Ocasio-Cortez isn't an outsider - She's just another establishment Democrat in the making
Here we have a millennial politician running as a Democrat, making all sorts of empty promises of Hope and Change, of Making America Great Again, but spoken by a different face, with different words.
And just like that, a brand new face has emerged on to the political scene in the form of one Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a pretend socialist running in the corporate-owned Democratic Party with a "middle class" bootstrap story straight out of the wealthy suburbs of Yorktown Heights, New York, where the median household income is a relatable $95,000/year.
Year after year, the mainstream media begs us to swoon over a candidate they choose to parade across all the late night and early morning talk shows as a champion of the people, as if they are some kind of fighter of the establishment. But as the old saying goes, "The revolution will not be televised" - and adding to that, your revolutionaries probably won't be spotted dancing with Ellen or cracking jokes with Jimmy Kimmel.
We've been here before. Coincidentally, almost always during an election year.
Consider these utterly ridiculous headlines:
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Versus The Machine"
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Bay Area: 'This is about a movement'"
"America's new revolutionaries show how the left can win"
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Fights the Power"
My, it feels like only yesterday when a young and handsome African-American Senator from Illinois was promising to close down Guantanamo Bay, put an end to widespread government surveillance, withdraw US troops from Iraq, and to usher in a government so transparent, we could see right through it.
Eight years later, with Obama long gone from office, we can see the results of those lofty pledges: Guantanamo remains open, government surveillance was amplified and NSA whistleblowers were prosecuted, US troops remained in Iraq and also found their way to Syria and Libya, and Obama's government was so transparent, he accepted an award for it - in private, with the media banned. (Seriously.)
Republicans learned from Obama's successful manipulation of American voters.
First, they tested the waters with Rand Paul, an interventionist abroad and a drug warrior at home. Paul, backed by corporate astroturf organizations like FreedomWorks, was tasked with hijacking the growing libertarian movement, pandering to millennials, and going on a "Black and Brown tour" to target minorities in a pathetic attempt to fold them in to the GOP establishment.
In retrospect, his bid for presidency was probably less about actually winning and more about rallying up young voters and minorities before dropping out of the race and encouraging them to support his old golfing buddy Donald Trump.
This is similar to what Bernie Sanders did, and has done for decades, first starting with Bill Clinton in 1992 and concluding with his shameful endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016, an action that effectively absorbed any "revolution" he was supposedly starting.
Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign has already followed a similar path, evident by the corporate pillaging taking place under his administration. His "revolution" - like every other "revolution" started by someone running in either of the two major political parties - will inevitably end once he leaves office, only to be replaced by another phony "revolution" that will take its place.
And all of this brings us to what makes the hype around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez so frustrating. Here we have a millennial politician running as a Democrat, making all sorts of empty promises of Hope and Change, of Making America Great Again, but spoken by a different face, with different words.
We're expected to believe it will be different this time, but we've heard that before.
We've been here before.
Running against the establishment by supporting it
"In 2020, should you win in November, can you say right now you will, unequivocally, back the Democratic nominee in opposition to President Trump? Meaning, if this were 2016, would it be a guarantee that Hillary Clinton would have gotten your vote?"
This was the question posed to Ocasio-Cortez during a 2018 CNN interview.
"Yeah," she enthusiastically responded.
The CNN host then added to the question:
"Or do you foresee a reasonable scenario in which that wouldn't happen?"
"Um, no, I think we're just at a moment where we absolutely have to support the Democratic nominee against President Trump, absolutely, without question."
Would any realistic definition of an outsider to the establishment describe someone willing to "unequivocally" endorse Hillary Clinton, a decades-long insider with mega ties to banks and corporations? Would any realistic definition of an outsider to the establishment be someone who would blindly support literally any candidate in the Democratic Party, without knowing who they are, what their values are, just because they are the opposing party to Republicans?
Or would this description more likely be of someone with loyalty not to their proposed ideas, but to the Democratic Party, and keeping it in power no matter what?
It gets worse.
Consider her response when asked during a PBS interview how she reflects on the legacy of Barack Obama:
"I think for me I try to look through Obama's legacy with as clear eyes as I possibly can. I certainly phone banked for him in 2008 as a young college student and I think that - I acknowledge that his administration came in at a very difficult time. He came in at the pitch of a financial crisis, he came in to, just, I think, unprecedented obstructionism from the Republican Party. He came at a time when, I believe, that the Republican Party started putting party over people and that has created a very destabilizing dynamic. I think that he tried, I think he did his best, I do have my critiques - I think that we got a little too corporate friendly in terms of policies, in terms of how we recovered from the financial crisis. I don't agree with all of our foreign policy, and drone strikes, um, but I also acknowledge that we did make progress during his presidency and I do think that it's my responsibility and our generation's responsibility to build on that."
