[The congresswoman said Joe Biden’s relationship with
progressives would hinge on his actions. And she dismissed criticism
from House moderates, calling some candidates who lost their races
“sitting ducks.”] [[link removed]]

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ ON BIDEN’S WIN, HOUSE LOSSES, AND WHAT’S
NEXT FOR THE LEFT  
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Astead W. Herndon
November 7, 2020
New York Times
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_ The congresswoman said Joe Biden’s relationship with progressives
would hinge on his actions. And she dismissed criticism from House
moderates, calling some candidates who lost their races “sitting
ducks.” _

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke outside her campaign
office in the Bronx on Election Day., Desiree Rios for The New York
Times

 

For months, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a good
soldier for the Democratic Party and Joseph R. Biden Jr
[[link removed]]. as he
sought to defeat President Trump.

But on Saturday, in a nearly hourlong interview shortly after
President-elect Biden was declared the winner, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made
clear the divisions within the party that animated the primary still
exist. And she dismissed recent criticisms from some Democratic House
members who have blamed the party’s left for costing them important
seats
[[link removed]].
Some of the members who lost, she said, had made themselves “sitting
ducks.”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

WE FINALLY HAVE A FULLER UNDERSTANDING OF THE RESULTS. WHAT’S YOUR
MACRO TAKEAWAY?

Well, I think the central one is that we aren’t in a free fall to
hell anymore. But whether we’re going to pick ourselves up or not is
the lingering question. We paused this precipitous descent. And the
question is if and how we will build ourselves back up.

We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve
any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence
of racism at the polls.

But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates.
Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing
district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green
New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of
the legislation, and he kept his seat.

TO YOUR FIRST POINT, DEMOCRATS LOST SEATS IN AN ELECTION WHERE THEY
WERE EXPECTED TO GAIN THEM. IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE ASCRIBING TO RACISM
AND WHITE SUPREMACY AT THE POLLS?

I think it’s going to be really important how the party deals with
this internally, and whether the party is going to be honest about
doing a real post-mortem and actually digging into why they lost.
Because before we even had any data yet in a lot of these races, there
was already finger-pointing that this was progressives’ fault and
that this was the fault of the Movement for Black Lives.

I’ve already started looking into the actual functioning of these
campaigns. And the thing is, I’ve been unseating Democrats for two
years. I have been defeating Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee-run campaigns for two years. That’s how I got to Congress.
That’s how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That’s how Jamaal Bowman
won. That’s how Cori Bush won. And so we know about extreme
vulnerabilities in how Democrats run campaigns.

Some of this is criminal. It’s malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000
on Facebook the week before the election. I don’t think anybody who
is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and
loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really
on the internet.

And I’ve looked through a lot of these campaigns that lost, and the
fact of the matter is if you’re not spending $200,000 on Facebook
with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote
the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. And
not a single one of these campaigns were firing on all cylinders.

WELL, CONOR LAMB DID WIN. SO WHAT ARE YOU SAYING: INVESTMENT IN
DIGITAL ADVERTISING AND CANVASSING ARE A GREATER REASON MODERATE
DEMOCRATS LOST THAN ANY PROGRESSIVE POLICY?

These folks are pointing toward Republican messaging that they feel
killed them, right? But why were you so vulnerable to that attack?

If you’re not door-knocking, if you’re not on the internet, if
your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you’re not
running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don’t see how anyone
could be making ideological claims when they didn’t run a
full-fledged campaign.

Our party isn’t even online, not in a real way that exhibits
competence. And so, yeah, they were vulnerable to these messages,
because they weren’t even on the mediums where these messages were
most potent. Sure, you can point to the message, but they were also
sitting ducks. They were sitting ducks.

There’s a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign
apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee. And there’s
a reason that when he didn’t activate or continue that, we lost
House majorities. Because the party — in and of itself — does not
have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix
that.

If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: “This is
moderates’ fault. This is because you didn’t let us have a floor
vote on Medicare for all.” And they opened the hood on my campaign,
and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the
election? They would laugh. And that’s what they look like right now
trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.

IS THERE ANYTHING FROM TUESDAY THAT SURPRISED YOU? OR MADE YOU RETHINK
YOUR PREVIOUSLY HELD VIEWS?

