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.”
So I take then you know that was the only issue the bill addressed, with no riders, so you’re certain it should have passed. The MTG bill definitely didn’t fund any wacko conservative garbage, right?
Well, no. Pretty much the only bills that get passed in modern era Congress are omnibus budget bills. MTG’s Israeli funding reduction was a specific amendment to one such bill, which AOC chose to vote against.
I’m sure the rest of what got passed had all sorts of whacko conservative garbage within, because they control the entire federal government at this time. This is likely partially why AOC voted against the actual bill as well.
That said, if you consider Israeli control of the US government an existential threat, which I do, then that makes it even more important to find opportunities to work with the conservatives in power to curtail Israel’s influence, which MTG’s amendment would have done.
AOC could have had her cake and eaten it too, by voting to pass the amendment to remove some funding to Israel, and then casting a performative nay vote for the overall budget bill.
So yeah, I’m disappointed that she chose partisan politics above achieving an impactful, measurable result. But that’s liberals for you. The only reason I care is because I hold AOC to a higher standard than most of them, because she is by far the closest to representing my own values in terms of her actual voting record and what she claims to believe in.