Ocasio-Cortez Launches Push To Unseat Democratic Rep Lipinksi for Being Too Bipartisan
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is looking to throw her weight around for progressive party-members seeking to unseat more bipartisan Democratic incumbents in the 2020 presidential election cycle.
Ocasio-Cortez made her first endorsement of the election cycle Tuesday, according to The Hill.
The freshman representative, who ousted a longtime New York Democrat in 2018, is throwing her support behind Marie Newman of Illinois as she attempts to unseat supposedly “conservative” 3rd District Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski.
“It’s going to take a bigger, stronger Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Tuesday. “One that’s returned to our FDR roots & fights for working people – to change our future in 2020.”
“We can’t afford deep blue seats fighting against healthcare & equal rights,” she added.
It’s going to take a bigger, stronger Democratic Party – one that’s returned to our FDR roots & fights for working people – to change our future in 2020.
We can’t afford deep blue seats fighting against healthcare & equal rights.
We need @Marie4Congress.https://t.co/muqbA5cjyk
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 17, 2019
It is not enough for a congressional seat to be “blue,” the New York Democrat told The New York Times this week, it has to be held by a candidate who supports radically leftist ideology as well.
Otherwise, America is not truly making progress and the seat might as well be held by a Republican.
“Marie Newman is a textbook example of one of the ways that we could be better as a party — to come from a deep blue seat and to be championing all the issues we need to be championing,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Lipinski, she said, is not that figure.
Having favored pro-life legislation and opposed the Affordable Care Act, he is simply too “problematic” to continue holding the power of a Democratic vote.
“The fact that a deep blue seat is advocating for many parts of the Republican agenda is extremely problematic. We’re not talking about a swing state that is being forced to take tough votes,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
Ironically, however, Lipinski is far from the bipartisan enemy to progressive values the new left’s poster child has made him out to be.
According to the Lugar Center’s Bipartisan Index, the six-time representative’s voting record places him at No. 78 in terms of willingness to reach across the aisle — around the 20th percentile.
This means one in every five representatives is still more likely to seek out a strongly bipartisan policy solution for any given issue than Lipinski.
Regardless, Ocasio-Cortez is hardly alone in her all-or-nothing approach to the Democratic platform.
A number of Democrats elected alongside her in the 2018 midterms stand arm-in-arm with the freshman firebrand, arguing that members of the party who do not devote wholeheartedly to the radical progressive agenda must be excommunicated.
Fellow “squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts made the assertion this July that the party did not need more “black faces,” Muslims or “queers” who did not want to stand with the new left on policy, according to the Washington Examiner.
“If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice,” Pressley said. “We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice,”
“We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice,” she continued. “We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice.
“If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don’t even show up because we need you to represent that voice.”
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