In an extensive interview published in The New Yorker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had some criticisms of Republicans, the President, the media, and Congress.
“Honestly, it is a shit show. It’s scandalizing, every single day,” she said.
“Some folks perhaps get used to it, or desensitized to the many different things that may be broken,” she added. “But there is so much reliance on this idea that there are adults in the room, and, in some respect, there are. But sometimes to be in a room with some of the most powerful people in the country and see the ways that they make decisions — sometimes they’re just susceptible to groupthink, susceptible to self-delusion.”
AOC spoke more specifically to the handling of the Build Back Better Act, when it suddenly was separated in order to pass the infrastructure bill alone.
“People really just talk themselves into thinking that passing the infrastructure plan on that day, in that week, is the most singular important decision of the presidency, more than voting rights, more than the Build Back Better Act itself, which contains the vast majority of the president’s actual plan,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“I wish the Democratic Party had more stones. I wish our party was capable of truly supporting bold leadership that can address root causes.”
While she acknowledged a razor thin margin of Democratic majority that limited President Biden’s control, she accused Biden of being too hesitant to exert his influence. She spoke of Biden’s ability to cancel student debt as an example.
As for Republicans, she accused them of exploiting white grievance with their attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and the opposition to voting rights and the states’ attempts to target minority votes.
Ocasio-Cortez says there’s a real risk that the country won’t be a democracy in ten years.
“What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn’t,” she said.
From The Hill, but you can read the entire interview here at the New Yorker.