American politics is a mess, but that has resulted in a few rather surprising and positive changes.

Take for example the overwhelming success of women who ran for office during these past midterms, and in previous elections over the past two years, with record numbers elected.

Leading the charge, and proving to be a trailblazer on social media, is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her Twitter clapbacks are widely shared (share misinformation about her at your peril), and she’s now transforming the way that American politicians handle communication on the platform.

A key component of that strategy is not hate-tweeting from the White House during executive time, but you knew that already.

Here’s the Guardian on her success, and her incredibly viral video:

…even the most exciting social media personality might struggle to make the often plodding work of congressional committees especially exciting. Some had assumed that while Ocasio-Cortez drove likes and favourites online, as a first-term congresswoman she would be relatively inconspicuous.

Instead, she has done the improbable, translating the topic of campaign finance into a viral video. Recently, she played a “lightning round game” with a panel of ethics experts, in which she asked a series of quick-fire lawyerly questions in order to demonstrate the ease with which officials in Congress and the White House can be corrupted by donations from special interest groups.

An edited video of the hearing, which was uploaded by the leftwing online channel NowThis news, has been viewed 37.5m times, making it the most watched political video ever posted on Twitter, according to the subscription-based web analytics company Tubular…

At this point we should mention that Tubular’s claim depends on how you define ‘political’, because Donald Trump’s video of him body-slamming a wrestler with the CNN logo for a head has ticked past 39 million views.

Remember this?

#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

How very presidential.

Anyway, here’s the video featuring Ocasio-Cortez. At the time of writing, it had 38,3 million views:

‘We have a system that is fundamentally broken.’ — Rep. @AOC is explaining just how f*cked campaign finance laws really are pic.twitter.com/7rRXf9pD6Z

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 7, 2019

So you’re telling me that big business, in the form of lobbying and campaign financing, actually pulls the strings inside the US political system?

Funny how Donald doesn’t seem to be draining that swamp.

Ocasio-Cortez is under constant attack by misinformation from right-wing interests (her new Green Deal is case in point), because if you mention taxing the rich, or enacting any meaningful change to a system as broken as campaign finance laws, Republicans and their vested interests will attack.

They’re terrified, girl – keep doing your thing.

[source:guardian]