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Transcript:
The midterms are coming up here in the US, which is the election that falls in the middle of the current president’s term and which used to be mostly ignored by normies, when I was a kid, because back then US politics were boring to middle class white people. These days, more people realize how important it is to vote in elections other than the ones for president, which is, I guess, one positive result of, um, fascism.
But behind all the drama ramping up for the midterms across the country, a few politicians are quietly building support for a 2028 run at the presidency, particularly on the side of the Democrats. The Republicans are sort of just trying to distance themselves from Trump without attracting too much attention, lest they be lynched at the next January 6th.
One Democrat who has been making moves is Congressional representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC. AOC is on the more progressive side of the Democratic party, in that she supports single payer healthcare, strong action on climate change, abortion rights, and yeah I know, in the super cool country you live in those are conservative values and YOUR progressive politicians are working on government-funded euthanasia booths and voting rights for parrots, great, congratulations, I’m happy for you but this is what we’re dealing with here so yeah if AOC runs I’m gonna have to vote for her and be happy because she will be more progressive than any president since FDR, and that guy threw Japanese Americans into concentration camps.
Anyway, AOC is clearly ramping up a potential presidential run, and so she and her crack team are trying to figure out how they might best the Republicans in 2028. Now, you can tell that I’m not a successful politician, because if it were me, I would just get out there and say all the stuff I believe that I know are wildly popular with the majority of voters, like “make abortion legal again,” and “stop giving money to Israel to help them do their genocide,” and “most of our politicians should just be launched into the sun at this point but I’ll only do it if it’s carbon neutral.”
But much like the larger Democratic party, AOC is not immune from the primal urge to attract voters on the conservative side of the aisle, and thus recently it’s been revealed that she is targeting the MAHAs.
The MAHAs are so named for “Make America Healthy Again,” and they were birthed from the unholy alliance between Donald Trump’s Christo-fascist MAGA movement and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s pseudoscientific antivaccine project.
I’m going to surprise you for a second, here: that’s actually not a completely terrible idea. In theory.
Because earlier this year, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that a shocking 41% of Americans said they identify with the MAHA movement, with 22% of them saying they identified “strongly”.
But that doesn’t mean that nearly half of Americans are antivaccine lunatics who think of RFK as a hero: it actually means that “MAHA” is a generic, nebulous idea that includes a lot of different issues, including those that are popular with people to the left: most respondents wanted better regulation of food additives and agricultural pesticides, which is not traditionally how Republicans like to do business. They like fewer regulations on anything that might be making them a lot of money at the expense of making poor people sick and dead.
And in that vein, the same survey showed that the MAHA crowd isn’t super happy with Trump’s policies: 30-40% of them disapproved of the administration’s vaccine and food policies.
That IS a potential voting block that a smart progressive could capture: are you tired of all the diarrhea lettuce currently floating around the country? Would you prefer your child NOT die of measles? Well, good news! Vote for me and I will put those regulations back into place and actually improve the health of Americans! Sure. Perfectly good messaging, in my opinion.
And so I wasn’t shocked to see this clip of AOC on the Majority Report, which happened back in June but I missed it NOT because I’m disgusted with that show’s treatment of victims of domestic violence and also I’ve just been having a really fun summer being outside. But I digress, here’s AOC dropping the news that she’s targeting MAHA.
Again, I’m not shocked, though if I were conducting that interview I would have had a few follow up questions. Luckily, so did someone at Politico, because they started investigating and found out who, exactly, AOC was chatting with: she hired someone who “worked closely with MAHA” who became her “sherpa,” and by late July she had met with “Joe Maxwell of Farm Action, government consultant Emily Stembridge,” and “Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America.”
For those who don’t know who Zen Honeycutt is, I’m trying to think of a good analogy. I think it would be like a Democratic politician saying that she’s looking to connect with Libertarian voters and then meeting with the moderators of r/AgeofConsentIsntReal.
Because those issues of overlap I mentioned that MAHA has with the majority of Americans, like wanting better food regulation? They are a very small part of what Zen Honeycutt and her batshit organization, Moms Across America, advocate for.
Honeycutt is so closely aligned with RFK that back in 2024, Mother Jones published a profile of her calling her his “buddy,” and attempting to learn from her why “Formerly Lefty Moms Are Flocking to Trump.” In that article, they detail a number of Honeycutt’s beliefs:
She started MAA to oppose GMOs, which was a more “lefty” cause. But she immediately pivoted to opposing childhood vaccines because they contain GMOs and pesticides and cause autism. They do not.
