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WOW2: November 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 11-1 thru 11-8 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-04  

November 8, 2020 – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the Democratic party leadership for incompetence in a no-holds-barred, post-election interview with the New York Times , warning that if the Biden administration does not put progressives in top positions, the party would lose big in the 2022 midterm elections. Signaling that the internal moratorium in place while the Democrats worked to defeat Donald Trump was over, the leftwing New York representative sharply rejected the notion advanced by some Democrats that progressive messaging around the Movement for Black Lives and the Green New Deal led to the party’s loss of congressional seats in last week’s election. The real problem, said Ocasio-Cortez, was that the party lacked “core competencies” to run campaigns. “There’s a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee,” she said. “And there’s a reason that when he didn’t activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party – in and of itself – does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that.” Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a longtime Democratic politician in 2018 and won re-election in 2020 in her Bronx district by more than 50 points, is part of the four-women group dubbed “the squad, who all won reelection. The failure of the party to operate an online strategy “in a real way that exhibits competence,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Times, made it hypocritical for the party to advance criticism of progressive messaging. “If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: ‘This is moderates’ fault. This is because you didn’t let us have a floor vote on Medicare for All.’ And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election?” Ocasio-Cortez said. “They would laugh. And that’s what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.” Citing grassroots activism that produced large turnout in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Georgia which was crucial to Biden’s win, Ocasio-Cortez said, “It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them, or even acknowledge their turnout ... If the party believes after 94% of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organisers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organised Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic party is the John Kasich won us this election? I mean, I can’t even describe how dangerous that is.” Kasich, a former Republican governor of Ohio campaigned for Biden, endorsing him as a centrist that moderate Republicans could get behind. Such an appeal might have had traction in some places, such as northern Michigan and western Omaha, but Trump beat Biden in Ohio by eight points and half a million votes.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/4/2203246/-WOW2-November-2023-Women-Trailblazers-and-Activists-11-1-thru-11-8?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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