Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff deleted a tweet that compared Democrats belonging to the Blue Dog Caucus to the white, southern Democrats of a bygone era.
“Instead of ‘fiscally conservative but socially liberal,’ let’s call the New Democrats and Blue Dog Caucus the ‘New Southern Democrats.’ They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did the 40s,” Saikat Chakrabarti tweeted.
The New Democrats are a caucus of moderate Democrats while the Blue Dog Caucus are a group of centrist Democrats who support fiscal conservatism
Even though he deleted the tweet, Chakrabarti defended his position and sent out a revised version of the original tweet.
Can we stop calling the Blue Dog Caucus “fiscally conservative but socially liberal?” I missed the part of fiscal conservativeness or social liberalness that includes wasting $4.5 billion of taxpayer money to put kids in concentration camps.
— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) June 27, 2019
Anyway I deleted the tweet since, yeah, I’m mad. But I do think if we don’t have progress on racial justice it will be because of the new Dems and blue dogs. Just like in 1940.
— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) June 27, 2019
“Didn’t realize this needed to be said, but: you can be someone who does not personally harbor ill will towards a race, but through your actions still enable a racist system. And a lot of New Democrats and Blue Dogs did that today,” Chakrabarti added, referring to the $4.6 billion emergency funding bill that passed the House to deal with the recent wave of migrants.
Version of the legislation passed the Senate 84-8 and passed the House 305-102, with Ocasio-Cortez expressing opposition to it. A total of 129 Democrats voted in support of the bill.
This Senate Bill will have us write a $4.6 Billion blank check (incl military $) for the border w NO accountability – just a verbal pinky promise.
Trump is not to be trusted with protecting our immigrants. Why must that even be stated? We need hard lines of protection, in ink. https://t.co/xFci23pFo6
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 27, 2019
The House passed their own funding bill, but it also included the elimination of additional funding for U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement and for the military that has been deployed to support federal agencies with the influx of illegal immigrants.
