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.
There aren’t really many of those, like you should point to a single person that is more left and therefore more popular. Bernie Sanders?
So like again this is a women being held to the standard of surpassing a theoretical man, but the men only have to surpass each other.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to inject gender into this, the original comment made no indication nor did I that a similarly prinicpled man would not face the same level of skepticism. A house rep who is under 40 and would still be under 40 who hasn’t been elected by even a statewide election nor has shown leadership as speaker of the house… That seems a crazy bet to hope to pan out. She has only ever demonstrated proven electorate support in a single district.
Note I had similar skepticism of Buttigieg, trying to be a 30-something Mayor straight to president seemed ill-advised.
I’m acknowledging there is a disparity in the treatment between genders, I’m not doing it myself. You specifically might have an equal standard, but chili cheese lies says barely anything about US politics and the one comment I see reinforces the popular unequal standard.
I agree that if she runs for Senate, that’s a good thing and it will put her on the same track as JFK, with maybe more momentum. But just to say, I’d rather she not do X without a different, more popular candidate to contrast with is just not a fair thing to say.
It’s absolutely a pattern that women are compared to theoretical men, while men are just compared to each other.
It was the same dog whistle “know her place” comment that comes up on every post about her. Whether they meant it to be or not, it is absolutely about gender.