Within six hours, according to C-SPAN’s Jeremy Art, it became the most retweeted post the network has ever posted. In the first 24 hours of the tweet, it has been retweeted more than 95,000 times and has more than 220,000 likes.
The video itself, which lasts just under 10 minutes, has been viewed almost 12 million times, which, again according to Art, makes it the sixth most viewed C-SPAN video never. And it’s the most viewed C-SPAN House clip never, although it was published just 24 hours ago.
Yoho’s Ocasio-Cortez takedown for sexism after he called her a “real bitch” after the match, according to a reporter for The Hill, clearly struck a chord.
Those numbers are mind boggling. Especially when you consider that 25 months ago, very few people outside of the Queens and Bronx district she was running for had heard her name.
It is not an exaggeration to say that, apart from former President Barack Obama (120.8 million followers on Twitter), there is no current member of the Democratic Party with more capacity to influence the national conversation than AOC. Not even Joe Biden, the alleged Democratic presidential candidate (7.2 million followers on Twitter). No Pelosi No is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (2.4 million).
Now influencing the national conversation is not the same as being able to dictate the legislative agenda of the House or Senate. Pelosi, who has sometimes been irritated by talking about AOC’s outsized influence, has repeatedly stated that point in interviews.
“All of these people have their general public and their world on Twitter,” Pelosi told The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd in July 2019 about Ocasio-Cortez and the other three members of the so-called “Squad.” “But they had no followers. They are four people and that is the amount of votes they got.”
A few months earlier, Pelosi had been even more direct about AOC and the Squad. “While there are people who have a large following on Twitter, the important thing is that we have a large number of votes on the floor of the House,” he told USA Today.
While Pelosi is technical (the speaker is far more capable of impacting what becomes law than AOC), he is also underestimating (ahem) the power that AOC’s social media could have.
These days it has become de rigueur to insist that “Twitter is not real life.” (I’ve said it!) But, as NYT columnist Charlie Warzel argues, that overly simplified view misses the point. Here is Charlie’s key:
Still, the notion that Twitter is not real life is false. There is the obvious literal meaning. Twitter is a real-world platform and is used by very real humans. Then there is the notion of tangible impact. Donald Trump’s platform for campaigning and governing and acting as assignment editor for the media is the prime example, but it goes far beyond that. Ask a journalist who has been fired for an old dredged tweet or a woman or person of color who has been criticized, crushed or harassed and kicked out of their home if Twitter is real life They will say yes.
“There is also something unspeakable about Twitter’s influence, especially when it comes to politics, around movement building and fandoms. The honest and sustained push from social media behind the candidates seems to translate into something, even if it is unclear how much to trust him. “
I think that second paragraph really captures why the AOC is so important in Democratic politics and culture in general. She is not alone a political. She is a movement, propelled to unimaginable heights for a freshman member of Congress by ardent fans who consume anything and everything he says and does.
AOC is the new model of our policy. She represents the future of how politicians will build support and then use that support to achieve their political and political goals. (AOC’s next goal may be a major Senate challenge for Schumer in 2022.)
You don’t have to agree to their policy (or even like it) to see that fact.
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