Dems Float Idea of Primary Agains Aoc the Hill
Holding a aureate microphone and wearing a seafoam-green pantsuit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez energized the San Antonio crowd with her vision for flipping the state of Texas to Autonomous control.
"It will happen," Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally earlier this month. "The merely question is when, Texas."
Every bit the crowd cheered, she added: "The work that yous put in today, the work that yous put in tomorrow, the piece of work that you put in on Mon – when you go i more door when you lot're tired, when you make ane more phone call when yous feel exhausted, you're bringing that solar day one day sooner."
The progressives in the audience roared in response, hanging on to her every discussion.
Four years afterward bursting on to the national political stage with a shocking primary victory over a long-serving House Democrat, Ocasio-Cortez is using her substantial political influence to promote progressive candidates and policies. Ocasio-Cortez's first entrada in 2018 was largely dismissed every bit a piping dream, but the leftwing New York congresswoman is now impossible to ignore.
Simply this month, the New Yorker interviewed Ocasio-Cortez well-nigh the fight for voting rights and her office as a progressive icon, while the editors of New York magazine are releasing a volume documenting her rapid rise in Democratic politics. Every bit she makes headlines, Ocasio-Cortez has continued to utilise her massive social media post-obit and her significant campaign war chest to advance her leftist policy calendar.
With Democrats bracing for a potentially disastrous midterm flavour, the congresswoman'due south actions on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hill brand information technology clear that she will keep to be a dominant force for the progressive motility. There seems to be no question now: AOC is here to stay.
On the trail
Ocasio-Cortez travelled to Texas this month to campaign for two of the progressive candidates she has endorsed this election wheel, Jessica Cisneros and Greg Casar. Since her commencement victory in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez has used her glory status to help other progressives attract voters and raise coin, which she has a unique talent for. During the 2020 cycle, her campaign committee raised more than $20m.
"Having her there on stage with y'all, it just is an amazing experience," said James Thompson, a former congressional candidate who held a 2018 rally with Ocasio-Cortez in Wichita, Kansas. "The immediate impact on my campaign was fundraising. We raised a substantial amount of money off of the rally that we had here. It really energized the people."
An endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez can immediately elevate a progressive candidate's entrada, and the congresswoman does not limit herself to open-seat races. In the four years since she won her own main against the incumbent congressman Joe Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed a number of candidates who are challenging sitting lawmakers. Cisneros, for instance, is attempting to defeat Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who has served in the House since 2005.
"AOC endorses more principal challengers to incumbents than pretty much anyone who is a current incumbent in Congress," said Waleed Shahid, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which backed Ocasio-Cortez's beginning campaign. "I think a lot of that has to practise with the fact that she was the primary challenger to an incumbent, then she knows personally how difficult it is to get support for something that requires that level of courage."
But Ocasio-Cortez'south willingness to openly oppose Autonomous incumbents has rankled some of her House colleagues who have been on the receiving finish of her criticism.
"This election is taking place in the 28th congressional Commune of Texas – not New York Metropolis," Cuellar'south campaign said in a argument ahead of Ocasio-Cortez's rallies in San Antonio and Austin. "The voters will decide this election, not far-left celebrities who represent defunding the police force, open borders, eliminating oil & gas jobs, and raising taxes on hard working Texans. Members should take intendance of their own district before taking failed ideas to South Texas."
Ocasio-Cortez's rallies in Texas likewise displayed her singular ability to enrage her Republican critics, who swiftly denounced her suggestion that the traditionally conservative state would inevitably motion to the left.
"If AOC thinks for a moment that Texans will fall for her whacked-out, woke, socialist idiocy, she doesn't know Texas," said Dan Patrick, the state's lieutenant governor.
But to Ocasio-Cortez's many admirers, her frequent clashes with Democrats and Republicans alike take gear up an example for a new kind of politics.
"She'south been an inspiration, I recall, to a lot of people," Thompson said. "Now, I recollect that scares the hell out of the Democratic party though, likewise, considering we're bucking the establishment and saying, 'Wait, nosotros want you lot to represent the people, not just party interest.'"
In the halls of Congress
Ocasio-Cortez's willingness to clash with members of her party extends beyond the entrada trail to her piece of work in Congress.
Earlier this month, she pursued the assuming strategy of trying to force a vote on a bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, had voiced opposition to the proposed ban, and Ocasio-Cortez's tactics seemed aimed at forcing the hand of Democratic leadership. (Pelosi has since struck a more open-minded tone about the ban on members' stock-trading.)
Ocasio-Cortez has likewise been unafraid to criticize some of her centrist colleagues who have attacked progressive policy proposals. On Friday, after Axios published a study suggesting moderate Democrats blamed the political party'south falling polling numbers on progressives and their support for the "defund the police" motility, Ocasio-Cortez hit back over Twitter.
She argued the existent reason behind Democrats' dour prospects in the midterm elections was the party'southward failure to pass the Build Dorsum Improve Human action, the $1.75tn spending package at the heart of Joe Biden'due south economic agenda. Ocasio-Cortez accused her centrist colleagues of tanking the legislation by allowing the bipartisan infrastructure bill to pass on its ain, leaving Democrats with nada to campaign on.
"They don't know how to take responsibleness so are lazily blaming the same folks they always do," Ocasio-Cortez said.
Rahna Epting, the executive director of the progressive group MoveOn, similarly dismissed claims that Ocasio-Cortez and her allies are dragging down Democrats' electoral prospects as "utter nonsense".
"Members of Congress of the progressive flank take raised expectations on Democrats broadly to deliver and prioritize people over profits. At that place is nothing wrong with that," Epting said. "What Democrats need to exercise is to stop the infighting."
Epting, whose group was one of the only progressive organizations to endorse Ocasio-Cortez during her 2018 primary battle, praised the congresswoman for using her platform to abet for important issues, including student debt relief and the climate crisis.
"AOC's superpower is to expose and shed light on corruption and injustices that take been longstanding," Epting said. "I think she has been one of the nigh electrifying members of Congress, probably in the history of the United states of america. And she's a true champion for people."
But Ocasio-Cortez volition be the first to acknowledge that her hopes of enacting meaningful progressive policies have suffered setbacks in contempo months. Build Back Better remains stalled in the Senate because of Democrat Joe Manchin's opposition, and the party has failed to enact national voting rights legislation.
Instead of bemoaning congressional inaction, though, Ocasio-Cortez has urged patience.
"We have a culture of immediate gratification where if you do something and it doesn't pay off correct abroad, we think it'southward pointless," she told the New Yorker. "There is no movement, there is no effort, at that place is no unionizing, in that location is no fight for the vote, there is no resistance to draconian abortion laws, if people think that the future is baked in and nothing is possible and that nosotros're doomed."
Thompson has seen the long-term bear on of Ocasio-Cortez'due south piece of work for himself. He lost his 2018 race, but since so, the politics of Wichita have shifted. Democrats now brand up a majority of the Wichita urban center council, when they previously only held 1 of 7 seats.
"Fifty-fifty though I didn't win, her coming really energized our local Democrats in our customs," Thompson said. "It made the states realize that look, we're not lone. And nosotros can do something when we come together."
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/19/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democrats-midterms-texas
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