This question could have been a prime opportunity to deviate from Obama's legacy. Instead, Ocasio-Cortez chose to gloss over and cling to it. Such a response isn't revolutionary; it's apologetic. It's delicate. It's too nice and far too friendly to an administration that promised many of the the same voters supporting Ocasio-Cortez a departure from the status quo only to betray them and become a torchbearer of it.
Yes, Obama came in at a "very difficult time" - but what point in American history wasn't difficult? Glossing over Obama's failures by blaming them on the time period, and on Other Party Obstructionism, is what establishment insiders do to cover up the misdeeds of their own party and to stay in the clique. Saying you "don't agree with all of our foreign policy" while failing to acknowledge that Obama received more money from defense companies than a warhawk like John McCain during the 2008 campaign, and then went on to bomb 7 Muslim countries before leaving office, might make one wonder why you only mentioned drone strikes instead of whole-heartedly rejecting US imperialism at its core by denouncing Obama for being a warmonger no different than Trump or George W. Bush.
Update - January 2019: AOC expressed support for Nancy Pelosi back in November 2018: "Right now, out of the field, I would say that [Pelosi] is the most progressive candidate. All of the rebellion for the Speakership are challenges to her right, and so I think it's important to communicate that. My standard in this is: I'm going to support the most progressive candidate that's leading the party, and right now, that is Nancy Pelosi, in terms of the running. I would like to see new, younger leadership, but I don't want new leadership that's more conservative."
AOC also received an endorsement from former President Barack Obama in October 2018, which she proudly accepted:
And speaking of foreign policy
Ocaiso-Cortez's absolute lack of emphasis when it comes to cutting defense spending speaks volumes. When asked how she would pay for added social programs, she almost exclusively mentions raising taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. During those rare times when she does mention defense spending, as she did during a July 2018 interview with Trevor Noah, it comes up at the very end of her explanation and is referred to in gentle terminology as "reprioritization".
The problem here is that gutting defense spending shouldn't be the ending point of any serious response on how to improve social programs, especially in a country where $700 billion taxpayer dollars are nonchalantly passed off to weapons manufacturers. Gutting defense spending should be mentioned first and foremost, without question, without hesitation, every single time.
Perhaps the reason Ocasio-Cortez fails to do this and instead sticks with safe, populist messages like raising taxes on the wealthy is because she actually has no interest in challenging such an overwhelmingly powerful industry. In fact, her entire "anti-war" platform needs to be placed under an intense microscope given what little we know about it.
First, there are the obvious signs, like her willingness to brush over and support war criminals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. To reiterate, Obama bombed 7 Muslim countries while in office: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria. His administration continued to prop up a dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, continued to funnel money into Israeli aggression against Palestine, and oversaw a murderous aerial drone program which went so far as to target American citizens and their children. Standing proudly at his side for a good chunk of this bloodbath was Hillary Clinton, who not only supported Obama's activities, but actively campaigned for them in the media. For Ocasio-Cortez to support either of these two monsters is no small observation and is certainly nothing to be taken lightly.
Then there's the fact that her anti-war platform vanished from her website and only reappeared after disappointed fans pointed it out, and what does appear on that website is her opposition to the wars not because of their immorality, but because of their lack of legality: "According to the Constitution, the right to declare war belongs to the Legislative body, not the President. Yet, most of these acts of aggression have never once been voted on by Congress."
Her views on Israeli aggression against Palestine are also telling. After criticizing Israeli violence against Palestine during a PBS interview with Margaret Hoover, she immediately backpedaled like a coward, claiming she's not an "expert":
"I come from the South Bronx, I come from a Puerto Rican background, and Middle Eastern politics was not exactly at my kitchen table every night."
But Middle Eastern politics not being the hot topic of kitchen table discussions is hardly an excuse to be so willfully ignorant of geopolitics, especially for someone running for office, and even more so for someone attempting to portray themselves as a fighter of the establishment.
There are other areas of her foreign policy views also worth mentioning.
For example, Ocasio-Cortez has apparently joined the Democratic Party séance to resurrect the crazed ghost of Senator Joseph McCarthy in an attempt to once again petrify Americans with the evil Russian bogeyman. In an interview with The Intercept, she said:
"We now have Russia playing a very aggressive role in other nations. We have what we saw in Europe ahead of the French elections where, thankfully, they had planned for a cyberattack, but we have a lot of the destabilization of our political institutions as well. We see the role that Russia is playing in that. We see that, for example, because of the domestic role that the Trump administration is playing in this protectionist ante up, we see China - this has been happening before Trump - but now especially during this administration, they are now starting to fill that vacuum of power that the United States formerly held. So I think that from our vantage point, within the United States we have to address those two things."
