This week, the GOP has to face a new reality — they can’t guarantee a hold on a winning electoral majority even in places like Kentucky, where President Donald Trump campaigned for a now defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate just this week. Prominent progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) took to Twitter on Wednesday to respond to the Trump-backed incumbent Matt Bevin’s crushing loss, pointing out that even in coal country, some of the Republican Party’s favorite lines of attack against Dems simply aren’t working. They claim that Democrats want to leave coal workers and communities behind — but that’s just not true, and Kentucky voters apparently didn’t believe it.
Ocasio-Cortez posted:
‘The #GreenNewDeal works in coal country because we’ve been fighting to fully fund coal workers’ pensions & work w/ impacted communities to plan a just transition. A GND can put everyone to work without leaving anyone behind. It’s a winning message everywhere, incl Kentucky’
The #GreenNewDeal works in coal country because we‘ve been fighting to fully fund coal workers’ pensions & work w/ impacted communities to plan a just transition.
A GND can put everyone to work without leaving anyone behind. It’s a winning message everywhere, incl Kentucky. 🌱🇺🇸 https://t.co/IP2snXDvPZ
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 6, 2019
She’s raised this point before. The point of the “Green New Deal” framework seeking to make the U.S. economy more environmentally sustaining is not to ignore those with personal stakes in the process, including coal production. It’s to work collectively to ensure a safer environment and future.
Strikingly enough, Kentucky’s own wildly unpopular Republican Senator Mitch McConnell has been one of the major opponents of Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal,” although he’s certainly opposed plenty of other Democratic legislation too. Still, since Kentucky voters seem uninterested in his ignorant stance of simply pretending real-world conditions don’t exist and/or warrant attention, he’s in even more political trouble and can’t count on victory in his re-election battle next year.
Check out Twitter’s response to Ocasio-Cortez…
