According to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the Democratic Party is not a “left party,” it is “a center or a center-right party.”
Speaking at an event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Ocasio Cortez said, “We don’t have a left party in the United States.”
“The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center or a center-conservative party,” she continued.
Watch her comments below:
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She noted that the House has not held a vote on progressive policies such as Medicare for all.
“We can’t even get a floor vote on Medicare for All, not even a floor vote that gets voted down. We can’t even get a vote on it. So this is not a left party.”
“But you’re right, it does convey a certain sentiment about true believers,” she added. “And there are a lot of true believers, in that we can capitalism our way out of poverty … if anything that’s probably the majority. And that’s an area in which I agree with Dr. King, that assessment is flawed.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been critical of the Democratic Party before, arguing that moderate members of Congress have too much sway over the party’s agenda in an interview with New York Magazine.
She also claimed that “in any other country,” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would not be in the same party as her because of their policy differences.
“In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”
Biden seems to agree with the notion that the Democratic Party supports a moderate agenda. In an interview with Axios in December, he dismissed the notion that Ocasio-Cortez was leading the party further left.
“You all thought that what happened was the party moved extremely to the left after Hillary,” he said, adding, “AOC was a new party. She’s a bright, wonderful person, but where’s the party? Come on, man.”
While Ocasio-Cortez and Biden feel the party is more moderate, a Quinnipiac poll from October of 2019 found that almost half of Americans think the party has moved too far to the left.