Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:00 PM | May 10, 2026
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AOC is back in the news. Suddenly, she's everywhere again, spouting the same nonsense as she has before. 

The difference? She is being treated more respectfully by the establishment Democrats and is getting a ton of criticism from people even further to the left of her. 

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Has the Overton window moved so far left, particularly on the issue of Jews and Israel, that the establishment is hoping to prop up AOC as the more moderate choice?

Yes, I know that sounds absurd on its face, and you may think that I am making a Sunday Smiles joke, but take note: while everybody on the right is making fun of how she has been rewriting the history of the American Revolution, nobody seems to be commenting that she is getting a tongue bath from David Axelrod, Obama's political guru. 

AOC has "it." The kind of charisma that draws your eyes to her and makes everybody talk about her. Conservatives love to hate on her and make fun of her, and progressives swooned over her for years, seeing her as the younger Bernie Sanders. 

Axelrod: There are a lot of people who would like you to run for president in 2028. And there are others who would like you to run for the senate. 

AOC: In this op-ed that Bezos paid for in The Washington Post, there was a veiled threat—it was the elite saying if you want this job, you just stepped out of line.  What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.

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For years, the establishment saw AOC as a threat to their power. She and Nancy Pelosi were not exactly buddies, although over the past couple of years, AOC has been somewhat more cooperative with her caucus as she has, ahem, matured. 

Irony of ironies, as antisemitism has become the defining feature of the progressive movement, AOC is no longer seen as radical enough in her hatred of Jews. 

Yes, I know that sounds absurd, given how viciously anti-Israel AOC has always been, and how she had until recently defined the left wing of the party on economic and social issues. But I noticed that when she took a shot at the sudden embrace of Marjorie Taylor Greene by progressives, she got a wave of criticism from progressives even farther to the left than she. 

Do a quick search on X for "AOC Pelosi," and you will find a contingent of radicals comparing the two as similar sellouts to the establishment. To the far left, who are becoming ever more popular in the Democratic Party and the "progressive" movement, AOC and Pelosi are indistinguishable. From such a distance, the differences seem minor, as they are both establishment shills to those who want to burn down everything. 

I was pilloried by "progressive Democrats"  in 2021 for exposing AOC as a fraud  by asking her to do what she campaigned on.

Her grift was obvious to anyone who bothered to look then, but now it's obvious to even the most sycophantic of her followers.  She's straight up repeating Zionist talking points & calling  anyone who criticizes  Israel an Anti-semite.  She's implementing the Establishment playbook of "Divide & Conquer".

What a garbage person & shame on anyone who still supports this charlatan.    #ForceTheVote

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We have reached a point where the new left side of the Overton Window is "Kill All Jooos and the Right side of it for progressives is "Maybe Some Jooos Shouldn't Be Killed."

Progressives are now seriously claiming that the Mossad trains dogs to rape Palestinians, and the blood libel that Jews drink the blood of Christians as part of a religious ritual is openly floating around again. When Francesca Albanese started repeating this claim, I started seeing it repeated among American progressives and the so-called "woke right," who are not talking about allying with the left. 

It seems perfectly plausible to me that establishment Democrats are grooming AOC as a backup plan, if insufficiently antisemitic presidential candidates can't gain ground. 

No doubt people like Axelrod worry about the fact that the "Boy with the Nazi tattoo" has become the flavor of the month, and that he is already being touted as a centrist and perhaps plausible presidential candidate. 

Platner trashed Obama, blaming him for the rise of Trump, so it's no surprise that the Obama folks are searching for somebody who appeals to the progressives without kicking the Obama folks out of the party?

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How did America go from Obama to Trump?

Maine Senate candidate @grahamformaine tells @davidsirota it wasn’t some great mystery: Democrats bailed out banks, abandoned working people, and let corporate power keep running the party. 

Go and listen to the full episode over on The Lever's Youtube channel.

We're all talking about Newsom, Whitmer, and Pritzker as presidential candidates, but it could just be that they are far too "conservative" for the current Democratic Party electorate. Are the Obama folks thinking that, perhaps, it would be easier to work with AOC, if the flame of antisemitism in the party ignites into a total firestorm?

UPDATE: To see how far the Democrats are willing to go outside the prior Overton Window, top Democrats in Washington are considering a plan to remove and replace the Virginia Supreme Court Justices in order to get their way on the redistricting. Read my column here. 
































































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ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ ANTISEMITISM DEMOCRAT PARTY ISRAEL NANCY PELOSI SUNDAY SMILES

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