[ Twice re-elected and comfortable in her political skin, the
Democratic congresswoman makes clear that Biden cant take progressives
for granted.]
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‘THERE’S A VERY REAL DANGER HERE’: AOC ON 2024, THE CLIMATE
CRISIS AND ‘SELLING OUT’  
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David Smith
September 3, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Twice re-elected and comfortable in her political skin, the
Democratic congresswoman makes clear that Biden can't take
progressives for granted. _

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Chile, August 17, 2023, in Palacio
de La Moneda., Photo: Vocería de Gobierno, licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

 

The campaign office of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
[[link removed]] sits
deep in the Bronx, across the street from a Chinese takeaway and
99-cent discount store, near enough to a railway bridge to hear the
rumble of passing trains. The front window of the plain redbrick
building is dominated by a big, smiling photo of the US congresswoman
and notices that say: “We welcome all races, all sexual
orientations, all gender identities, all religions, all abilities,”
and “We say gay in the Bronx”. Inside, the words “¡AOC!
ORGANIZING BASE” are printed in giant purple letters on a wall.

Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 became the youngest woman and youngest Latina
to serve in the House of Representatives, is now 33, twice re-elected
and comfortable in her political skin. She could hardly be described
as an old hand but nor does she channel the shock of the new.
She deploys social media
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enviable authenticity; she grills congressional witnesses like a
seasoned interrogator; she is an object of perverse fascination
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Fox News and rightwing trolls; she has been around Washington long
enough to draw charges of “co-option” and “selling out”.

“AOC Is Just a Regular Old Democrat Now,” ran a headline
[[link removed]] on
New York magazine’s Intelligencer website in July. The article’s
author, Freddie deBoer, argued that Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance on
the Pod Save America podcast
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her endorsement of Joe Biden for president in the 2024 election was
her “last kiss-off to the radicals who had supported her, voted for
her, donated to her campaign, and made her unusually famous in
American politics”.

The Ocasio-Cortez who sits for an interview with the Guardian is
clearly aware of the leftist’s eternal dilemma – purity versus
pragmatism – and determined to navigate it with care. She makes
clear that Biden cannot take progressives for granted next year but
urges Democrats [[link removed]] to
unite against the bigger threat of “fascism” in America. She
condemns the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian president, Vladimir
Putin, but wants the US to be clear about its aims there and
acknowledge “the anxieties of our history”.

And after a summer of extreme heat and wild weather
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she evidently worries that incrementalism will not be enough to
address a climate crisis that is crying out for revolution.

Ocasio-Cortez’s first legislative proposal after arriving on Capitol
Hill was a Green New Deal
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envisions a 10-year national mobilisation in the spirit of President
Franklin Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. That went nowhere, but last
year Biden did sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law
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touting its $369bn investment in clean energy and climate action as
the biggest of any nation in history.

However, the president also approved more oil and gas drilling permits
in his first two years in office than his predecessor, Donald Trump,
according to the Bureau of Land Management.

It is, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges, a mixed picture. “What is
difficult is that the climate crisis does not really care about the
political complexities that we very much have to grapple with in our
work,” she says, wearing a blue dress with floral shoulder pattern
and sitting on a long wooden seat dotted with black and yellow
cushions.

“We can celebrate all of these policies that result in reductions
but we also can’t erase them with increased oil and gas production.
I’m very concerned about where our net math is on that because we
can calculate, yes, we had an enormous amount of reductions that are
represented in the Inflation Reduction Act
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but this is not something that can be measured necessarily in dollars
and cents.

We can celebrate all of these policies that result in reductions but
we also can’t erase them with increased oil and gas production

“It’s measured in carbon tonnes and in emissions and there’s a
lot of funny math that happens in emissions when people talk about
clean coal and how fracking somehow reduces our carbon emissions, when
we know that it increases methane, which is far more powerful than
CO2. While on one hand we can applaud the progress, on the other hand
that in no way erases the the setbacks that we’ve had.”

Ocasio-Cortez has joined Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator
Bernie Sanders in introducing a bill calling on the president
to declare a national climate emergency
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unleash every resource available. In early August, Biden claimed that
he had “practically” declared such an emergency, but in reality he
has not.

Even so, the congresswoman says: “I believe he understands the scale
of the crisis. I think what we are up against, which perhaps should be
discussed more for those of us in the climate movement, is the
geopolitics of this.”

She goes on to describe a challenge that is bigger than one man or one
nation. “The shift in energy represents a real threat to traditional
power globally. As we shift away from non-renewables, we are talking
about threatening power among some of the most influential
institutions in the United States, in Latin America and globally. That
is something that is going to have profound ramifications, all of
which I don’t even believe we can fully appreciate yet.

