Democratic congressional nominee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is a proud “Democratic Socialist,” but she isn’t trying to force the label on other members of her party.
"It’s part of what I am, it’s not all of what I am,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “And I think that’s a very important distinction."
Ocasio-Cortez defeated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th congressional district last week. Fueling her victory was the same Democratic Socialist movement responsible for Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) rise in the 2016 election, Politico reported.
Ocasio-Cortez said her opponent’s “lack of presence” in the district likely contributed to her win.
“There was, I think, a lack of listening on the ground,” she said. “The lack of going to the grocery store and saying ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ And that is an important part of representation.”
Ocasio-Cortez added that she believes Crowley has provided “phenomenal” service to the district.
“I'm not trying to impose an ideology on all several hundred members of Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But I do think that, once again, it's not about selling an ‘-ism‘ or an ideology or a label or a color. This is about selling our values."
During the interview, Ocasio-Cortez dug into the GOP, saying she feels like they are gaslighting the country, especially with the pending U.S. Supreme Court justice nomination. She said:
We have senators and we have folks trying to figure out the strategy. But in the meantime, the messaging isn’t as clear to the communities that we’re trying to represent. Are we fighting, or not?...For me, I’m a fighter. I’m always one for a fight, especially when we see what the GOP has done. I feel like they are kind of gaslighting the country. Where, when they want to fight, when they want to bend and break the rules and stretch the Constitution to its limits, they’ll do it. But when they’re on the other side of the table, it’s whoa, decorum.
