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.
Shit costs money. Campaign offices cost money. Staff cost money. Advertisements cost money. Transportation and venues for rallies cost money.
You cannot run for any office without spending money. Nixon was getting drowned out by Republican smears, with no bullhorn big enough to respond. If she had the $140M war chest that Talarico was packing, she’d have done better.
You don’t need to have the most money to run a campaign. Just ask Abdul El-Sayed. But you do need a significant amount. Even in Michigan, he spent $2M to win his primary and another $50M for the general election.
Angie Nixon was in a bigger state with higher costs, spending only $11M through the general, compared to $27M spent by Moody. This was after she’d won her primary for under $1M against a Democrat opponent with $16M.
Democrats spent more money to beat Nixon than they spent to beat Nixon’s Republican opponent.