Posted on 07/11/2019 4:05:33 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
A growing number of progressive House Democrats, frustrated with an ongoing spat between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), are taking the freshman New Yorker to task for accusing Pelosi of treating minority women unfairly.
The critics say Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, crossed a line when she accused Pelosi of putting a target on “newly elected women of color” for their far-left policy positions.
The remarks — and the media uproar they’ve created — led exasperated Democrats to sound off Thursday against the freshman social-media sensation, accusing Ocasio-Cortez of harboring unrealistic views about her own influence on Capitol Hill — to the detriment of the Democrats’ ambitious policy agenda.
“What a weak argument,” said Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of both the Black and Progressive caucuses. “Because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. Unbelievable to me.”
Other liberals, while not so seething, also defended Pelosi, warning of the political dangers of adhering to stringent ideological demands — and airing gripes with other Democrats in public.
“You know how people lose the elections? By not having the ability to see the big picture and not being able to keep their eye on the ball,” said Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a Black Caucus member.
But Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair who is Indian American, said that she could relate to Ocasio-Cortez feeling targeted as a woman of color.
“I can tell you that it happens all the time. It isn't usually from just one person. The system is geared in that way,” Jayapal said. “It's just a constant thing we deal with as women of color. It's always harder when it's perceived as coming from your own side, whether that was how it was intended or not.”
Jayapal said that she and her fellow Progressive Caucus co-chair, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), are requesting a meeting with Pelosi to “talk about the general relationship of the progressives to the Democratic caucus.”
“I think it's just important that we clear this,” Jayapal said.
The seeds of the recent quarrel were planted before the July 4 recess, when Pelosi reluctantly ditched plans to move a House-crafted border spending package in favor of a more conservative Senate-passed bill.
Liberals like Ocasio-Cortez, furious over reports that migrants have been detained at the border under dismal health and hygienic conditions, had demanded that the legislation include explicit protections for those in federal custody — provisions not contained in the Senate bill.
Some liberals accused the moderate Democrats who’d pressed for the Senate bill of putting child migrants at risk. Pocan, for instance, equated Democrats in the Problem Solvers Caucus to child abusers. Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide, chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, went a long step further, accusing the centrist members of the Blue Dog and New Democratic coalitions of being racist.
“They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s,” Chakrabarti said in a tweet that has since been deleted.
That tweet prompted Pelosi, in an extraordinary closed-door meeting Wednesday, to scold her troops for airing public grievances instead of taking their concerns directly to her — a message she defended Thursday.
“They took offense because I addressed, at the request of my members, an offensive tweet that came out of one of the members' offices that referenced our Blue Dogs and our New Dems essentially as segregationists,” Pelosi said at a Thursday press conference, referring to the tweet from Ocasio-Cortez’s top aide. “Our members took offense at that. I addressed that. How they're interpreting and carrying it to another place is up to them.”
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), a New Democrats vice chair who is African American, issued a statement on Thursday criticizing the comparison to segregationists.
“I personally experienced Dixiecrats’ bigoted policies growing up. So, to even insinuate that I, or any other member of the New Dems, would promote policies that are racist and hateful or ones that would negatively impact communities of color is deeply offensive and couldn’t be further from the truth,” Sewell said. Ocasio-Cortez told The Washington Post on Wednesday that she felt Pelosi was targeting her and three other progressive freshman women of color, known as the “squad”: Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.).
“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Post. “But the persistent singling out . . . it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful . . . the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”
Ocasio-Cortez maintained in an interview with CNN on Thursday that she thinks the progressive freshmen are being singled out but rejected the notion that Pelosi has racial animus.
The flare-up comes on the heels of Pelosi’s interview last week with The New York Times, when she noted the four freshmen were the only Democrats to oppose the party’s more liberal border bill and therefore had limited clout in the subsequent debate over the Senate version, even despite their considerable social media presence.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi said. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Progressive Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), while stressing she is friendly with both Pelosi and the freshmen, echoed the Speaker in arguing the four have limited influence as a bloc.
“I think it's really not accurate to call them the ‘squad,’” Schakowsky said. “It's not like they, you know, they see themselves as a squad and get together and say, ‘Now, what's our next move?’”
Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), another progressive, praised both Pelosi — who has a life-long track record fighting for racial justice and women’s rights — and the freshmen rabble-rousers, who have infused the party with a wave of energy and fresh ideas.
“We admire them; they energize us; they're eager,” Moore said. “And of course they have the luxury of — it is a luxury — just to be able to represent [their] district and to be strident.
“Nancy, of course, is the leader, so she has to represent all of us.”
But Moore also said the influence of freshmen like Ocasio-Cortez ultimately rests with how many votes they can actually sway.
“They’ll learn. It’s all about the 218 in this game,” said Moore, who is African American. “You can be a star if you want to be, but it’s all about the 218.”
.....then she will move to California and become the longest serving Senator in that states history
I know. It’s kinda funny to me. I’m a southerner from New Orleans. Rich white democrats are just as stupid about minorities as Euro-Tards are about Muslims. They are not prepared to deal with the shocking ignorance of their minority pets.
Here is the problem with these punks.
The establishment has to much to loose if they get pushed aside from these idiots.
In that party, the establishment is everything. Even in the GOP.
The first part of the Civil war is now being fought within the congress and DC in general.
Yes and yes :-)
Definitely gonna buy some. :D
And when BIG AOC supporters write letters to the N.Y. Post saying that they are now unhappy with her, because of her fight with Pelolsi, AOC is in TROUBLE in all caps!
And again, the DA vote was VERY low! FAMILY & WORKERS PARTY people get those votes out; especially the damned ILLEGALS!
The next time, with a non-insane, FEMALE Dem primarying AOC...with the DNC working against AOC and funding the primarier, AOC winning a second term becomes "iffy" at best.
Yes, a LOT of her white supporters and some blacks are VERY upset with AOC! And she IS being primaried; a well liked, not old,female DEM has already thrown her hate into the ring and is working to unseat AOC right now...a year+ early!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5iv6sECGU
How do you know that? Do you live in her district and have some insight?
“Because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. “
I wonder where AOC learned that? That’s been the number one play in the D playbook for about the last 30 years.
Ocasio-Kotex isn’t in a good place. The RATs want her gone as badly as the GOP. Her only supporters are Soros and her twin anti-Semitic sisters, Tlaib and Omar.
True. It is amazing she doesn’t know and how committed she is to what she knows that is just flat wrong.
Pelosi is on very shaky ground . A lot of people think her time has passed.
The problem for Sandy Cortez is that non-white Dems fueled by class envy and racial hatred don’t donate. As long as wealthy white libs dominate the Dem Party, these otherized dregs are beholden to them. They face re-election every two years, and it would be easy for Pelosi (or whichever wealthy white lib replaces her at the head of the party House delegation) to simply fund a primary challenger against them. In the case of Cortez, it doesn’t mean necessarily endorsing the old white male Dem she beat in the last primary - it can be another hateful Latina who is simply willing to follow orders. They really are a dime a dozen in NYC.
Now the Dems are employing/committing “youthism” by ganging up against the progeny they worked so hard to create all these decades...
Yes, and they will discover this only after the last white person has been chased out of the Democrat party. Mayor Pete is discovering that black people don't support butt pirates. I think the wealthy butt pirate donors will discover that when Nancy Pelosi steps down and is replaced by Maxine Waters. They will take their money...but then tell them to GFY.
LOL! Maybe Rep. Jayapal can show us all the discrimination the red-dot Indians faced in the US. As a fellow "woman of colour" who has suffered from discrimination.
The average citizen has NO idea how government now works.
While the Civics and Government classes I took in HS are obselete, the new norm is what is good for the Party’s Pocket and votes.
Lose an election and you recommend Men and women just as bitter as you with the same agenda to the RNC or DNC and they are the ones Vetting department heads. While leaving the Trump Haters of the Bush/Obama era to administer programs. Destroy the Good Trump does, hide/destroy evidence from him. He is not getting the emails of Outrage over the Forced Tapers of Veterans and Civilian who are now having heart attacks and committing more suicides. He was shown 1 side of the Fake Opioid Crisis, the addicted babies and the college students crying parents, NOT the Sick, Terminally ill or chronically ill patients.
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