Ocasio Cortez Pelosi Democrats
House Democrats will almost certainly reelect Nancy Pelosi to a fourth term as Speaker on January 3. She easily survived a caucus vote in November and the full floor vote ought to be just as simple. Although Pelosi’s tenure made her a “slay, queen” heroine to some very online #resistance activists, she has plenty of critics in her own party. If Pelosi’s next term is truly her last, as she’s pledged it will be, it means her legacy is currently at stake. And her record will likely age poorly, for reasons recently articulated by one of her party’s rising stars.
Opposing Pelosi’s reelection as Speaker really only makes sense if they have the numbers and influence to replace her with an ally, and right now, they don’t.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted that top Democrats House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should no longer head the party during a new podcast with The Intercept. Jan 11, 2021 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rejecting criticism from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that she is not receptive to younger members and does not groom them for future leadership roles.
In a new interview, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill that Democrats need fresh leadership. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should go, she said. The two Democratic leaders and their allies have neglected any “real grooming of a next generation of leadership,” she continued, and the party is now weaker than it should be. “A lot of this is not just about [Pelosi and Schumer], but also about the structural shifts that these two personalities have led in their time in leadership,” she added. With power concentrated in the leadership classes of both parties, she said, individual members have less influence, and less incentive to stay in Congress.
Nov 15, 2020 Filed under 2020 presidential election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, congress, democrats, nancy pelosi, us house of representatives, 11/15/20 Share this article: Share this. “If Representative Ocasio-Cortez does not apologize immediately, we will be forced to find alternative means to condemn this regrettable statement,” Roy, wrote in a letter to Pelosi on Thursday.
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Ocasio-Cortez is without question one of the most left-wing Democrats in national office: She’s frequently at odds with senior Democrats on major issues like Medicare for All, a policy that Pelosi doesn’t support. But even within this context, her remarks are notable. When a number of House Democrats said they’d vote against Pelosi in 2019, the newly elected Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that party members must “evolve our leadership” before voting for Pelosi. Her new comments are much blunter, though she made it clear that she intends to vote for Pelosi a second time.
While it may be tempting for some to fit Ocasio-Cortez’s condemnation of Pelosi and Schumer into the party’s ongoing civil war, that analysis is somewhat inaccurate. Under Pelosi and Schumer, the party has catered to conservative and moderate members while alienating its rising progressive flank, and Ocasio-Cortez’s specific criticisms of Pelosi are certainly informed by ideology. But hostility to Pelosi doesn’t just come from the left. In 2018, opposition to her reelection looked strongest on the party’s right. Two years earlier, moderate Tim Ryan challenged her for Speaker, only to lose. For Pelosi’s progressive critics, this is a problem. Opposing Pelosi’s reelection as Speaker really only makes sense if they have the numbers and influence to replace her with an ally, and right now, they don’t. Ocasio-Cortez recognizes this. “If you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse,” she told Scahill. As long as Pelosi remains to the left of her most organized critics, left-wing Democrats have little choice but to vote for her.
House progressives may agree with their moderate colleagues about the state of the party’s leadership class. It has become sclerotic, and ought to be replaced. But generational change isn’t always the same thing as a major ideological shift. If left-wing Democrats such as Ocasio-Cortez want to plot a new direction for the party, they don’t have much time left to build the power it will take to replace Pelosi with one of their own.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasts conditions at migrant detention centers
Border Patrol pushes back, says Democratic lawmaker's accusations aren't true; reaction and analysis on 'The Five.'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back Saturday night after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized her and other far-left freshmen congresswomen for voting against a $4.6 billion border bill that President Trump signed into law on Monday.
Congress had approved the bill with help from moderate Democrats – and in a New York Times interview Pelosi slammed the progressive wing of her party for not also supporting the humanitarian-assistance measure.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
But Ocasio-Cortez took a different view.
“That public ‘whatever’ is called public sentiment,” Ocasio-Cortez answered later in a Twitter message. “And wielding the power to shift it is how we actually achieve meaningful change in this country.”
In a separate message, Ocasio-Cortez also defended the use of social media by herself and her fellow newcomers to Congress, over the more traditional – and often more expensive and time-consuming — methods favored by longer-serving lawmakers.
“I find it strange when members act as though social media isn’t important,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “They set millions of [dollars] on [fire] to run TV ads so people can see their message.
“I haven’t dialed for dollars *once* this year,” she added, “& have more time to do my actual job. Yet we’d rather campaign like it’s 2008.”
Ocasio-Cortez also criticized the Democrats who decided to vote along with Republicans on the spending plan to address issues at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I don’t believe it was a good idea for Dems to blindly trust the Trump admin when so many kids have died in their custody. It’s a huge mistake,” she wrote. “This admin also refuses to hand over docs to Congress on the whereabouts of families. People’s lives are getting bargained, & for what?”
In a Washington Post op-ed published Friday, author Ryan Grim writes that Ocasio-Cortez sees older Democrats as too eager to compromise with Republicans, whom she regards as “clowns.”
“Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember,” Grim writes. “’Even before I was of voting age, I saw Republicans accuse the Obamas of doing a ‘terrorist fist bump,’ so they’ve been clowns since I was a teen,’ she said.”
Ocasio Cortez Facebook
“Ocasio-Cortez told me that she treats Republicans like buffoons because that’s how they’ve behaved for as long as she can remember.”
Ocasio-cortez Pelosi Democrats
Meanwhile, some Republicans and other critics have called Ocasio-Cortez hypocritical for opposing the border bill, which her critics say was designed to address many of the problems that she and other far-left Democrats have been complaining about in recent weeks.
“People like AOC create the disaster, refuse to fix it, vote against funding to help people and then go down there to attack the people who are saying to her, ‘We don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough facilities,’” former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” last week, calling Ocasio-Cortez 'viciously dishonest.'