Im-Politic: Have We Hit Peak AOC?

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2020 elections, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, Bing, Democrats, Google, Im-Politic

Like so many of us, I’ve followed the career of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with unusual interest. But lately it seems that I haven’t been reading or hearing as much about her as I had for most of her first months in Congress, when the first-term New York City House Member clearly established herself as one of the nation’s most influential lawmakers, a leader of the Democratic Party, and a social and legacy media superstar.

So I decided to check some data sources to see if my hunch was right, and was flabbergasted to come up with completely contradictory findings. On balance, however, the evidence tilts toward declining public interest. 

My methodology? Examining statistics from the Bing and Google search engines to see whether terms like her “AOC” nickname and “Ocasio-Cortez” have been sought out for more or less frequently since her election in November, 2018.

According to Bing, which permits folks to see the actual worldwide search numbers over various time periods, appetites for information about AOC have been steadily strengthening. Here are the monthly statistics from last November through today for “AOC” searches and for “Ocasio-Cortez” searches:

                                                      “AOC”       “Ocasio-Cortez”      total

Nov. 2018:                                         224K                346K              570K

Dec. 2018:                                         174K                202K              376K

Jan. 2019:                                          307K                342K              649K

Feb. 2019:                                         422K                350K              772K

March 2019:                                      383K                332K             715K

April 2019:                                        381K                298K             679K

May 2019:                                         474K                373K             847K

June 2019:                                         557K                442K             999K

July 2019:                                         791K                 869K          1660K

Aug. 2019:                                        817K                 761K          1578K

Sept 2019:                                        662K                  284K           946K

But the Google findings are very different. Google doesn’t enable calculating actual numbers of searches by month (unless I’m missing something – which is all too possible). Instead, it presents “search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term.”

For “AOC,” that peak popularity was hit between this past July 14 and July 20 – which matches the Bing findings pretty well. The likely explanation? That was when President Trump sent out his series of tweets urging Ocasio-Cortez and the three other progressive female (and non-white) House members comprising the so-called “Squad” to “go back” to their own countries.

The second highest peak, a reading of 82, came between this past February 24 and March 2 – which finds very confirmation with the Bing results, but only some.

But since late July, according to this measure, the numbers of AOC searches have sunk like a stone. The reading for the six days following July 20 was only 59. During the period after, it fell to 39, and between September 15 and 21, was only 33. The Bing results indicate no such drop-off.

Interestingly, the Google data for “Ocasio-Cortez” point to more overall searches than for “AOC.” But the highest peaks by far (and there were three between 89 and 100 as opposed to only one for “AOC”) came much earlier – between November, 2018 and this past February. The highest score for that peak ”AOC” mid-July Trump tweet period was only 39. The latest “Ocasio-Cortez” figure? Only a six.

I’d be the last one to count out Ocasio-Cortez – if only because she’s so young and for that reason alone, still boasts so much potential for reinvention(s), But with Google a much more popular search engine than Bing, and with an intensifying presidential campaign likely to take even more of the spotlight from her, there’s at least a case to be made that, for the time being, Peak AOC has arrived.

Im-Politic: Why You Should be Really Skeptical About the Green New Deal

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, climate change, Congress, Green New Deal, Im-Politic

Since I have no special expertise on climate change, I can’t comment usefully on the scientific aspects of the Green New Deal (GND) resolution introduced recently in the House of Representatives. As a result, I don’t even believe that I can comment usefully on how the U.S. economy may be affected by a major green refit and the tradeoffs it will inevitably entail even if I had a clear idea of what such a blueprint would entail.

What I do claim some expertise on is political posturing and elementary logic. And on those bases alone, it’s glaringly obvious that the resolution’s Congressional and other supporters aren’t the slightest bit serious about preventing catastrophic global warming.

Here’s the dead giveaway: Nothing in the plan, or about it, is remotely capable of addressing the threat as it’s described by GND-ers.

Let’s assume for argument’s sake that most, or perhaps not even many, of the resolution’s backers don’t literally agree with their leading spokesperson, freshman Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, that “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change….” (And even this phrasing is pretty fishy. What’s with using fudgy language like “address” in such a cassandra-like clarion call? Did President Franklin D. Roosevelt warn Americans that the country could be endangered if it didn’t “address” the Nazis and the Japanese militarists? Moreover, how many years of planetary survival will be gained by “addressing” the threat? How long does the Earth have until climate change is ended or whatever ultimate goal the GND-ers have in mind?)

Even GND-ers believing the planet has more than twelve years surely view the situation as desperate. But if so, what’s the point of spending precious time working up a document that’s non-binding, and that even many backers view as “aspirational”? (See, e.g., here and here.) What possible excuse could there be for not focusing on whatever it takes to passing a mandatory climate change plan ASAP – and with veto-proof majorities?

In addition, why, given the immediacy of the threat and the literal life and death stakes for humanity as a whole do the GND-ers clutter up their manifesto with objectives and standards such as “ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition….”? Or “guaranteeing a job with a family-sus4 taining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States….”?

In other words, no planet-saving campaign can be approved unless it benefits organized labor? And how long do those paid vacations need to be?

Similarly, why, given the ostensible urgency, does the resolution insist that the program “be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses….”? What a time sink that’s going to be!

And that leads to the most suspicious substantive feature of the GND movement so far. Even though climate change warnings have been sounded literally for decades, and even though they’ve been issued with increasing frequency by more and more individuals, organizations, national governments, and international organizations, the above phrasing is an explicit admission that there’s no commonly agreed upon plan that would even cover the United States alone.

Principally, on the one hand, the resolution states that its goals (including “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources….”) “should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization.” On the other, it proposes achieving these goals through “making public investments in the research and development of new clean and renewable energy technologies and industries….” In other words, after all this time, the GND-ers don’t yet know what these technologies could be, let alone how long it will take to turn whatever laboratory breakthroughs they envision into knowhow usable in the real world.

One of my favorite adages is that necessity is the mother of invention, mainly because its opposite is usually true as well: If there’s no real invention, you can be there’s no necessity. As demonstrated by the form and substance of the resolution, that’s a legitimate conclusion to be drawn about the Green New Deal.