AOC's chief of staff comments just killed the Green New Deal
by Philip Klein
| July 12, 2019 11:56 AM
In fairness, the Green New Deal always read like socialist fanfic, so it's hard to argue that a totally unrealistic idea with narrow support could actually be "killed." But whatever chance there was for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's big initiative to win over skeptics went poof when her chief of staff said the quiet part out loud: the Green New Deal is not primarily about addressing the climate crisis, but about replacing America's capitalist economy with a more socialist one.
A glowing Washington Post profile of Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti opens with a meeting that he had with Sam Ricketts, the climate director for Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, who launched a long-shot 2020 presidential bid centered around a sweeping climate change plan.
The article reports:
Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,†he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.†Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?†Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.â€
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/aocs-chief-of-staff-just-killed-the-green-new-deal
