Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continues to assault fellow Democrats for trying to pin the blame on her and other progressives for the election debacle. As the attacks on left-wing loons become sharper and more focused, AOC has resorted to name-calling and childish threats to take her three million Twitter followers and go home.
She told the New York Times that if Democrats continue to be hostile to her and other progressives, she may quit politics altogether.
“I don’t even know if I want to be in politics,” she told The Times. “You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.”
“Externally, there’s been a ton of support,” she added. “But internally, it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive.”
“But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.”
It’s this kind of obliviousness that makes her such a threat to liberty. She can’t see that there are 330 million people in America, most of whom are hostile or indifferent to progressive ideas. She has allowed the publicity and the adoration go to her head.
Democrats who attack her and her agenda are only trying to survive. That she doesn’t understand that basic fact about American politics is perhaps understandable given her limited experience outside of her own neighborhood, but frightening in its implications.
“I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke,” she told The Times. “That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.”
Yes, people really want guaranteed health care. But they don’t want it at any cost, nor do they want it if it limits their freedom of choice. This is what’s obvious to other Democrats but completely escapes AOC.
She is a wrecking ball for the Democratic Party but despite all, the party needs her and the energy and expertise of her supporters. She actually makes a valid point about tapping that energy and expertise by more mainstream candidates. She railed against party leaders who had barred progressive consultants from getting party money if they helped primary a sitting Democrat.
“If you are the DCCC, and you’re hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them. So the DCCC banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“The leadership and elements of the party — frankly, people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party — are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.”
Those consulting firms may be great at organizing a digital campaign, but the question works both ways: how many of them actually want to work with mainstream Democrats? These are the party purists who want to start a revolution, not continue the status quo.
AOC isn’t quitting politics, although it’s amusing if she thinks the threat in any way upsets the party leadership. She is a media phenomenon whose influence beyond Twitter and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is suspect. I suspect many mainstream members of the party would have bid her “good riddance” if she ever decided to make good on her threat.
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