freelance journalist Jeryl Bier helpfully noted Friday morning.
“No one told him to go put training wheels back on,” McGann complains.
But on March 29, 2016, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s, D-Calif., office released a statement saying, “It’s been six months, Speaker Ryan. Time for the training wheels to come off!”
And the newly-minted House Speaker, far from just having fallen off the turnip truck, had been in Congress for 17 years when she said that! The Pelosi statement went on to fact-check Ryan on various claims, including when he said in 2015 that Republican lawmakers were going to “unveil a plan to replace every word of Obamacare.”
McGann also claims, “No one told him he wasn’t ready for prime time.”
On Aug. 15, 2012, President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign spokesman Danny Kanner said in response to an interview Ryan gave Fox News’ Brit Hume that the Wisconsin lawmaker was “not ready for prime time.”
McGann claims, “No one saw [‘pants on fire’ ratings] and said Ryan is unfit to serve in Congress.”
It may come as a surprise to McGann to learn that Ryan has been targeted by a Political Action Committee literally named Unfit to Serve.
Or maybe she ought to consider when Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote on Facebook in 2012 that the Romney-Ryan plan on Medicare was “further proof” that the GOP nominee and his running mate were “singularly unfit to end gridlock and bring bipartisan solutions to Washington.”
Though McGann’s argument evidently suffers from her being oblivious to the subject matter, she maintains throughout that Ocasio-Cortez is some kind of victim.
“This isn’t an argument to hold members of Congress to a lower standard,” she writes. “We should scrutinize their ideas and their plans and question whether they should represent us. But we shouldn’t use that standard for some candidates like Ocasio-Cortez and give a pass to men who we think look the part of a politician, like tall, blue-eyed Paul Ryan.”
Well, now, it’s a good thing nobody is doing that, isn’t it?
