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 love her, but Congress needs to change its makeup first to be all progressive and pass progressive legislations that will turn successful before she has any chance of presidency.
As of right now if she would run I expect she would lose. I think people want to give progressives a chance but likely would still be hesitant until progressives prove themselves.
I’ve literally heard these sentiments my entire life, and progressives keep proving it wrong every time.
The latest was my dad saying, “well of course a progressive could win in New York, but not anywhere else in the country.”
I think the nation has shown multiple times in the past decade that what we really don’t want is another fucking status quo democrat. The country is desperate for change, and if the democrats and people with your sentiment would take their foot off progressives’ necks and stand behind us instead, progressives could actually make this country great (for the first time, btw).
This is exactly why Hillary lost, FWIW. People were tired of establishment dems being in control. They wanted a shakeup. And in response to that, Dems ran the very personification of the establishment. Hillary was the face of everything that people hated about democrats.
As far as the establishment saw it, she had done her time as a good little soldier, paid her dues promptly, sang the party’s songs, danced the party’s dances, and was “owed” the chance at a presidency because of that. Not because she was the best candidate for the people, but because she was the one who best embodied the establishment that Dems wanted to uphold.
Instead, people voted for the candidate who promised exactly what people wanted: A shakeup. Trump wasn’t a good candidate during his first campaign, but he did promise an end to the old status quo. And to a lot of voters, that was the only thing that mattered.
Bruh, Texas just turned blue. Anything is possible rn.