By: Luke ScanlonAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of biggest names from the newest class of representatives to enter Congress. She is a self-declared Democratic Socialist, and the youngest woman ever in Congress at just 29 years old. She’s been making headlines and drawing criticisms from both sides of the aisle since her meteoric political rise in the 2018 Midterm Elections, and she shows no signs of slowing down as she begins her term as the representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District. Ocasio-Cortez was born and raised in the Bronx to a Puerto Rican mother and a Bronx-native father. Her parents were disappointed with the quality of education at her school in the Bronx, which is the poorest borough in New York, so her extended family helped send her to a better school district. Ocasio-Cortez says the trips from the Bronx to the more affluent parts of New York to stay with her extended family were her first experiences with income inequality.
She was an organizer of Bernie Sanders’ grassroots campaign in the 2016 election, and she applied the same principles of grassroots lobbying to her own campaign. During her campaign in the 2018 Midterm Election, which was her first time running for political office, Ocasio-Cortez refused to accept donations from lobbyists. Instead, she ran a campaign funded by just $200,000 of donations. Meanwhile, her opponent in the Democratic primary, Joe Crowley, collected $3 million in donations and contributions for his primary election campaign. Crowley hasn’t had a challenger in the primary for the past 14 years, and was a strong candidate to be the next Speaker of the House. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory was a major upset to establishment Democrats, and it highlights the division between the establishment and more progressive Democrats. She made this division clear in her campaign video when she said, “This race is about people versus money. We’ve got people. They’ve got money.” Ocasio-Cortez ran a progressive campaign focused on Democratic Socialist policies of spreading the wealth of America and guaranteeing certain rights for all individuals, such as healthcare, employment, public schooling, and housing. Some of her more controversial policy ideas are a “New Green Deal” in which the United States would convert entirely to renewable energy sources by the year 2035 in an effort to combat Climate Change, and a 70% income tax on the nation’s wealthiest individuals to fund this and other policies. She also supports the abolishment of ICE due to its detainment of children, which she refers to as a human rights abuse. Despite her campaign’s focus on constructing policies rather than tearing down other politicians, Ocasio-Cortez has been the target of multiple attempts to embarrass or detract from her character. A few months after her victory in the election, conservative outlets found and spread a video of Ocasio-Cortez dancing from when she was in college in an effort to embarrass her and show her as a clueless millennial. This attempt backfired, however, as many people found the video to be humanizing and Ocasio-Cortez herself posted another video of her dancing with the caption, “Congresswomen dance too.” She has also suffered criticism from within her own party when senior Senate Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Lieberman said, “I certainly hope she’s not the future and I don’t believe she is,” in reference to the future of the Democratic party. Ocasio-Cortez, who has often shirked the traditional formality of establishment Congress, responded by tweeting, “New party, who dis?” Ocasio-Cortez yet again sparked controversy on both sides of the aisle with a tweet claiming that a supposed $21 trillion from the Pentagon that “could not be traced, documented, or explained,” could be used to pay for 66% of the $32 trillion that it would cost to fund Medicare for all. The Washington Post Fact Checker found multiple issues with this statement, including that the $21 trillion from the Pentagon included money coming in and money being spent rather than just money being spent, so it is entirely possible that the positives and negatives simply cancel out and there is no money to be spent on Medicare for all. Another issue is that the $21 trillion from the Pentagon was taken from a span of 17 years, while the $32 trillion needed for Medicare for all would be spent over 10 years, so the values cannot be equated. When called out for this falsehood in an interview with Anderson Cooper, Ocasio-Cortez stated, “I think that there's a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right." When Cooper told her, “But being factually correct is important,” Ocasio-Cortez agreed, stating, “It’s absolutely important, and whenever I make a mistake. I say, ‘Okay, this was clumsy.’ And then I restate what my point was. But it's not the same thing as the president lying about immigrants. It's not the same thing, at all." Whether Ocasio-Cortez’s missteps will hinder her ability to influence policy in the long run is yet to be determined, but her past has made two things clear—she will continue to fight for the policies and the people she believes in, and she will continue to create friction with Republican and Establishment Democrats alike as she introduces her far-left ideas and spunky personality to the House of Representatives.
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