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Im-Politic: Goya Adds to the Progressives’ Losing Streak

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, authoritarianism, boycotts, cancel culture, CCP Virus, consumers, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, Goya, Hispanics, identity politics, Im-Politic, Julian Castro, Latinos, Lin-Manuel Miranda, progressives, Robert Inanue, The Squad, Trump, Wuhan virus

It’s almost enough to make even their opponents feel sorry for New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her fellow members of Congress’ “Squad,” and the rest of Progressive World, especially those who have tried to use Cancel Culture to enforce their party line.

Since the Election 2020 period results have come in, these lefties, and their intolerant, extremist positions have been pilloried for their party’s setbacks in the House and lost opportunities in the Senate by many of their more moderate fellow Democrats.

Recently, however, reliable evidence also has appeared that one of their leading recent Cancel Culture campaigns has backfired spectacularly – their call for a boycott of Goya Foods products.

Goya says it’s America’s biggest Hispanic-owned food company, so at first glance, it would seem an odd target for the ire of Identity Politics-obsessed progressives. But at a July White House event for Hispanic business leaders, CEO Robert Unanue (whose family hails from Spain) committed the supposedly cardinal sin of praising President Trump.

Out came the progressive thought police, including not only Ocasio-Cortez (known of course by the pop culture-type monicker “AOC”) snarkily urging supporters to make their own adobo sauce without Goya’s popular seasoning mix, but Obama administration Housing and Urban Development Secretary and failed presidential candidate Julian Castro, and Hamilton composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.  (See here for the details.)  

For several months afterwards, I tried to find some hard data on the boycott’s impact, but failed – mainly because Goya is a privately held company. The boycotters and much of the press coverage contended that Goya was taking it on the chin, while Unanue claimed his business was profiting from a powerful backlash. But nothing more solid was available.   

Now it is. In October (sorry I didn’t spot this earlier), Goya announced plans for an $80 million investment in a factory in the Houston, Texas area. The facility, which serves as the company’s main hub for producing and distributing its products to the western United States, will be adding equipment needed for a product line that includes new organic offerings. Moreover, this project comes just two years after Goya completed a doubling of the factory’s square footage. So it should be clear that Unanue’s claims were reality-based.

And yesterday the coup de grace was delivered – in a devilishly clever way. Unanue revealed that the company had named AOC “Employee of the Month” for “bringing attention to Goya and our adobo.”

Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling descriptions of her boycott role “made up fantasies” and arguing that Goya’s increased sales stemmed from the shift from restaurant dining to home cooking prompted by CCP Virus lockdowns. And maybe there’s some truth to the latter – although American consumers have plenty of choices other than Goya for Hispanic food products. As for the former, though, it’s just an example of AOC lacking the courage of her convictions, and trying to wipe the huevos off her face.

I can’t help but close, though, by noting that even though President Trump – who joined the Twitter war on behalf of Goya – not only suffered no damage from this episode, but notably increased his support from Latino voters in last month’s election, can learn a lesson from Unanue. The Goya CEO (who also professed to excuse AOC for being “young” and “naive”) just killed a leading critic with kindness. Imagine if even just some of that kind of wit and subtlety had characterized the Mr. Trump’s own statements as candidate and President.

Im-Politic: Have We Hit Peak AOC?

23 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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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.

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