On Thursday, Washington Post columnist Elizabeth Bruenig took on the problem of limousine liberalism — by defending it. Rushing to the aid of new socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Breunig suggested that the only plausible rationale for conservatives attacking Ocasio-Cortez’s middle-class upbringing was their fear of her supremely moral message:
As more left-flank challengers face off with center-left incumbents and more democratic socialists begin looking toward public office, beware: You will all be called champagne socialists or yacht communists, the ritzier and more radical counterparts of limousine liberals. It doesn’t matter how comparatively humble your background is, or how relatively modest your means in the context of the political class at-large — it’ll always be news if Bernie Sanders wears a $700 coat or buys a house by a lake, because his political position on inequality is so obviously moral that the only way to impeach it is to make him seem dishonest about it. The same goes, and will continue to go, for every other candidate who attempts to advance material equality. This stance is hard to supply a persuasive democratic alternative to, so critics instead claim that its standard-bearers don’t really mean it.
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