Gloomy record
“A Shit Show”: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez settles accounts with the US Congress
Disillusioned after three years as a member of Congress: the young US Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
© Alex Wong / Getty Images
She is one of the wild young US Democrats and was one of Donald Trump’s favorite enemies. After three years as a congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes stock. She looks gloomy.
Your abbreviation AOC has long since become a kind of trademark. As the most prominent voice of the “Squad”, a group of young, left-wing US Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has made a name for herself in Europe – also because, as a controversial MP, she was a favorite opponent of ex-President Donald Trump. After three years as a member of Congress, the New Yorker has now taken stock in a detailed interview. In doing so, she does not leave a good hair on the parliamentary business on Capitol Hill in Washington.
“Honestly, it’s a shit show. It’s scandalous every day,” AOC told The New Yorker magazine in drastic terms. The legislative process consists mainly of poorly prepared plans and missed opportunities to make things happen. US President Joe Biden is far too reserved, the Republicans are undemocratic and the media is sensational.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Some got used to it
There are certainly colleagues who have gotten used to all of this or have long been desensitized, but she is sometimes amazed at what she experiences in the Capitol. “Being in a room with some of the most powerful people in the country and seeing them make decisions – sometimes they’re just prone to groupthink and self-deception.” As an example, she described the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill — a key project of the Biden administration. After a months-long standoff over calls to pass the much broader Build Back Better Act first, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House Speaker, finally untied the knot and the infrastructure program passed. However, the Build Back Better Act with a large number of educational, climate and family benefits has not made any progress since then.
Ocasio-Cortez cannot understand the joy of Joe Biden’s political success in this form: “People are really convincing themselves that passing the infrastructure plan (…) is the only important decision of the presidency – more than the voting rights, more than the Build Back Better Act itself, which contains the bulk of the President’s actual plan,” according to AOC. To see how the MP colleagues make decisions is a “fascinating psychological moment”.
Concern about democracy in the USA
The 32-year-old is concerned about the state of the two political parties in the United States. In her own party, she longs for a generation change and she wishes for more courage in political action. “I wish our party were able to support a courageous leadership that addresses the causes [für die Probleme des Landes] can tackle,” says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Joe Biden is also too reserved – even if, due to the wafer-thin Democratic majority, some things are simply “outside the President’s control”. the midterm election year is not good, citing the hesitation to scrap student loans as an example, which alienated a key constituency that Ocasio-Cortez said was “completely within his power.”
The young New Yorker considers a strong Democratic party to be important, also because of the way the Republicans have developed since Donald Trump was in office. According to the GOP, the Grand Old Party, there is a “very real risk” that the United States will no longer be a democratic state in about a decade. “What we’re risking is having a government that might pose as a democracy and might try to pretend it is but it isn’t,” Ocasio-Cortez said. We are already witnessing the beginning of this development, says AOC, and always leads attacks on the right to vote where “republican power is threatened by changing electorates and demographics”. “It’s a white, nationalist, reactionary politics that’s beginning to grow to a critical mass.”
AOC running for Senate soon?
As far as their own future is concerned, AOC does not let themselves be looked at in the interview. She does not comment on rumors that she could soon run for the Senate. She works tirelessly for the interests of working people, and that can also get her out of office and into activism. But despite all the criticism, despite all the frustration about the processes in the Capitol and despite her tendency to be very cynical at times, the daily work in Washington has value. “I reject total cynicism that what is happening here is fruitless.”
Sources: “The New Yorkers”, The Hill