Russia's "aggressive role in other nations" pales in comparison to America's hostile activities around the world. Our bloated defense budgets year after year, our military bases dotting every corner of the globe, our unaccountable torturers, our drone strikes, our support for dictatorships, our funding for "rebel" groups in countries our government doesn't like, our military occupations in mineral-rich countries. Does Ocasio-Cortez want to concern herself with this "vacuum of power that the United States formerly held" or does she want to cut defense spending? Because rekindling the atomic flames of the Cold War with Russia and China probably isn't going to lead to a scenario where defense companies are making less money.
During the same Intercept interview, Ocasio-Cortez was asked by Jeremy Scahill:
"Is there any US military action since 9/11 that you would have supported if you were in Congress? Let's go from September 11th, 2001, to today, as we speak. Bombing a country, drone strikes, snatching people off the streets, invading countries, surging as Obama did in Afghanistan."
To which she replied:
"In terms of aggressive military actions, no. I'm proud to have the endorsement of Common Defense which is a group of military veterans and their families that are trying to fight for social justice and economic justice and peace in the world abroad. So when I had these conversations - I think it's important to echo that not all military actions are what you're discussing. In terms of what you're discussing, probably not. The only one that, I mean, even with the surge, with Obama's surge, I think what he was trying to do was deal with this mess of going into Afghanistan in the first place. In a sense, there are some tough spots that you're in where when you have boots on the ground, and you have those soldiers that are there, pulling out immediately sometimes isn't the most stabilizing course of action. So I think there, maybe. But I don't think that these drone strikes were just. I don't think that essentially this blank check on wars that the AUMF provided that allowed us to go into places like Yemen and, so on, to essentially wage war that Americans don't even know about - I think all of those actions are pretty reprehensible and they don't serve to further stabilize communities and, in fact, we've pumped arms into a lot of these areas. We arm one rebel group and then that eventually becomes a destabilizing force five years on from that."
What could have been a simple response, an easy "No, I don't support any of the post-9/11 wars" instead morphed into a block of text about how "not all military actions" are created equal, defending the "mess" that Obama made messier by authorizing a "surge" in Afghanistan, saying that sometimes there are "tough spots" where we need boots on the ground - where "pulling out immediately" isn't the most "stabilizing" course of action - and then rounding it all up by talking about how destabilizing it all is.
When asked during a campaign rally in support of Abdul El-Sayed by a World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporter whether she supports the full withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East, Ocasio-Cortez replied:
"I'm sorry, I'm here to support Abdul."
The next day, another WSWS reporter asked Ocasio-Cortez the same question at a rally in Ypsilanti, Michigan and received the same rehearsed answer.
Once again, what should be an easy question from a supposedly anti-war candidate turns into a lost opportunity and yet another sign of just another establishment hack pretending to be something else.
Update - January 2019: AOC voted to support a bill reaffirming US loyalty to NATO.
The establishment, peace, and more of the same
To recap, here we have a politician who we're told is the fresh new face of the Democratic Party, a candidate who: voices support for corporate-backed, warmongering tools of the establishment like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; is willing to blindly support the Democratic nominee in 2020, without knowing who they are yet and what their policies will be, simply on the basis of them belonging to the same political party and nothing more; claims to be anti-war while peddling fear about countries like Russia and China; lacks guts when it comes to calling out Israel, and standing behind those accusations instead of folding under pressure; talks about reviving social programs without emphasizing the importance of cutting defense spending as the primary first step; and a candidate who has so far squandered countless opportunities to give revolutionary answers to questions that could positively deviate her from the political norm.
Adding to this is one last point regarding her campaign disclosures, which are hardly the worst but remain nonetheless interesting. Ocasio-Cortez is backed by a slightly scammy Political Action Committee called Justice Democrats, which wants to flood the Democratic Party with new faces in the 4,593,019th attempt at "reforming" it. At the time of this article, Ocasio-Cortez has taken $5,000 from MoveOn.org, an organization that should scream "establishment" given its role in backing dozens of mainstream Democrats. And perhaps most interestingly, JP Morgan employees gave Ocasio-Cortez $3,000, which is a low number yet still one far too high for a candidate supposedly running as an outsider.
During a 2018 interview with Pod Save America, Ocasio-Cortez made her political intentions clear, emphasizing that she's not here to "burn the house down" while also clearly stating that she isn't a hardliner: "Some people are a hardliner, I'm not a hardliner kind of person. I'm very pragmatic so I meet everybody where they're at even if you call yourself a Republican." In other words, her political platform is flexible. She's willing to "learn and evolve" - which is exactly the kind of doublespeak one would expect to hear from any other politician attempting to justify their flip-flopping, inconsistencies, pandering, and paper-thin backbone.
Ocasio-Cortez is, at the end of the day, a politician from New York, a toxic state that has produced abominations like Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, and Andrew Cuomo, to name a few. Given her adoration for the Democratic Party and willingness to follow its hawkish corporate narrative, one should have few doubts that Ocasio-Cortez will fit in just fine in Congress, and maybe even in the White House one day.
Update - August 2019: AOC voted in support of a bill that included $738 billion for defense spending.