Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused establishment Democrats of treating her “like shit” as progressive activists urged her to run for president in 2028.
In a 100-minute long video posted on Instagram, the 37-year-old congresswoman from New York said that the party had a “remarkable opportunity” to pass left-wing policies after the midterm elections. She also accused the party’s leadership of starving funds from left-wing candidates during the campaign.
“There’s this huge conversation about candidates that were under invested in,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She cited Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who came within 240,000 votes of flipping Florida from red to blue, but ultimately lost to the Republican candidate Ashley Moody.
“If Angie Nixon had just had a little bit of that support, that outcome could have changed. But that money has to come from somewhere and it comes from these people,” Ocasio-Cortez said in reference to the party’s Senate leadership.
Reflecting on the period after she was first elected to Congress in 2018 at the age of 29, Ocasio-Cortez accused senior Democrats of being “horrifically cruel” to her. “I mean I was treated like shit,” she said. “Everybody took a swing at me.”
The Bronx congresswoman is seen as the likeliest progressive candidate to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028.
I have no problem with AOC’s ethical stance — mirroring that of El-Sayed’s recent words himself noting protecting all children, including Israeli children. The needle can be threaded, and I condemn just as much those child deaths on O7 as I do the greater atrocity by Israel that came after, proportionally. Only the humane would.
Additionally AOC would later state that Israel can fund its own defensive systems and refused to further provide such aid. Presumably this is in part due to the risk of Israel misappropriating these resources as well.
Overall AOC rarely misses the mark, and I’m no single-issue voter. Climate Change, Women’s Rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Healthcare, Support for Ukraine against the Ruzzian genocide, Campaign Finance / Election Reform, protection for immigrants, etc. — there is a lot to consider, and even within the framework of Palestinian human rights, we wouldn’t have a problem standing up to Israel if every person in Congress was like her.
We need to remind ourselves too that Democrats are better for civilians than Republicans in every way and end more wars than they start, at least in the past 30 or so years. For example, Trump with Musk’s help gutted USAID, which has now led to over 600,000 civilians deaths in just a year’s time, and continuously rising. That dwarfs the deaths in Gaza and Ukraine, combined. Naturally one atrocity does not detract from another, but it’s important to put into context the Greater Evil in what is often an inevitably binary-choice outcome for elections. In other words, never let perfect be the enemy of better.
The existence of israel guarantees the continued death of Palestinian children. You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too.
The rest of your points are fair but I don’t trust her. I don’t trust any Democrat (or other politician) unconditionally, but Ilhan Omar is by far in the lead for me. I hope I’m wrong about AOC but that vote tells me she’s more of a political opportunist than a truly principled person - and changing when the winds blow differently could support that conclusion just as much as it could support the conclusion that she saw the error of her ways.
Right, but the weak leadership of the Democrats (and their corruption in rigging the primaries against their populist uprising in the form of Bernie Sanders) enabled Trump’s rise. So it’s binary in the narrative, but under an oligarchy, it’s really just one choice (so no choice) with different theatrical performances attached.