For months, delegates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party and Joseph R. Biden has been a good soldier for Jr., as he tried to defeat President Trump.
But on Saturday, shortly after President-elect Biden was declared the winner, in a nearly O-hour-long interview, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made it clear to sections within the party that the primary is still animated. And she rejected recent criticism from some Democratic House members who have blamed the party’s left for spending important seats. Some of the lost members said they had made themselves “sitting ducks”.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Ultimately we have a full understanding of the consequences. What is your macro takeaway?
Well, I think the central one is that we are no longer in a free fall into hell. But whether we are going to choose ourselves is a lingering question. We have stopped this vague descent. And the question is if and how we will back up ourselves.
We know that race is a problem, and staying away from it will not solve any election questions. We must actively disarm the powerful influence of racism at the polls.
But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate who co-sponsored Medicare for All in the Swing District retained their position. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levine was the original co-sponsor of the law, and he retained his seat.
By your first point, Democrats lost seats in elections where they were expected to benefit. Do you accept racism and white supremacy in voting?
I think it will be really important how the party deals with this internally, and whether the party will be honest about doing the actual postmortem and digging into what is really lost. Because in many of these races before we had any data yet, there was already a finger pointing that this was the fault of the progressives and this was the fault of the movement for the Black Lives.
I have already begun to check the actual performance of this campaign. And the thing is, I’ve been unsettling Democrats for two years. I have been beating DCCCC managed campaigns for two years. This is how I went to Congress. This is how we chose Ayanna Presley. That’s how Jamal Bowman won. That’s how Corey Bush won. And so we know about the extreme weaknesses of how Democrats campaign.
Some of these are criminal. That is misconduct. Connor Lamb spent $ 2,000 on Facebook a week before the election. I don’t think our God can blame someone else who isn’t actually on the internet in the year 2020 and loses the election when you’re not really even on the internet.
And I’ve lost a lot of these campaigns, and the fact of the matter is that if you’re not spending a fund 200,000 on Facebook, raising funds, persuading, recruiting volunteers, getting votes weeks before the election, you’re not firing on all cylinders. Remained. And not one of these expeditions was able to fire on all the cylinders.
Well, Connor Lamb won. So what are you saying: investing in digital advertising and investment is a bigger reason for losing moderate Democrats than any progressive policy?
These people are hinting at Republican messaging that they think they were killed, right? But why were you so sensitive to that attack?
If you are not knocking on the door, if you are not on the internet, if your main dependence points are TV and mail, then you are not campaigning on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone can make an ideological claim when someone isn’t running a full campaign.
Our party is not even online, not in a real way. And so, yes, they were sensitive to these messages, because they weren’t even on media where these messages were very powerful. Sure, you could point to the message, but they were also sitting ducks. They were sitting ducks.
Barack Obama has one reason to create a full-fledged national campaign device outside the Democratic National Committee. And there’s a reason that when it didn’t activate or continue, we lost the majority of the house. Because the party – itself – does not have the key skills, and the amount of money will not fix it.
If I lost my election, and I went out and said: “This is a mistake of the moderator. This is because you didn’t let the floor vote on Medicare for all of us. “And they opened up my campaign, and they found out that I had spent $ 5,000 on TV commercials just before election week? They were laughing. And that’s what they look like right now, trying to blame the Movement for Black Live for their loss.” Has been.
Is there anything that surprises you since Tuesday? Or should you reconsider your earlier scenarios?
The share of white support to Trump. I thought the polls were closed, but seeing that made me realize what we had to do there.
We need a lot of anti-racial, deep propaganda in this country. Because if we keep losing white shares and just allow Facebook to radically increase the number of white voters and elements of white voters, there aren’t a number of colored and young people that you can offset.
But the problem is right now, I think a lot of Dame’s strategy is to avoid actually working through this. Just trying to avoid biting the bear. His argument is to defame the police, right? Not to provoke racial resentment. I don’t think it’s sustainable.
There is a lot of magical thinking in Washington Washington, that this is just about special people who kind of come from the top down. Years later, we rejected the idea that they worked and that they were cultured in favor of the idea that they were magical, special people. I want people to take off these goggles and realize how we can work better.
If you’re a DCCCC, and you’re hemorrhaging incoming candidates for progressive rebels, you might want to use some of those payrolls. But instead, we banned them. So the DCCC banned every single one of the best pay firms in the country in a digital organization.
It is clear that the party leadership and elements – some of the decision makers in the party – have become so blinded by this anti-worker sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the assets they own.
I urge the party to help me for two years. That too it is very bad. I’m trying to help. Before the election, I offered every swing district Democrat to help with their operation. And each of them, but all five refused my help. And all five weak or swing district people that I have helped secure victory or are on the way to securing victory. And every one who denies my help is losing. And now they are blaming us for their loss.
So I need my comrades to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. The movement for Black Live is not the enemy, Medicare is not the enemy for all. This argument is not even about winning. It’s that if they keep pushing the wrong thing forward, I mean they’re just establishing their own passion.
What is your expectation of how open the Biden administration will be on the left? And what is the strategy in terms of moving it?
I don’t know how open they will be. And it’s not a personal thing. It’s just, the history of the party is that we get really excited about the roots of the grass to be elected. And then those communities are abandoned immediately after the election.
I think the transition period will indicate whether the administration is taking a more open and collaborative approach, or whether they are taking a kind of ice-out approach. Because the Obama transition set a course for 2010 and some damage to our House. It was those many transition decisions – and who was put in the leadership position – that really informed the strategy of the regime, surprisingly.
What if the administration is hostile? What if John Kasich’s opinion on who Biden should be? what are you doing?
Well, I’ll be hateful, because we’ll be lost. And that’s it. Visits this transition, they send a signal. They tell a story about who the administration attributes to this victory. And it will be really difficult after immigrant youth activists help deliver potential to Arizona and Nevada. It will be really difficult once Detroit and Rashida Talaib increase the number in their district.
It’s really hard for us to turn them around when non-otters don’t seem to change anything for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or accept their vote.
If the party believes that after Detroit’s one percent of Biden went to Biden, after black organizers in Georgia only doubled and tripled the vote, after many people organized Philadelphia, is the Democratic Party a sign that John Cassic has won us this election? I mean I can’t even describe how dangerous it is.
You are diagnosing national trends. You are probably the most famous voice on the left right now. What can we expect from you in the next four years?
I do not know. I think through the transition, and until the next term, I will probably have more answers. How the party responds will greatly inform my approach and I think it will become necessary.
The last two years have been very hostile. Externally, we are winning. Externally, there has been a ton of support, but internally, it is very hostile to anything that also gives a progressive smell.
Is the party ready to sit down and work together and figure out how to use everyone’s assets at the party? Or are they just going to double down on this kind of forceful approach? And that’s what I know I do.
Is there a universe in which they are so antagonistic that we are talking about a Senate move in a few years?
I don’t really know. I don’t even know if I want to stay in politics. You know, really, in the first six months of my tenure, I didn’t even know if I would run for re-election this year.
Really? Why
It’s incoming. It’s stressful. That is violence. It lacks the support of your own party. It is your own party thinking you are the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you are bad because you really add your name to your opinion.
I chose to run for re-election because I felt I had to prove that this was real. That this movement was real. That I was not fluke. Those people can really guarantee health and people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.
But I’m serious when I tell you about my troubles of running for office and the troubles I face when I start living somewhere – they’re probably the same.
