I am often critical of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In truth, I go a little bit harder on AOC than on most.
There’s a reason for that. It’s because AOC talked a big game and said the right things and marketed herself (successfully) as some revolutionary progressive.
But in reality, AOC is just a generic riding a woke wave on a vessel of social media and cable television.
She’s a hack, and I’m not alone in my assessment. Current Affairs has a new article titled ‘How AOC Went From Influencer to Influenced,’ which takes a deep-dive look into all of AOC’s shortcomings.
AOC Talked a Big Game Up Front
During the Trump administration, AOC narrated a film describing what her signature resolution, the Green New Deal, looked like in a fictional future in which Democrats had regained control of the legislative and executive branches.
“The wave began when Democrats took back the House in 2018, and the Senate, and the White House in 2020, and launched the decade of the Green New Deal, a flurry of legislation that kicked off our social and ecological transformation to save the planet. It was the kind of swing for the fence ambition we needed. Finally, we were entertaining solutions on the scale of the crises we faced, without leaving anyone behind. That included Medicare for All, the most popular social program in American history. We also introduced the federal jobs guarantee, a public option, including dignified, living wages for work.”
That was AOC’s vision for the future. And Democrats did take back the House, Senate, and White House as AOC predicted. But beyond that … crickets … the flurry of progressive legislation never happened. “The party has failed to deliver on practically every promise made during the election campaign,” Lily Sanchez wrote for Current Affairs. And AOC seems somewhat content with that outcome.
Maybe the expectations for AOC were too high, but if that’s true it’s in large part her own doing.
“Two weeks before her election in the 2018 Democratic primary, she said … ‘We need new leadership in the Democratic Party, and we need new leadership in the country’ … In another 2018 interview, she said the Democratic Party needed to “‘return to social advocacy and the working class’ and that the Dems needed to ‘break free’ from ‘corporate money in order to ‘survive.’”
Great. Sounds good. That’s not how things have unfolded, of course. Instead, we got a congresswoman whose first vote in office was to confirm Nancy Pelosi. And it’s been all downhill since then.
Falling Short
Benjamin Studebaker dissected what has gone wrong with AOC and Co. in his 2023 book The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut. Here’s what he had to say.
“What happens when a political movement is strong enough to win a handful of elections in fringe congressional districts, but not strong enough to produce anything like governing majority? It’s politicians have to find some way of appearing effective. They slowly shift the goalposts. They quietly abandon their transformative policy goals instead offer their supporters the satisfaction of symbolic victories. Instead of fighting for big legislation, they fight to embarrass their opponents on television and on Twitter. They make viral videos. They work with the center of the party, because working with the center is the only way to win even small victories. They talk those petty victories up and present them as grand triumphs.”
So, not entirely AOC’s fault. But Studebaker hits on a point I hit on frequently: AOC is more of a social media influencer than a legislator.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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