It wasn’t going to be long before the left-left of the progressive movement turned on New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC). The same crowd that claimed that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was a Wall Street corporatist neoliberal snake wasn’t going to stand for anyone that challenged Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s “leadership” of the left.
I just expected that acrimony to take longer to show up.
I’ve written about it before, like here, but in short—AOC was wooed relentlessly by Warren during her presidential bid, but she ended up endorsing Sanders, not because of his similarly aggressive outreach (there was none, just one courtesy call his staff forced him to make), but seemingly out of gratitude for helping her get elected. It is, after all, the oldest adage in politics—you reward those who brought you. And that endorsement, coming in the heels of Sanders’s mid-October heart attack, provided a jolt of energy. It didn’t expand his coalition—he was and is mired at 30%, but it did energize his core base at a time when doubts about his health threatened to knock him down. As a result, she solidified the very liberal support that Warren desperately needed to stay competitive.
Yet that partnership frayed over time, with AOC upset at the Sanders campaign for things like ignoring her advice, failing to be conciliatory toward Warren and her supporters, and knocking her on her immigration advocacy. As a result, she disappeared from Bernie rallies, engendering bitterness from the Sanders camp. She gently chided online Bernie Bros for their hatred:
She was even more explicit in this NY Times interview a couple of weeks ago. “There’s so much emphasis on making outreach as conflict-based as possible,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And sometimes I even feel miscast and understood. Because it’s about what tools you use, and conflict is one tool but not the only tool.”
But it was this AOC tweet that seemingly solidified the split:
The Bernie left lost its collective head over this. With responses like this one:
We’re talking thousands of comments like that. AOC had praised a Bernie foe, one who refused to endorse him, and as such deserved the scorn of the with-us-or-against-us crowd. It was breathtaking in its shortsightedness. But, perhaps, not so surprising, given Sanders’ 30% strategy, which included othering any enemies, no matter how closely aligned they might be ideologically.
That’s why I wrote a piece titled, “The left won’t win the White House if it rallies around another 30% candidate.” Is that even controversial? If you don’t even try to win a majority of Democrats, what good are you? Be a gadfly in the corner! Play the part of “conscience of the party” if you want, But don’t harm our chances to win a majority with exclusionary and self-defeating politics!
Apparently, AOC has come to the same conclusion, as Politico noted that the once crusading firebrand had tamped down this cycle. “Of the half-dozen incumbent primary challengers Justice Democrats is backing this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed just two,” Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein reported. “Neither was a particularly risky move: Both candidates — Jessica Cisneros in Texas and Marie Newman in Illinois — were taking on conservative Democrats who oppose abortion rights and later earned the support of several prominent national Democrats.”
Daily Kos supported both those primary challenges, putting them well in the mainstream of the practical American left—improve the party where we can. This isn’t to knock Justice Democrats. I will never criticize a primary challenge. No elected official is entitled to her or his seat by fiat, for life. There’s definitely a place for Justice Democrats and I appreciate the work they do. But they have a role to play, and our role at Daily Kos has been more pragmatic. Pragmatism has its limits—we didn’t back the AOC primary challenge. We didn’t back Ayanna Pressley’s challenge either, and she’s my favorite. That is to say, pragmatism isn’t everything, but it’s our niche. I respect Justice Democrats without thinking they are better or worse than us. Is that clear?
What is clear, however, is that AOC has decided to tack more practical. It’s actually the smart political play. It doesn’t mean she's a sellout, which is what the usual suspects are calling her after reading that article, it just means that she has plans to rise up in the party. The sky is the limit, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that I see a President Ocasio-Cortez as a real possibility. But getting there means building bridges, because guess what—the Bernie left will never have power as long as it insists on black-and-white us-versus-them politics that limit them to a pathetic 30%. Ideologically, we’re a majority of our party, from things like Medicare for All, to war, to racial and gender justice, we’re the majority. And yet the Democratic electorate picked a nominee who is … problematic on all of that stuff. Why? Because Joe Biden spent a lifetime building bridges. All the political correctness in the world won’t get you elected if people think you’re an asshole.
So AOC basically decided to keep building the movement with honey rather than vinegar. If you care about progressive politics, that’s a good thing. What’s more important? That progressive ideas win, or that Bernie himself win? Any movement that rests on a single individual is not a movement at all, but a cult of personality. Yet too many people are overly invested in that cult of personality.
Too many people prefer being in the aggrieved minority, including Cenk—who spent $1 million to get 6% of the primary vote in a congressional race this year and is working hard to bust a union at his company. But he is not alone, because of course he is not.