AOC: Dems need to ‘take our gloves off with Republicans’

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14) suggested in a recent interview that Democratic Party lawmakers must become more combative with their Republican colleagues, Daily Wire reports.

"We’re always messaging around bipartisanship and how much we love working with Republicans all the time in a lot of these sensitive areas," said the Democratic firebrand in an interview with Politico. "We need to have an unapologetic agenda, have an actual alternative and counter-messaging that is distinct from the Republican Party instead of trying to play to notions of civility."

"I just really hope that it gets through to a lot of people that this idea that we can win over white voters on a civility argument is like not a reliable strategy," she continued.

The news comes as Democrats begin to quarrel on the path forward for their party after a less than ideal showing for the left on election night. While Democrats appear to have taken back the White House, the party suffered big losses in the House of Representatives and was far less successful in the Senate than originally projected.

"Anti-racism plays zero percent of a role in Democratic electoral strategy — zero, explicitly, implicitly," Ocasio-Cortez complained. "It is now an existential crisis for the Democratic Party." According to Ocasio-Cortez, anti-racist training is important in order to prevent the Democrats from losing the white electorate.

Other Democrats are not as thrilled with Ocasio-Cortez's strategy, with many Democrats believing that the rhetoric coming out of progressive lawmakers and activists was detrimental to the party's prospects in the 2020 election. Issues such as defunding the police, the green new deal, and riots which took place over the summer proved to be unpopular with the electorate and caused voters to shift their down-ballot votes to the GOP even as many voted President Trump out of office.

Ocasio-Cortez, responding to such claims, said in a recent interview that the opposite was true. Democrats, in her view, did not do enough to distinguish themselves from Republicans. She argued that Democrats who supported progressive policies mostly won their seats, although others have suggested that these victories are mostly in solidly Democratic districts where the Democratic primary is the only election which really matters.

Ocasio-Cortez sparked controversy earlier this week when she suggested that a list of Trump supporters and people who worked in his administration need to be documented. "Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future?" the far-left lawmakers asked on Twitter. "Lol at the 'party of personal responsibility' being upset at the idea of being responsible for their behavior over last four years."

The Trump Accountability Project responded that yes, they are keeping a blacklist those who worked in the Trump administration.