Opinion | AOC wants the Democrats to consider again

Some people may surprise that the representative Alexandria OCasio-Cortez, the most dynamic progressive icon of American politics, would like the Democrats to stop thinking “that the power struggle within the party is between progressives and moderate”, as recently told me.

“Whether it’s consultants or the class of consultants, they are losing elections for this,” he said.

Instead, Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez believes that her party can join fight for the boy and the Gal, a fundamental value that insists does not belong to any particular ideological field-o at least should not. “I believe that economic populism is the path previously,” he said, a message that he recently brought to the road to Senator Bernie Sanders, to the joint rally on his oligarchy fighters tour that are the closest thing to an organized and energized effort within the Democratic Party since the Republicans won full control of Washington in November.

Can Democrats become the party of the working class again? Can economic populism combine progressives and moderate? Can a Democrat win in a district or state of swing on a populist platform? Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez thinks so. But whether it is right or not, the important thing for the Democrats at this initial phase of the Trump-Wilderness period is that it is putting great ideas and arguments on the table. There is not enough on the party right now.

There is clearly a lot of anti-trump energy to be exploited, to the point that the president was nervous enough to possibly lose a red district race to replace the representative Elise Stefanik that he he pulled his nomination be Ambassador of the United Nations. But many Democrats from Washington are struggling to reject Mr. Trump and the party seems to launch for inspiration and direction. Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez is taking up that cloak like few others, and along the way, challenging some of her caricatures as a starting ideologue.

Case in question: speaking with me of economic populism, he did not mention the members of the handful team, but instead he checked a very different colleague. “Look at a front line like Jared Golden, who is on medicating for everyone,” he said, citing the Maine deputy he has picher A liberal position on health care despite being a self-identified “progressive conservative” that represents a district of Trumpy. “This is the reason why I say that we must have a refusal of this left-right, because there are people who can rely on certain problems,” said Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez. “Of course, there are third binary third parties such as immigration that they will not want in every single district. But this does not mean that we do not support vocally policies that will help people pay the bills.”

Mr. Golden sees things slightly differently – “people at home know that I’m not guiding in the same direction in which they are”, he told me – and he would have taken populism in some slightly different directions, such as focusing on the reduction of debt. But even if the two are not perfectly aligned, they offer the feeling that there is still energy and determination in a party that many Americans they turned on.

Up to what extent Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez can go is a hot topic for many democrats right now. With his youth, charisma, social media skills and political experts that we talk about today not only the obvious heir of Mr. Sanders as the leader of the progressive movement, but as a possible presidential contender for 2028. This both recognizes its potential and feels at best premature hypotheses.

Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez is probably the best known progressive figure in the elected-school office, Bernie! – with all the derived division. His simple existence runs the Republicans to a certain extent that recall their reaction to Nancy Pelosi in its period of maximum splendor. In fact, Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez strikes me how to have the potential to be a congress force in the hairy model: a ferocious progressive from a deep blue district, defamed by the Republicans as a left extremist also how its pragmatism and strategic thought are underestimated. Having hit the house as a launcher of Mancino bombs in 2019, since then he has taken measures to build relationships through his Caucus, also distributing cash for the campaign to more conservative colleagues in the first -line districts.

The Oligarchy Tour fight organized by Mr. Sanders and who presented it as a “special guest” attracted crazy number worthy of a presidential campaign: About 15,000 to Tempe, ariz.; 11,000 to Greley, colo.; 34,000 in Denver. These events are more than political or ideological, but also pure emotions. THE frustration and fury Among the democratic voters are palpable these days. (Just ask Chuck Schumer.) The Democrats crazy by Mr. Trump ask for the leaders who share their sense of urgency.

Fighting the oligarchy, with its revolutionary fervor, is working to scratch that itching. “We need a democratic party that fights more hard for us!” Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd. And although Mr. Sanders is the protagonist of the tour, and many other speakers have joined him, it is Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez, who acts as a fresh and support-face heating act, who has many democrats traumatized by Trump who dreams of a counter-revolution.

The Ro Khanna representative of California reminded me that, in a recent town hall, people continued to ask him: “What will you do to stop this?” None of his answers on what has been possible in legislative terms has ever “completely landed,” he said. “And then I would say only: ‘Look, it will all take us. It will take a movement.’ And that’s what Bernie and Aoc are doing.

The big rallies are often mocked, but they are precious in many ways, they supported Faiz Shakir, head of the councilor of Sanders. “They build communities,” he said, which sees critical with the decline of civic organizations and trade union rooms and other places where the organization once took left. “Leaving the pandemic, people want to be in common for each other for an affirmative vision,” he said.

For the construction of the movement, the most personal style of public commitment of Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez seems designed for an institutional distrust era, in which many Americans have little use for party policy. As Mr. Khanna noticed, “he connects with his life experiences in a sense with young people and people who do not follow all the details of politics by attracting them”.

The question of “life experiences” is a hot topic, while the Democrats deal with having been identified as the party of the elite.

“On the one hand, I think there are democrats who think it is an incorrect perception,” said Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez. “But on the other hand, we have to see how people have voted. We have lost voters of the working class.”

It is a question not only of message but of “The Messenger”, he offered.

“I think the type of candidates who perhaps a couple of decades ago were a time aspirational, like having the Harvard degree and the pedigree and an estimated job after the college,” are in a more complicated position, he said. “The inequality in this country has come to the point where it now represents the things that people are affected they can never have the opportunity to have.”

“I think people need to see some of us who have actually obtained a really hard background and have really seen some things in their lives and not only heard of things in their lives. Because it is visceral. In reality, knowing what it really is to go home in an apartment and the lights are off, to really know what it is about not being able to afford a prescription, is something that can really be heard.”

Not so many years ago, when the left wing of the party felt strong and aggressively challenging the most moderate democrats in the primaries, Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez was seen as an antagonist, also a threat to some of her less progressive colleagues. Now, with Mr. Trump runs wild, the emerging fault line within the party concerns more than those aligned with her could call fighters compared to the folders.

And he is giving the congress an opening to try to erase some of the left divisions in which he once played. This month found himself feud On social media with Senator John Sfretman of Pennsylvania, who has supported in his 2022 race, but in these days he sees too accommodating the Republicans. When the most moderate primary opponent of Mr. Sfretman of that year, the former representative Conor Lamb, crashed, made kind. “I was wrong about you and I’m sorry. Where I send my apology module with Conor Lamb,” he published, launching an EMOJI crying for a good extent.

None of which suggests that there are no important differences between the democrats. Mr. Golden, the progressive conservative of Maine, suggested that many of his colleagues to “the left” do not venture far enough along the populist path: “I feel as if they were not willing to embrace the populist views in their entirety”. For example? “Type,” we need economic, but non -cultural populism. “Why do people think they are bifurcated in that way?

These debates on ideas and leadership are crucial for a healthy party. So it is the trust, that Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez is working to help restore the Democrats, ensuring the people that her team has been lit to fight against an out of control president and on behalf of the loser.

Can all this translate into lady OCasio-Cortez becoming a standard bearer for the entire party? It is lightning for the right, and for some independent and voters oscillate, a person traditionally not suitable for assembling the large -based coalition based on democrats need to recover the White House, especially when a plurality Party voters say they must move in a moderate direction. Having said that, the next presidential elections are more than three years of pause and nobody can say how the medium -term elections next year will go down the political deck – much less what the party or the country will want in 10 or even 20 years.

“In the end, we could vote in different ways,” he told me. “But as long as people feel they can trust the person who is launching that vote, this is the entire dance game right there.”