Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had grave concerns about left-wing “misogyny”and aggressive supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as he ran for president in 2020, according to a new book.
In The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution, Ryan Grim writes that AOC was more disturbed by the Sanders campaign than she let on.
Grim details that AOC’s unease was mostly with Sanders’s white, male supporters, referred to as “Bernie Bros,” who employed social media to aggressively attack competitors and detractors. Sanders denounced the online bullying but critics say he didn’t go far enough to discourage the behavior.
Grim quotes AOC as saying during the 2020 race, “Bernie’s supporters have been very, very damaging to him, and it’s really frustrating to see and experience. They don’t realize how influential they are. It’s frustrating to feel like they are hurting him. I feel like [Elizabeth] Warren is scooping up LGBT, progressives, women, and progressives of color because of how they isolate.”
The book also says AOC worried that progressives would see the Sanders campaign as “forcing an unnecessary choice between class analysis and race analysis” through their “behavior.”
Both Sanders and Warren actively courted AOC’s endorsement, and the book outlines her struggle to determine who would best represent progressives in the 2020 election. AOC eventually settled on Sanders, although she criticized the campaign’s willingness to accept an endorsement from podcaster Joe Rogan, saying he “alienates so many people and platforms alt-right figures” and a Rogan connection would instigate “an insane amount of blowback” among progressives.
Grim reports that AOC was also concerned with the backlash she and fellow Squad members Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) were receiving from within their own party.
“I was most depressed at the time by the misogyny I saw within the left and how differently [the Squad was] treated,” AOC is quoted as saying.
The book reveals that AOC clashed with then Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who often made fun of her young age. AOC was 28 when she beat 10-term incumbent and Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley in 2018. Grim publishes a text AOC sent him about the tension between the two women:
“The amount of times she told me that … ‘I have protest signs older than you in my basement’ s—. Like yeah, but mine don’t collect dust,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in the text.
Grim, the DC bureau chief of the hard-left website The Intercept, wrote, “Ocasio-Cortez’s curse was her desire to win consensus that she was there to help, coupled with her radical politics.”
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