Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, affectionately known as AOC, has conservatives so agitated that they are foaming at the mouth. She has become their favorite target. Whenever Ocasio-Cortez is in the news, conservatives fall all over themselves trying to find new ways to attack her intelligence.
Ocasio-Cortez should be flattered by this. When else has a freshman Representative in Congress engendered so much fear from her opposition that they spend so much time and effort trying to insult her whenever she happens to make the news?
That is exactly what is going on here. Conservatives fear Ocasio-Cortez. That is because she represents a threat to the political establishment.
Coming seemingly from nowhere, Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, defeated a powerful member of the House Democratic leadership, Joseph Crowley, in the congressional primary for a district representing parts of Queens and the Bronx. Crowley had been rumored to be a potential successor to Nancy Pelosi when Pelosi eventually steps down from her role as Speaker of the House.
At the time of her primary victory, Ocasio-Cortez worked as a waitress in a taqueria in New York. She has been described as a political novice. However, she had worked as an intern for Ted Kennedy, an organizer for Bernie Sanders' 2016 primary campaign, and for an organization that supported leadership in the Hispanic community, the National Hispanic Institute. Her education includes a bachelor of arts degree in International Relations and Economics from Boston College.
Ocasio-Cortez, who emphasized her working class background, captured national attention running a grass-roots campaign. She won the general election, becoming the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
Her agenda is unabashedly progressive. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and represents a very liberal congressional district.
When preparing to join Congress, Ocasio-Cortez complained of the orientation program for new members hosted by Harvard. She expressed exasperation that guests included corporate CEOs and lobbyists, but no one from labor unions, no activists and no community leaders. In doing so, she exposed the bias the pervades the American political system to the detriment of the working class.
Ocasio-Cortez boldly spoke out about the disadvantages and unfair images that the working class, and in particular minorities, face. She criticized the use of unpaid interns by congressional members, noting that it prevented working class students from receiving valuable experience during their education, since such students often had to find paying jobs to support their education. She rallied against the image that the poor were responsible for their own position in life, panning a Chase Bank tweet that implied that the poor should skip coffee houses, restaurants and taxi cabs.
Ocasio-Cortez noted that before she became a Representative in Congress, she would wake up n the middle of the night worried if she had paid a certain bill on time. This was not because she was irresponsible. It was because she was not being paid a living wage. Now she had a congressional salary and government health insurance, eliminating a major expense from her former life. She wanted all Americans to be able to avoid the anxiety caused by low wages.
In sum, Ocasio-Cortez bucked the system, and exposed its biases against minorities and the working class, commanding media attention along the way. She defeated a powerful incumbent, and then won a general election without relying heavily on corporate donations to her campaign. She freely exposes how intertwined corporate special interests and the government are, and how freshman members are expected to continue with system. She decries the situation of the working class poor, and debunks the myths that lead to their stigmatization.
It is because she bucks the system, and does so successfully, while representing views to which conservatives are diametrically opposed, that conservatives feel the need to attack her. In doing so, conservatives have, at times, shown how ridiculous and petty their criticisms are.
Ocasio-Cortez uses social media, such as Instagram and Twitter, to reach her constituency directly. She takes advantage of social media's platform, which emphasizes the use of video, to present herself talking about issues in informal settings. Conservatives have scoured over this video repeatedly in an attempt to find what they consider to be gaffes in order to question her intelligence.
On the campaign trail, for example, Ocasio-Cortez spoke at her alma matter, Boston College. She cautioned supporters that even if the Democrats won big in the election, they would not get everything they wanted right away. "[A]s much as I would love that. I would like to get inaugurated January 3, January 4 we’re signing health care, we’re signing this, we’re signing de-incarceration. But really, it is that we have a duty to always fight and maintain the strength of our values."
Taking Ocasio-Cortez's words out of context, Fox and Friends presented the video, saying to their audience that she lacks the requisite knowledge of how government works. Specifically, they laughed, it is only the President who is inaugurated and signs bills into law.
First, while members of Congress are technically "sworn-in," the dictionary definition of "inauguration" includes "the formal admission of someone to office." Indeed, when she was sworn-in, news media, including NBC, referred her speech that followed as an "inaugural address." Nit-picking over a word that conveys the same meaning just made Fox News, and others who repeated the criticism, look silly.
