AOC jabs at critics in party
People pushing leftward ‘are not the enemy,’ she tells Dems
WASHINGTON — Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, D-N.Y., fired back at Democrats who have pinned blame on the group of legislators known as the Squad for party losses in the House and who are working with Republicans, as Joe Biden suggested Saturday.
No thanks, she said.
Instead, she vowed to work to help Georgia deliver the Senate to Democrats “so we don’t have to negotiate in that manner,” Ocasio-cortez said on CNN’S “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Ocasio-cortez also responded to criticism from Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-VA., who said moving to the left will work to unwind the Democratic Party.
“There are, at least in the House caucus, very deep divisions within the party, and I believe that we need to really come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart,” she told host Jake Tapper.
“We have a slimmer Democrat majority. It’s going to be even more important to work together and not fight each other,” she continued. “It deepens the division in the party and it’s irresponsible. It’s irresponsible to pour gasoline on very delicate tensions within the party and exploit it.”
Ocasio-cortez fueled some division herself, saying to The New York Times on Saturday that the House Democrats who lost their seats were moderate “sitting ducks” and that she did not endorse them or spend time helping them lure millennials.
“I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years,” she told the Times. “That’s also the damn thing of it. I’ve been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them but five refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming us for their loss.
“So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy and that their base is not the enemy.”
Ocasio-cortez added a rebuke of Democrats who have historically abandoned the base that got them elected.
“The history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grassroots to get elected, and then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election,” she told the Times.