The position puts her at odds with some on the left, such as Rep. Ro Khanna, another potential 2028 contender, who said he wants to find “common ground” with people like Greene.
In a conversation Friday at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics moderated by David Axelrod, the onetime political strategist to President Barack Obama, a student asked Ocasio-Cortez whether she stood by past remarks that there were “legitimate white supremacist sympathizers at the core of the House of Representatives caucus” and, if so, why she worked with some of them.
Ocasio-Cortez did stand by them and said she wasn’t scared of reaching across the aisle, holding up her work with Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. But she set a clear boundary.
“I personally do not trust someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a proven bigot and antisemite, on the issue of what is good for Gazans and Israelis,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t think it benefits our movement in that instance to align the left with white nationalists. I don’t think it serves us.”
You do not win over people who are delusional by playing into their delusions, you acknowledge their delusions and explain it in another way. These people who believe thousands of lies from talking heads mostly got there by not being forced to acknowledge their shortcomings, whether it be about their tribalism, paranoia, guilt, or outright bigotry, it was because those views preexisted and were coddled. Most of the people who want to reach out to conservatives so bad can only fathom doing so by throwing the smallest victim under the bus. Fuck that