She argues that “5G cell phone radiation can cause “learning and behavioral issues, fertility impairment, and cancer;” which it does not.
She argues that junk food causes serial killers and that organic food can stop school shootings.
She’s against antidepressants because she thinks they increase “suicidal and homicidal ideation and…suicide rates.”
She’s also against “mandatory chemotherapy” for kids, which I suppose means that she thinks parents should be allowed to let their child die even when medical professionals agree that medical intervention will save them. This has come up in the past when parents think that, say, an organic diet will cure their kid and actual doctors know it won’t.
But wait, there’s more. Zen Honeycutt also fights against children being “indoctrinated with education from public schools that influence their sexual identity.”
That’s a BINGO. A right-wing lunatic bingo.
Look, I saw a lot of my social media mutuals saying that AOC is completely wrong to try to reach out to anyone who identifies with “MAHA.” Several people criticized her talking point on the Majority Report about how many of these people are suffering from healthcare anxiety, which sounds awfully like all the MAGA excuses about economic anxiety when so many of those people are just racists with plenty of money.
But I need to push back on that a bit, because systemic issues DO push people into conspiracy theory radicalization echo chambers. The less trust people have in their government and institutions, the more they rely on superstition and the easier it is for fraudsters to fleece them. Would universal healthcare erase the pseudoscientific antivaccine pro-supplement and dewormer industry? Of course not, but yes, it actually would defang them.
Looking back at that Kaiser Family Foundation poll, they report that “the cost of health care is a more prominent focus for voters than issues like food and vaccine policy. Most voters say health costs will have a “major impact” on their decision to vote (55%) and who they vote for (61%) in November, compared to about four in ten who say the same of vaccine or food policy. Even among voters who support the MAHA movement, health care costs are the dominant priority by a wide margin when compared with other areas of health. When asked to select the most important health priority for the federal government, four in ten MAHA voters (42%) choose lowering health costs, twice the share who choose restricting chemical additives in the food supply (21%) and far outranking other MAHA priorities like reevaluating vaccine safety (10%), limiting corporate influence in U.S. food policy (8%), or restricting pesticide use in agriculture (8%).”
But no one needs to talk to Zen fucking Honeycutt to figure that out. All anyone does by talking with Zen Honeycutt and listening to her deep thoughts and opinions is that you raise the profile and confidence and influence of Zen fucking Honeycutt.
I’ll give AOC this much: all of this came out in a leak thanks to Politico’s investigation, and not because she appeared on stage with this moron or any of the other rightwing lunatics at the forefront of the MAHA movement. Those people are never, ever, ever going to vote for AOC. As one doctor pointed out on BlueSky, Honeycutt herself made this clear on Xitter:
“Just a heads up, Democrat Candidates: There is not a single MAHA voter that will vote for you if you are:
1. Bashing Kennedy
2. Forcing vaccine mandates
3. Doing nothing about pesticides in our food
“It’s a stretch- 1 am not saying MAHA will vote Dem, and I am not speaking for all – just from what I am seeing…but MAHA definitely won’t vote Dem if you are doing the above three things.
“Want our votes? Collaborate with Kennedy. Let kids go to school and summer camp unvaccinated if their parents choose ( my body, my choice, right?). Do something about any one of the 86 pesticides that have been banned in other countries. And some MAHA voters might consider…”
Yeah, no. Nope! No. No deal.
I feel like someone at AOC HQ saw that survey about more than 40% of Americans identifying with MAHA, and being disappointed in Trump’s handling of certain issues, and decided they shouldn’t bother with the details of the survey and instead just go straight to the kooks at the top of the MAHA movement. But those people are ungettable, and more so, the gettable people are not listening to them. The average person who is worried about the poop lettuce and would like it if the federal government did something about that? They think Zen Honeycut is a Phish tribute band. They’re not looking to these idiots for guidance. They don’t even like Trump or RFK!
AOC, I promise you that you are wasting your time with these people. You want to be president in 2028? Loudly call Republicans fascist losers and promise to reestablish liberal democracy. Promise to do popular shit that benefits people. Hell, just crib off Mamdani’s notes, he doesn’t mind. Single payer healthcare. Abortion. Childcare. Criticize data centers. Tax the rich. Tell AI companies to go fuck themselves. Be better about bashing Israel and tell them to go fuck themselves, too. They’re the same people, basically, just tell that whole group of billionaire Zionist chatbot aficionados to go fuck themselves. Very easy stuff, here. You can do it!