Second, when viewed in context, it is clear that Ocasio-Cortez was tempering the expectations of her supporters, and noting that progressives like herself have a lot of work to do before legislation could be passed. The use of the word "we're" indicates that she was not speaking of signing bills herself, but of progressives like her passing legislation into law consistent with their agenda, such as expanding health care coverage and addressing criminal justice reform.
Likewise, conservatives attempted to attack her working class background. A video showing how she dressed in the first days of the new Congress were meant to show that despite her claims that she personally had little money in the bank, that somehow she could afford expensive clothes. A video showing Ocasio-Cortez dancing with friends while attending Boston College was used in an attempt to argue that her self-portrayal of understanding the struggling of the working class was inaccurate. These attempts failed to convince a wider audience, and only demonstrated the pettiness of conservative criticism.
Ocasio-Cortez represents a political movement where women of color have started to gain inroads to governmental positions. She joins Ilham Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, affectionately known as "the Squad," as freshman Representatives of color who vocally oppose President Trump and the Republican agenda. Members of the Squad have not been shy in exposing the cruelty of Trump's immigration policies. Upon visiting detention centers along the southern border, the Squad exposed abuses asylum-seeking families faced, such as lack of medical care and being forced to find drinking water from a cell's toilet. Threatened by this revelation, Trump infamously responded that members of the Squad should "go back to where they came from." Never mind that three of the four Representatives were born in the United States, and Ilham Omar was a Somali refugee who earned U.S. citizenship. Opposing Trump earned the Squad racist criticism from the President.
Concerning her policy positions, conservatives love to remind the public that they amount to "socialism," a word meant to invoke fear in the electorate. The conservative's playbook is to label a proposal they oppose as "socialism," and then cite a country, such as Venezuela, as their proof that socialism is bad. Never mind that socialism is an economic system, not a political one, and that the political instability in Venezuela is due to authoritative overreaching of the executive. Conservatives ignore that popular programs in the United States are socialistic in nature, such as social security and subsidies to farmers hurt by Trump's trade war. President Trump loves to cite Norway as a model country. Yet Norway implements socialist policies, such a free secondary education.
Conservatives also like to exaggerate Ocasio-Cortez's policy proposals. Ocasio-Cortez, for example, became a spokesperson for the proposed House Resolution 109, known as the "Green New Deal." The proposal was not legislation, in the sense that it created no legal obligations. Rather, the Green New Deal was simply a list of goals divided into two parts. The first part set goals for the United States to combat climate change, such as reducing carbon emissions to net zero within ten years. The second part recognized that this would be a radical change in the economy, and that the Government should do what it could to protect those who would otherwise be displaced by the changes. The resolution made nothing illegal, and contained no proposals on how to reach the goals. It was meant simply to start the serious debate needed to address climate change in the hopes of avoiding catastrophic change.
Critics, of course, represented the resolution as banning popular items of Americana. Thus, the proposal to build high speed rail was represented as a ban on domestic air travel. The goal of eliminating America's dependence on fossil fuels was represented as a ban on cars and office buildings. Proposed reductions in carbon emissions was represented as an attack on bovine flatulence, and thus a ban on hamburgers. Thus, conservatives chose to oppose Ocasio-Cortez's proposals through misrepresentations and scare tactics.
Recently, Ocasio-Cortez has made a new ambitious legislative proposal, addressing the plight of the working class. The proposal includes limiting rent increases, enforcing a living wage, redefining the poverty line to include expenses not originally contemplated such as child care and internet access, and ratifying the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
These proposals recognize problems that the working class poor face in their daily lives, such as inflated housing expenses, and a minimum wage that has been frozen at $7.25 per hour since 2009. To conservatives, they are radical ideas which threaten the interests of big business. Ocasio-Cortez will certainly face strong opposition to her legislation.
Nonetheless, Ocasio-Cortez is serving an important function in U.S. politics. She is using the attention that the media is giving her to start important conversations over policy, and ensuring that the interests of the working class are being addressed. With a divided Congress, it is not likely that her proposals will pass and be implemented. But calling attention to those against whom the deck is stacked is vital if America is to be true to the value of equality before the law.
By: William J. Kovatch, Jr.
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