Ocasio-Cortez Slams Fellow Dems For Being Too ‘Reflexively Anti-Republican’
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic representative from New York, caught attention with an extremely out-of-character remark regarding congressional Republicans.
AOC joined a growing number of Democrats looking to collaborate with President-elect Donald Trump during his second term. Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the progressive wing of her party in Congress, told Punchbowl News on Wednesday that she would support Trump’s policies that align with her values.
“The reason why I think oftentimes Democrats occasionally lose elections is because we’re too reflexively anti-Republican, and that we don’t lean into an ambitious vision for working-class Americans strongly enough,” she told the outlet.
In recent election cycles, Democrats have focused much more on changing the American culture by focusing on gender, diversity, and other far-left issues like climate change while merely paying lip service to so-called “kitchen table issues” like food inflation and high gas and home prices.
Punchbowl News reported that many Democrats are adopting a different approach than the resistance-style tactics seen during Trump’s first term.
Several issues where some Democrats believe they can find common ground with the incoming president include securing the border, reforming wasteful government spending, and advancing certain economic reforms.
“I don’t think the American people want extremism, but they do want changes at the border,” Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz told the outlet.
The lawmaker stated that his party is addressing their election loss by recognizing their disconnect with voters on critical issues, such as immigration. “On some of these issues, we were to the left of the American people,” he admitted.
Several Democrats have expressed support for the Laken Riley Act, an immigration reform bill that passed the House on Tuesday. According to Punchbowl News, 48 Democrats in the lower chamber voted in favor of the bill, marking an increase of 11 votes from the previous Congress.
But nearly 160 House Democrats voted against the measure — including Ocasio-Cortez and all of her so-called far-left “Squad” members.
“We should pursue every opportunity around border security and immigration reform,” Ohio Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman, who did support the bill, told the outlet.
“That’s number one, and number two is getting costs down,” he added.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is urging his Democratic Senate colleagues to create a spectacle during the confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
“Republicans spent four years attacking the Democratic brand, and we need to use the hearings to begin returning the favor,” Schumer told top committee Democrats in a meeting Wednesday afternoon, Axios reported.
Schumer told the Democratic caucus during a lunch on Tuesday that they should interrogate Trump’s nominees about the president-elect’s agenda and its potential impact on Americans, according to Axios.
He reminded senators that they have a chance to take control of the narrative from the GOP on key issues such as the economy, the border, and cultural matters, despite virtually ignoring all three issues for the past four years of the Biden-Harris administration.
Schumer argued that there is more political advantage in challenging Trump’s agenda than in finding common ground with it, according to Axios — an assessment that appears to be at odds with the fact that Trump won a mandate victory by blowing out Vice President Kamala Harris in terms of electoral votes while also capturing a popular majority.
Democrats have raised objections to several of Trump’s nominations, including Pete Hegseth for defense secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Kash Patel for FBI director, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Newsmax on Friday that he is “really not expecting any help from Democrats” as the confirmation hearings approach. “I wish we were going to get some, but I doubt it,” Johnson added. “I’ll be satisfied if they don’t obstruct our process of moving forward and confirming those people.”
