Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the Democratic Party leans to the right of the political center.
The New York Democrat spoke at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event held in Harlem’s Riverside Church on Monday. While there, the 30-year-old lawmaker claimed that the United States lacks a “left party” politically.
“We don’t have a left party in the United States. The Democratic Party is not a left party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The Democratic Party is a center or center-conservative party.”
“We can’t even get a floor vote on Medicare for All, not even a floor vote that gets voted down. So, this is not a left party,” she continued, referring to a policy proposal that would provide health insurance to all while eliminating private insurance options. “There are a lot of true believers that we can ‘capitalism’ our way out of poverty in the Democratic Party. If anything, that’s probably the majority.”
The comments echoed an argument Ocasio-Cortez made earlier this month when she called the Democratic Party “too big of a tent.”
“In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are,” she said. “They let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive.”
Ocasio-Cortez was elected to the House in 2018 after unseating Rep. Joe Crowley, 57, chairman of the Democratic caucus, who had held the seat for two decades. The young lawmaker, a socialist, immediately stationed herself as one of the most radical members of the Democratic Party.
She proposed the Green New Deal, a resolution to curb or stop man-made climate change and eliminate economic inequality. The resolution’s goals were to reach a 100% renewable energy target and encourage the transition with massive spending on infrastructure and social programs, including universal healthcare.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took up the resolution in the Senate, and it failed with a vote of 57 to 0. Most Democrats in the chamber voted “present” to protest the vote, which they said was rushed through committee to the Senate floor. The House has yet to vote on the measure.
