Ocasio-Cortez: Campaign of Gun Control, Multi-culturism and Open Borders

A Border Patrol vehicle sits along the border barrier separating San Diego and Tijuana Mexico watching for illegal crossings in March 2016. The border barrier between San Diego and Mexico is a deterrent to illegal immigration, drug smuggling and human trafficking. The area is regularly patrolled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the lookout for illegal crossings.
Photographer: Donna Burton

James Pinkerton, a former aide in the Reagan administration and contributing editor at The American Conservative, wonders if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s platform of gun control, open borders and multiculturalism could ever be a winning strategy in America. He writes (abridged):

If Ocasio-Cortez and her allies could stick to that lunch-bucket message on wages, rents, tuitions, and healthcare costs, that could herald a true revival for Democrats, helping them make deep inroads into red states. After all, the New Deal was more than a little bit social-democratic, and that message played well across the nation. And more recently, avowed social democrats have done well in Europe; indeed, even today in the U.S., the millennial generation’s support for socialism is riding high.

On the other hand, the specter of Venezuela, and its 43,000 percent inflation rate, looms over any left-wing economic message; proponents of collectivism will have to explain how they can implement their agenda and avoid Venezuela-ification.

Yet the even larger problem for Ocasio-Cortez-type leftists is the cultural—or perhaps one should say, multicultural—baggage they are carrying.

A look at Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign issues page reveals, for example, her strong support for gun control and, at the same time, to be honest about it, crime de-control.

Perhaps most profoundly, Ocasio-Cortez has called for open borders, or, as she puts it, “abolish ICE”—that is, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with protecting the border.