(Oliver Doyle/REUTERS)

The Washington Post has a fairly sympathetic explainer on how the AOC team put out what should henceforth be known as the Cow Fart FAQ. From the piece:

“An early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND resolution got published to the website by mistake,” Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, two days after the document’s release. “Mistakes happen when doing time launches like this coordinating multiple groups and collaborators.”

The confusion over the document complicated the roll out of the Green New Deal plan, as more than a dozen media outlets, particularly in the conservative media, reported on policies in the FAQ page that the co-signers of the resolution have not agreed to support. One House Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak about internal discussions, said he and other liberal members have privately vented frustration over the publication of the FAQ page.

As I noted in a surprisingly viral tweet, this was the mother of all Kinsley Gaffes. A Kinsley gaffe, for those who don’t know, is a term derived from Michael Kinsley’s famous line, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”

The FAQ, by Team AOC’s own account, was a group-project and the Cow Farts and Airplanes language wasn’t particularly objectionable within the parameters of their Group Think. It’s fine for some Democrats to gripe that they didn’t agree to that language, but spare me the outrage over the insinuation. Not only is it clear that many of the GND planners thought this was a reasonable thing to say, the text of the actual resolution is full of sophomoric, socialist prattle.

And that brings me to a larger point. These people think that they can adequately plan and run — for all time — an economic system from Washington that would guarantee: “a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States” as well as “access to nature.”

But they can’t even plan the roll out of a non-binding resolution and some press-release materials? And, when confronted by their own words, their immediate response was to accuse their enemies of sabotaging them? Gosh, by all means, let’s give them control of the entire economy. That couldn’t work out badly. I mean “Mistakes happen when doing time launches like this coordinating multiple groups and collaborators,” when uploading FAQs, not when doing anything as simple as commandeering the bulk of the U.S. economy.

Something to Consider If you enjoyed this article, we have a proposition for you: Join NRPLUS. Members get all of our content (including the magazine), no paywalls or content meters, an advertising-minimal experience, and unique access to our writers and editors (conference calls, social-media groups, etc.). And importantly, NRPLUS members help keep NR going. Consider it? If you enjoyed this article, and were stimulated by its contents, we have a proposition for you: Join NRPLUS. LEARN MORE