Scaring Off Amazon Will Backfire for the Left
Progressives in the Democratic Party are reading too much into the results of November’s election. They don’t have a mandate.
So much for Queens’s most famous new corporate resident.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Amazon announcing it will not put one of its new North America headquarters in New York City is the latest in a bad run of events that raise the possibility that progressives have overplayed their hand. While progressives may be newly energized after electoral success in November’s elections, they don’t have the electoral mandate they believe they do, and they still have to answer how they intend to implement their ambitious agenda with little to show for themselves to date.
This negative news cycle began last week when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unveiled her Green New Deal proposal, with confusion about what was actually introduced. Wildly ambitious in scope, seeking to shift entirely to zero-emission energy within a decade and provide good-paying jobs to all, it was confusing in part because of the publication of an early draft of a FAQ that didn’t represent what was actually in the proposal. This fueled opponents’ attacks on the program and left lawmakers and the media trying to figure out what had actually been proposed.