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.
Who is she planning to vote for Majority Leader?
Edit: Should be Speaker (of the House).
She’s supporting Jeffries.
She’s making a shrewd calculation here and I trust her more than Jeffries.
She’s been known to make deals–like voting for “defensive” weapons sales to Israel.
At the end of the day, all politicians have to bend a little bit, but I think voting for Jeffries in this moment is closer to breaking than bending. Jeffries is not going to turn his back on the people that brought him to the dance.
You’re right here, but can I do, not want to support AOC any more?
My best hope is that she will stand up to Jeffries and fight when it matters and then we can use those conflicts together get her in the white house.
I’m sure this is a lot of hopium but I need something man.
Right now there is chaos. No need to worry – yet. We’re all still making noise about Jeffries, no one wants him, he’s lost the trust of the country, and that needs to not let up.
One thing a Speaker HAS to have is the confidence of their chamber: the noise we’re making now IS having an effect, and if we keep it up, one of two things will happen. Either they will select a different Speaker, OR they will keep Jeffries and make do with what they have, trying to force him into submission so that they don’t feel our heat too, until he too resigns or gets kicked out.
I don’t know if you remember, but it’s pretty easy to remove a Speaker of the House from that role. The House Republicans did that just three years ago, when they booted Kevin McCarthy from his speakership and after much disarray and infighting, selected that lickspittle Mike Johnson. Every Congress makes their own rules regarding what is needed to oust the Speaker, and this new Congress will too.
For myself, it’s too early to lose hope if only because it’s too early to have much hope: everything is literally undecided right now. The best thing the rest of us can be doing is calling our newly elected (or re-elected) House reps and telling them: NO HAKEEM.
If they have ANY idea of the level of anger sweeping this country, they will not put that tool in the Speaker chair. And because we voted as we did, they have more of a sense of it now than they did before. We all need to keep up the pressure.
thanks for the kind words, I already wrote rep and senators saying no to Jeffries and Schumer.
I feel like the establishment wants them for some reason but at least they will know they are on thin ice.
I’m ready to get back out protesting at the slighted sign of sucking.
I believe you probably mean Speaker of the House. House Majority leader is 2nd to the Speaker?
Or you do mean majority, either way.
It looks like there’s some ambiguity between the House Speaker and Majority Leader roles.
I know you self-corrected to some extent, but you should know that BOTH chambers of Congress have a majority leader, and you’re focusing on the one that doesn’t matter so much. One majority leader is almost irrelevant to anyone outside Congress, and the other majority leader is one of the most powerful figures in government.
At the top of the Senate is the Senate Majority Leader. Right now that’s Schumer. He is, at times, the most powerful individual in Congress, and can block or allow legislation from ever coming to a vote, which is how he has stifled bills that would have decreased our cash flow to the genocide in Israel. The Senate Majority Leader is selected by party caucus, and is the party leader as well as being the leader of the chamber.
At the top of the House is the Speaker of the House, which of course you know, but after him is the House majority leader. We almost never hear about them, and they are selected by party caucus but do not lead the chamber: again, in the House that’s the Speaker. Usually when the media is talking about this specific role, they call it House majority leader to differentiate it. (I just got corrected on this point myself recently, it gets confusing after a while.)
The House is different from the Senate in this way, because the Speaker of the House is selected by ALL representatives in a public vote, while the Senate Majority Leader is selected within a closed-door party caucus.
And then after them, both houses have minority leaders – party positions – as well as whips, people who do the primary work of rounding up the members of their own party when it comes time to vote. Like the House majority leader, we rarely hear about these either: by the time something is worth getting into the weeds on knowing, the actual leader – the Speaker or the Senate Majority Leader – is already in the mix and will speak for the rest.
Thus, for myself, trying to prioritize congressional roles in order to understand current events, I don’t even think about the House majority leader, because the only majority leader that has a truly powerful role is the Senate one.
And if you’re ever confused – like the rest of us – focus on the chamber, not the role. Is it referring to the Senate, or to the House? That will tell you what you need to know, if you’re coming across a name or a role that seems duplicative or unfamiliar.
I’m writing this solely because I think that’s where you might be going and want to spare you some confusion: while the role does have some power, the House majority leader is not usually noteworthy, and rarely even makes the news beyond DC insiders. Senate Majority Leader is usually the one you want to pay attention to.
Yes, I’ve been reading the comments hadn’t come out to edit / correct clarify since it’s already been capably done by my fellow lemsters.
So the Speaker of the House is basically the same as the Majority Leader in the Senate, but it’s different than being the Majority Leader in the House… perfectly sensical and absolutely normal.
Yes! You got it, lol.
The reason it’s like this is because American democracy literally started off as an experiment. You’ll even hear us referred to as “the American experiment” as in, “Will the American experiment survive?”
The first congresses, including the ones that gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were making it up as they went along, and even they didn’t know what they were doing. They just did it. They knew they didn’t want what they had, so whatever they were going to do was going to be something never tried before. So they tried it.
All of this is like a 400-year-old house that has been adjusted and added on and rebuilt and renovated over time. Folks on the Magna Carta had a really good start on polishing their game over those of us on the American experiment.
Love how byzantine it all is…
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There were rumors a month ago that she would run against Schumer. I don’t think it’s AOC you have to worry about there, but we’ll see.
She’s in the House, not the Senate. She can neither run nor vote for majority leader, and she has already said she can’t/won’t run for Speaker.
I don’t think she would be a particularly good Speaker of the House anyway. I like her, but that role is not her political strength.
I was just pointing out that all signs indicate she doesn’t support Schumer being reelected.
I agree. I am warming up to the idea of her as president though.
What? You said she might run against Schumer, who is in a different house of Congress. He’s a Senator. She’s a Representative.
Yes, there were rumors months ago that AOC might run for Senate against Schumer.
AOC refuses to rule out run against Senate leader Chuck Schumer
There has been on again/off again speculation for years that she may challenge his seat when he is up for re-election again.
She may run against Schumer, but in the next Democratic primary election for Senator
I imagine it would be hard for her to vote for Schumer since she’s in the House, but I read that she did some horse trading with Jeffries so might feel obligated to support him… I think if she wants to maintain her leadership of the progressive wing of the party–which is the real source of her power–she’s going to have to abandon that sinking ship.
I believe she’s smarter than to support Jeffries and Schumer with the way the winds are blowing right now.
I agree. The time to come at the king is now.
She doesn’t get to vote for Majority leader. She’s a representative, not a senator.
The House and the Senate each have a majority leader, refered to as the House Majority Leader and the Senate Majority Leader, AFAIK.
You are wrong. You could look it up, you know.
I think you might want to re-adjust your confidence level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_leader
True, but it also says:
This is why most people doesn’t know it. It seems like it is just a good trivia fact.
Indeed it does. But this is not one of them.
Thanks.
deleted by creator
Or simply mistaken, friend.
Oh, sorry. I misread what you were saying because I’m incredibly stupid sometimes myself.
This took me 5 seconds:
https://www.house.gov/leadership