The congresswoman claims party members ‘took swings’ at her when she was first elected. Now, a dedicated organisation is pleading her to run for president

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.

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    112·
    23 hours ago

    I’ve literally heard these sentiments my entire life, and progressives keep proving it wrong every time.

    The latest was my dad saying, “well of course a progressive could win in New York, but not anywhere else in the country.”

    I think the nation has shown multiple times in the past decade that what we really don’t want is another fucking status quo democrat. The country is desperate for change, and if the democrats and people with your sentiment would take their foot off progressives’ necks and stand behind us instead, progressives could actually make this country great (for the first time, btw).

    • Carl@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      561·
      23 hours ago

      This is exactly why Hillary lost, FWIW. People were tired of establishment dems being in control. They wanted a shakeup. And in response to that, Dems ran the very personification of the establishment. Hillary was the face of everything that people hated about democrats.

      As far as the establishment saw it, she had done her time as a good little soldier, paid her dues promptly, sang the party’s songs, danced the party’s dances, and was “owed” the chance at a presidency because of that. Not because she was the best candidate for the people, but because she was the one who best embodied the establishment that Dems wanted to uphold.

      Instead, people voted for the candidate who promised exactly what people wanted: A shakeup. Trump wasn’t a good candidate during his first campaign, but he did promise an end to the old status quo. And to a lot of voters, that was the only thing that mattered.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
          2·
          9 hours ago

          Because she campaigned heavily in blue states and neglected the states she actually needed to win. While I’m not a fan of the electoral college, in this case Hillary was intentionally playing the wrong game.

      • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
        131·
        21 hours ago

        A bit more context on Clinton: The DNC was pretty much broke and their finances were a mess. Clinton came in and cleaned house and raised a bunch of money and basically saved the DNC from total insolvency. In return for saving their asses, her campaign was given a lot of control over the DNC. She had control of finances and hiring and firing.

        How did the DNC get in such bad financial shape in the 1st place? Was it just incompetance or was there also fraud? If you’re a high level DNC leader, do you owe Clinton for saving your job or do you owe her for preventing a scandal that could land you in jail?

        All this to say, from the outside it looks like “she put in her time, it’s her turn” but from the inside it’s more “we’ve totally fucked up and if we don’t let her take the wheel we will be jobless, disgraced and possibly sued or jailed”

        • Krono@lemmy.today
          15·
          18 hours ago

          That Clinton fundraising didn’t save the DNC, it destroyed its soul.

          Do you think those millions of dollars of corporate cash came without strings? Of course not. After accepting this money, the DNC was all-in on support for the military industrial complex, wall street, health insurers, etc.

          This had horrible effects on DNC policy in the following years- supporting the forever wars, abandoning the public option, bailing out wall street while abandoning working people… So many horrible things were set in motion by this Clinton corruption.

          Before the Clinton sellout we had one corporate party and one moderate party. After the sellout we only have 2 corporate parties to choose from.

          • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
            7·
            13 hours ago

            Do you think those millions of dollars of corporate cash came without strings?

            No. I do not. And I never said otherwise.

            I was not in any way saying that this was a good thing.

            Before the Clinton sellout we had one corporate party and one moderate party. After the sellout we only have 2 corporate parties to choose from.

            Are you talking about Bill? Cuz the DNC has been all about the donors for a long time. Hillary definitely made it worse (as did citizens united) but they’ve been pretty mid (at best) almost my whole life.