Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, photo courtesy of the office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.
Radical socialist Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been blaming more centrist Democrats for the party’s failure to maintain its wide majority in the House of representatives. But not all the moderates are wilting in front of AOC’s star power. Rep. Connor Lamb and other moderate Democrats are fighting back against “The Squad” and their “unworkable” and “unpopular” ideas for the country. Chris Field reports at The Blaze:
The congresswoman has tried to lay the blame at the feet of moderates and their campaign failures.
One moderate Democrat is daring to call her out and saying she’s not a team player and that her ideas are “unworkable and extremely unpopular.”
What happened?
Beyond the fight for the White House, Democrats were projected to expand their majority in the U.S. House, quite possibly flip the majority of the U.S. Senate, and flip multiple state legislative chambers.
They failed on all counts.
Following last week’s election results, Democrats blamed anti-police and pro-socialism messaging from far-left members for their failures.
Ocasio-Cortez took exception to those claims and instead blamed the party’s losses on GOP smears connecting Democrats to socialism and “defund the police” movements and on moderate Democrats’ poor campaigning efforts that allowed Republican charges to stick.
In an interview with the New York Times during which she said she feels like her party thinks she’s the “enemy,” the congresswoman specifically called out moderate Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb (Pa.) for “criminal” political “malpractice.” She blasted Lamb for spending only $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election as an example of how moderate Democrats’ poor campaigning was what cost her party in 2020 and not radicals like her and her fellow liberal progressives.
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.
But there’s one problem in Ocasio-Cortez’s logic: Lamb won re-election.
And now the congressman is speaking out and, as HotAir’s John Sexton noted, daring to do what other members of his party have refused to do: “talk back to AOC.”
How did Lamb respond?
The Times interviewed Lamb after his victory and noted that he is “one of those moderates who believes the left is costing Democrats in key areas” and that he believes a Biden administration will “govern as it had campaigned: with progressives at arm’s length.”
Lamb told the Times that what went wrong for House Democrats was the message being pushed by progressives (and self-avowed socialists). Their “unrealistic” calls for a far-left agenda alienated a lot of voters, Lamb said.
“I’m giving you an honest account of what I’m hearing from my own constituents, which is that they are extremely frustrated by the message of defunding the police and banning fracking,” he told the Times. “And I, as a Democrat, am just as frustrated. Because those things aren’t just unpopular, they’re completely unrealistic, and they aren’t going to happen.”
The green agenda pushed by people like Ocasio-Cortez “isn’t something to joke around about,” Lamb added.
According to Lamb, the progressive policies and rhetoric have “gone way too far.” Instead, he said, the Democrats’ messaging “needs to be dialed back” and “rooted in common sense, in reality.”
Read more here.