“I think that is what drives an enormous amount of blowback and
resistance. When you look at, for example, the influence of the Koch
brothers
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US democracy, they basically have historically purchased enormous
amounts of influence over the United States Senate. They are oil
barons. These are fossil fuel companies that have exerted huge amounts
of influence both in US democracy and in global interests.”

 

Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a House committee on oversight and
accountability subcommittee hearing on national security, the border
and foreign affairs on 26 July.  (Photograph: Shutterstock  //  The
Guardian)
Ocasio-Cortez also points to the power and influence of the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and Middle
Eastern nations such as the United Arab Emirates. “When we talk
about the transition to renewable energies, wrapped inside that is a
profound challenge to the current global order and that, I believe, is
something that we’re going to have to contend with in our time.”

For the left, the war in Ukraine
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complicated. Putin’s invasion is by any measure an affront to
morality. But US support for Ukraine has put critics of the
military-industrial complex (the government spends about $900bn a year
on defence, around 15% of the federal budget or 3.3% of the gross
domestic product) in the uncomfortable position of rooting for the
Pentagon and endorsing a windfall for defence contractors. Longtime
sceptics of US imperialism suddenly find themselves aligned with
Republican hawks.

Ocasio-Cortez articulates the uneasy accommodation: “It’s a
legitimate conversation. I think on one hand, it is important for us
to underscore what a dramatic threat to global order Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine is and continues to be. We must defend democracy.
We cannot allow this reversion into almost a late 19th-century
imperial invasion order – it is so incredibly destabilising and
dangerous. We must fight against that precedent. We must protect the
democracy of Ukraine and the sovereignty of Ukraine 100%.

 

Ocasio-Cortez speaks during a news conference by the Congressional
Progressive Caucus on the threat of default on 24 May on Capitol Hill
in Washington.  (Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP  //  The Guardian)
“I think it’s also relevant to acknowledge that this is happening
on the heels of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan
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how many of us were raised growing up saying this was going to be
temporary, and it became a forever war. I believe that acknowledging
the anxieties of our history of that is relevant.

“Indicating to the people of this country what are we looking for,
what are the levels of accountability, is not something that I think
is an affront to democracy. I think the American people understandably
want clarity about what our commitments are, to what extent they are.
I think that is absolutely fair. We do not want a forever war and we
also don’t want a return to a 19th-century imperial order either.”

A self-described democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez has not been
afraid to buck Democratic leadership, including by voting against a
deal that Biden negotiated with Republicans in May to raise the debt
ceiling. In 2020 she made the provocative comment that
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in any other country, she and Biden would not be in the same party.
Yet she has endorsed his re-election in 2024. Does that mean she has
travelled towards him or he towards her?

“I think it means that we have a US political system that’s not
parliamentary, to my envy of many other countries,” she replies
deftly. “There were so many people that were so up in arms about
that comment, which I likely maintain to this day. But I find that
parliamentary systems allow for a larger degree of honesty about the
political coalitions that we must make. It’s not anything negative
towards the president or towards anybody else.

“It’s just a reality that we have very different political
coalitions that constitute the Democratic party and being able to
define that, I actually think grants us much power. It’s to say,
listen, I am not defined by nor do I agree with all of the stances of
this president, and I’m sure neither does he with mine.

“But that does not mean that we are not in this together against the
greater forces and questions of our time, and I think being able to
demonstrate that ability to coalesce puts us in a position of far
greater strength than, say, the Republican party who are at each
other’s necks to the extent that they can’t even fund the
government.”

There has been no greater rallying point for Democrats of all stripes
than Trump. As Paul Begala, a former White House adviser, has
observed
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“Nothing unites the people of Earth like a threat from Mars.”
Ocasio-Cortez, a celebrated member of “the Squad” of House
progressives, regards continued solidarity as imperative for as long
as the quadruple-indicted former president menaces US democracy.

She warns: “We should be candid about the fact that his chances as
the nominee are still the strongest, probably out of the entire
[Republican] field, and what that means. There’s very real danger
here because with our electoral college
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we know it doesn’t matter how many millions more votes you get.
It’s about the smattering of states who just represent a few
thousand votes’ difference between Trump and Biden.

“We are not in 2020, and seeing what that turnout may look like is
something that I’m sure keeps many of us up at night. But that being
said, I know that this is why, to me, support of President Biden has
been very important, because this question is larger than any policy
differences. This is truly about having a strong front against fascism
in the United States.”

Women have emerged as a profound electoral force, especially with the
overturning of Roe v Wade

But will that be enough to motivate the progressive base in 2024?
Trump has no serious primary challenger, but his approval rating
remains mired in the 40s. A recent Emerson College polling survey
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the Green party candidate Cornel West drawing support from 7% of
independents, 8% of Black voters and 7% of Hispanics – key parts of
the Biden coalition. In a hypothetical presidential election, the
survey found 44% support Trump, 39% Biden, 4% West and 13% undecided.

Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges that, after defeating Sanders in the 2020
primary, Biden made welcome efforts
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include progressives on joint policy taskforces and in his
administration. But she cautions that he must now make his case to the
left all over again.

“In 2020 the Biden campaign, after the nomination, did work very
hard to unite the party. We’re very early still in the 2024 election
cycle, but I do believe that it will be very important for President
Biden’s team to once again engage in that coalition-building because
it is not one and done.”

Likewise, she continues, Latino voters
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not be taken for granted. “Republicans have been very aggressive
about building presence in Latino communities, and I believe that we
as Democrats can double and triple down in our efforts to communicate
in a way that’s not just translations of English material, but for
us to manoeuvre ourselves almost as a separate, distinct campaign that
occurs in Spanish or in many of the languages and communities that
constitute the base of the Democratic party.”

Ocasio-Cortez was part of an all-Latino congressional delegation
that recently visited
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Chile and Colombia to begin redefining US relations with Latin America
after decades of interventions and distrust. The group met landless
workers and homeless workers who have organised popular movements
while also becoming a formidable force at the ballot box.

 

Ocasio-Cortez shakes hands with Mayor Iraci Hassler in Santiago,
Chile, on 17 August.  (Photograph: Esteban Félix/AP  //  The
Guardian)
She reflects: “I think sometimes in the US, especially on the left
but even across the political spectrum, there is a struggle between
more grassroots movements feeling as though engaging in electoralism
is a form of selling out, or the compromises required in being part of
a legislative system are somehow delegitimising to an authentic
relationship to advancing the working class.

“I think what we’ve seen from MST [Landless Workers Movement] and
MTST [Homeless Workers Movement] is that there’s actually a way to
do both, that you can preserve your integrity but also understand the
importance of taking a pragmatic approach and being in the game when
it comes to having electoral representation.”

It takes one to know one. Ocasio-Cortez, a former restaurant server
and bartender who in 2018 defeated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley
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a seat that represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, faces the
accusation from some that she has gone from outsider to insider, that
she has become just a little too comfortable toeing the party line.

She laughs. “I think I would be remiss to not mention that I’ve
absolutely been subject to part of that. But just as we hear from some
of these folks in Brazil, we are so underserved without having that
presence in governance. To sacrifice all of that to a historically
neoliberal order has not served us.

 

Ocasio-Cortez and Street Vendor Project advocates call for the
continuation of locally led efforts to improve the Corona Plaza vendor
market in Queens, New York, on 2 August. Photograph: John
Angelillo/UPI  //  The Guardian)
“I think that when you see how even the Democratic party of the
United States has changed in just the last five years alone, we’ve
seen the fruits of being able to have a seat at the table ... I
believe that we would not have the legislation that we have today if
it were not for that progressive representation in government.”

Her commitment to the system, whatever its flaws, invites the question
of whether Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most gifted communicators in
politics today, will run for president herself some day. She does not
say no. “For me personally, I’m very much just motivated by what
the conditions of the present moment are and what we can do to help
advance that cause.

“I am not interested in running for anything – president or
anything else including for re-election in my own seat – just
running for running’s sake. It always comes down to the conditions
of that moment and the possibilities of our time.”

The first woman nominated for president by the Democratic party was
Hillary Clinton in 2016. In Trump, she lost to a rival who gloried in
shameless misogyny
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But Ocasio-Cortez, whose gender, race, age and ideology make her as
antithetical to Trump as can be imagined, refuses to be discouraged.

“I do believe that the power of misogyny is very real and very
potent in American politics,” she says. “But I’m very encouraged
by what has happened since then. I believe women have emerged as a
profound electoral force, especially with the overturning of Roe v
Wade
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Young women especially I think have been very animated and organised
in this moment. I think we are in a moment of generational change.

“We are absolutely contending with an extraordinary misogyny in our
politics. The United States can go around and say what it says, but
many, many, many other countries have elected female heads of state,
whereas the United States has gone well over 200 years without one.
Those barriers are very real, but I think the change of this time is
also giving a lot of us a lot of hope.”

Before getting back to work in an office of greens, purples, whites
and yellows – and hundreds of colourful backpacks for constituents
entering the new school year – she sums up: “Certainly the
conditions have been such and the misogyny in our politics has been
such that we’ve never been able to elect a woman president. But that
doesn’t mean we never will.”

_[DAVID SMITH is the Guardian's Washington DC bureau chief.
Click here
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public key. Twitter @smithinamerica
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