Photo : AP

Seth Moulton, a centrist Democrat who has been attempting and seemingly failing to mount a challenge to Nancy Pelosi’s presumed speakership, had a big wet cry in public today. He went on the radio and was all, “waaah, waaaah, the lady hurt my feelings,” the lady in this case being Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for making a tweet.


According to WGBH News:

In an interview with Boston Public Radio Friday, Moulton, who identifies himself as a progressive Democrat, called Cortez’s tweet “offensive,” and not just to him, but to legislators like California Democrat and Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus Linda Sanchez, who called for a change in House leadership last fall. “It’s offensive because [Sanchez] is in the progressive caucus, she is not to the right of Nancy Pelosi, and it’s also offensive because she’s a woman,” Moulton said.


What’s Seth so salty about? This tweet:



First of all, Seth, feelings hurt much? Knickers in a twist much?

It really is disgraceful for a man to shield his attempts to oust Pelosi—for which he himself has been accused of sexism, which is surely not undue—by implying that Ocasio-Cortez, who is actually a woman, is the real sexist, for implicitly criticizing another woman. (As you can see above, she didn’t mention Sanchez at all.) Apparently, implying that any female Democrat could be to the right of Nancy Pelosi is now sexist. Nothing in Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet refers to Sanchez specifically or to women at all. There are no sexist tropes in there. Moulton is just employing the most cynical defense possible.


In the same interview, the congressman also bizarrely glossed over what happened with potential Pelosi challenger Rep. Marcia Fudge. “We came very close with Marcia Fudge,” he says, but “she had a personal tragedy back home over the weekend when she was home deciding whether or not to take the plunge.” When the interviewer expressed concern and asked about what happened, Moulton offered this deeply odd account of Fudge writing a letter of support in 2015 for a Cleveland judge convicted of domestic violence who this month was arrested in connection with his wife’s murder (emphasis added):

Well, what actually happened is that, it was very very tragic in a political sense. The existing leadership put out some opposition research against her. But what happened was a judge whom she and about 40 other people had supported in a letter at one point, killed his wife, and not only is this just a terrible tragic period, but before she signed this letter she actually gotten to know them because she thought it was a responsible thing to do, and so it was incredibly personal to her. Of course she had no control over it, but Team Pelosi was trying to blame her for it, and it was not just an insidious political attack, it really I think affected her personally, and I think that’s a big part of why she decided not to run. But you know sometimes these things happen, and it’s just bad timing, and I think she would have been an amazing speaker, but ultimately the timing wasn’t right, so she didn’t step up.


I would suggest, in the future, when discussing the brutal murder of a woman (particularly moments after accusing another woman of sexism), not to describe it as a “political tragedy.” Weird shit, Seth.