The share of white support for Trump. I thought the polling was off,
but just seeing it, there was that feeling of realizing what work we
have to do.

We need to do a lot of anti-racist, deep canvassing in this country.
Because if we keep losing white shares and just allowing Facebook to
radicalize more and more elements of white voters and the white
electorate, there’s no amount of people of color and young people
that you can turn out to offset that.

But the problem is that right now, I think a lot of Dem strategy is to
avoid actually working through this. Just trying to avoid poking the
bear. That’s their argument with defunding police, right? To not
agitate racial resentment. I don’t think that is sustainable.

There’s a lot of magical thinking in Washington, that this is just
about special people that kind of come down from on high. Year after
year, we decline the idea that they did work and ran sophisticated
operations in favor of the idea that they are magical, special people.
I need people to take these goggles off and realize how we can do
things better.

If you are the D.C.C.C., and you’re hemorrhaging incumbent
candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may
want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them
[[link removed]].
So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the
country at digital organizing.

The leadership and elements of the party — frankly, people in some
of the most important decision-making positions in the party — are
becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are
blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.

I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years.
That’s also the damn thing of it. I’ve been trying to help. Before
the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat
with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused
my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that
I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every
single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they’re blaming
us for their loss.

So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And
that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is
not the enemy, that Medicare for all is not the enemy. This isn’t
even just about winning an argument. It’s that if they keep going
after the wrong thing, I mean, they’re just setting up their own
obsolescence.

WHAT IS YOUR EXPECTATION AS TO HOW OPEN THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WILL
BE TO THE LEFT? AND WHAT IS THE STRATEGY IN TERMS OF MOVING IT?

I don’t know how open they’ll be. And it’s not a personal thing.
It’s just, the history of the party tends to be that we get really
excited about the grass roots to get elected. And then those
communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.

I think the transition period is going to indicate whether the
administration is taking a more open and collaborative approach, or
whether they’re taking a kind of icing-out approach. Because
Obama’s transition set a trajectory for 2010 and some of our House
losses. It was a lot of those transition decisions — and who was put
in positions of leadership — that really informed, unsurprisingly,
the strategy of governance.

WHAT IF THE ADMINISTRATION IS HOSTILE? IF THEY TAKE THE JOHN KASICH
VIEW OF WHO JOE BIDEN SHOULD BE? WHAT DO YOU DO?

Well, I’d be bummed, because we’re going to lose. And that’s
just what it is. These transition appointments, they send a signal.
They tell a story of who the administration credits with this victory.
And so it’s going be really hard after immigrant youth activists
helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It’s going to be
really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her
district.

It’s really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like
nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don’t see them,
or even acknowledge their turnout.

If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after
Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia,
after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the
Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I
can’t even describe how dangerous that is.

YOU ARE DIAGNOSING NATIONAL TRENDS. YOU’RE MAYBE THE MOST FAMOUS
VOICE ON THE LEFT CURRENTLY. WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM YOU IN THE NEXT
FOUR YEARS?

I don’t know. I think I’ll have probably more answers as we get
through transition, and to the next term. How the party responds will
very much inform my approach and what I think is going to be
necessary.

The last two years have been pretty hostile. Externally, we’ve been
winning. Externally, there’s been a ton of support, but internally,
it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells
progressive.

Is the party ready to, like, sit down and work together and figure out
how we’re going to use the assets from everyone at the party? Or are
they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach?
And that’s going to inform what I do.

IS THERE A UNIVERSE IN WHICH THEY’RE HOSTILE ENOUGH THAT WE’RE
TALKING ABOUT A SENATE RUN IN A COUPLE YEARS?

I genuinely don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to be in
politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I
didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.

REALLY? WHY?

It’s the incoming. It’s the stress. It’s the violence. It’s
the lack of support from your own party. It’s your own party
thinking you’re the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously
in the press and then turn around and say you’re bad because you
actually append your name to your opinion.

I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that
this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke.
That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really
want the Democratic Party to fight for them.

But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher
office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead
somewhere — they’re probably the same.

_ASTEAD W. HERNDON is a national political reporter based in New York.
He was previously a Washington-based political reporter and a City
Hall reporter for The Boston Globe. @AsteadWesley
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