2020 Democratic Primary Thread: Focus on House & Senate races
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East Is In The House OMG
If there is an election in Nov 2020, Biden will win.
Good data, thanks.
The face, was in response to the farcical argument in the twitter post, not on the evidence of which voters leak to Trump.
AOC breaks with Bernie on how to lead the left
AOC breaks with Bernie on how to lead the left
The congresswoman is declining to back primary challengers following in her footsteps — and working within the system in Congress.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
By ALEX THOMPSON and HOLLY OTTERBEIN
03/30/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Soon after her upset primary victory against a Democratic Party boss in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to St. Louis to prove her victory wasn't a one-off by campaigning for Cori Bush, who was similarly taking on a longtime Democratic congressman.
“What I’m asking for you to do is to support my sister, Cori Bush,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally. “It is so important what we did, we just came off of this win in New York, but people were trying to say, ‘It’s just one place.’”
Bush lost that race but is challenging Rep. William "Lacy" Clay again in an August primary. She has more money and higher name recognition, and earned the endorsement of Bernie Sanders. But Ocasio-Cortez isn’t helping Bush this time.
After her victory in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez encouraged progressives to follow in her footsteps and run for Congress with the backing of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, even if it meant taking on powerful incumbents. Sixteen months later, the Missouri primary isn’t the only one Ocasio-Cortez is steering clear of.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Of the half-dozen incumbent primary challengers Justice Democrats is backing this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed just two. Neither was a particularly risky move: Both candidates — Jessica Cisneros in Texas and Marie Newman in Illinois — were taking on conservative Democrats who oppose abortion rights and later earned the support of several prominent national Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez’s reluctance marks a break with the outsider tactics of the activist left, represented by groups like Justice Democrats. This election cycle, the organization is trying to boot not just conservative Democrats but also some liberal Democrats and to replace them with members who are more left-wing. In other words, to replicate what it pulled off against Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018 by recruiting Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez’s shift coincides with turnover among top aides in her congressional office — replacing some outspoken radicals with more traditional political professionals — along with a broader reckoning on the left on how to expand Sanders’ coalition after his failure to significantly do so in the presidential primary. Some progressives have questioned whether Sanders should have softened his anti-establishment rhetoric and tried to build bridges with mainstream Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 rather than betting big on turning out disaffected and first-time voters.
Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement moves are not a fluke but part of a larger change over the past several months. After her disruptive, burn-it-down early months in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez, who colleagues say is often conflict-averse in person, has increasingly been trying to work more within the system. She is building coalitions with fellow Democratic members and picking her fights more selectively.
The changes have divided her supporters, with some lamenting she's been co-opted in short order by the system — and others asserting she's offering the left a more viable path toward sustained power.
Gone are her plans for a “corporate-free” caucus, modeled on the uncompromising tactics of the conservative Freedom Caucus. The goal then was to force leadership's hand to go further left.
After starting some high-profile fights with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and tweaking Democratic colleagues on Twitter early in her tenure, Ocasio-Cortez has been more conciliatory toward other House Democrats. In February, she dubbed Pelosi the “mama bear of the Democratic Party.”
“The Democratic Party is the party of coalitions, not a cult."
James Carville, a top strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign
Over the past few weeks, Ocasio-Cortez has also chided Sanders supporters for online harassment and delivered soft critiques of Sanders and some of his allies for being too “conflict-based.” The moves have drawn surprise praise from some moderate and veteran Democrats.
“The Democratic Party is the party of coalitions, not a cult,” said James Carville, a top strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and vocal critic of Sanders during the primary. “I’ve observed her. I think she’s really talented, that she’s really smart. Maybe she is — I don’t speak for her — coming to the conclusion that she wants to be part of the coalition.”
Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, called Ocasio-Cortez's shift "a sign of leadership."
"There are some people on the left who thought that their views represented a strong majority, and the primary process has shown that voters diverged, that Sanders is winning a minority and smaller minority than he had four years ago,” Tanden said.
Instead of supporting Justice Democrats' full slate of incumbent challengers, Ocasio-Cortez launched her own PAC earlier this year that's been more focused on electing progressives in Republican-held or open seats. Ocasio-Cortez declined to be interviewed, but her new communications director, Lauren Hitt, noted that Bush’s August 4 primary is still several months away and that the congresswoman is monitoring other primaries.
"We don’t usually endorse so far out," Hitt said. Ocasio-Cortez, however, endorsed Newman six months before her primary and backed Cisneros more than four months before hers.
Of course, it's easier to endorse a primary challenger as an outsider than as an incumbent working with the people she'd be trying to remove. Some of the campaigns for incumbent challengers said they understood that dynamic but still hoped that things might be different.
Bush’s campaign manager, Isra Allison, told POLITICO that despite the lack of an endorsement this time, “We support AOC and the work she’s done and the attention she’s brought to these important issues. Our opinions on that trump any of her recent decision-making.”
“It’s understood that she’s in a precarious position endorsing incumbent challengers at all being in Congress,” said Brandon Sharp, a senior adviser for Morgan Harper, a Justice Democrats-backed candidate challenging Rep. Joyce Beatty in Ohio. That primary was scheduled for earlier this month but was delayed by the spread of the novel coronavirus. Sharp added that the campaign hasn't formally asked for an endorsement.
Justice Democrats aides said Ocasio-Cortez remains the most anti-establishment Democrat in Congress. They pointed to fundraising and advocacy work she has already done for Cisneros and Newman. Cisneros lost her race, while Newman won.
“I can’t think of an elected politician who’s doing more to support primary challengers and a new generation of progressive leadership in the Democratic Party than her,” said the group’s spokesperson, Waleed Shahid.
Still, some left-wing supporters have been less enamored with Ocasio-Cortez’s evolution. Many were reluctant to speak publicly, however, given her stature and the fact that Sanders’ expected loss makes her a likely heir to his movement.
The changes go beyond rhetoric and include personnel. Two of her most senior aides who worked on her insurgent campaign have left her operation — chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who co-founded Justice Democrats, left in August, and communications director Corbin Trent left her team earlier this month.
Some associates of Ocasio-Cortez thought Trent was hurting her by calling for tactics they felt were politically foolhardy. One ally recalled Trent wanted Ocasio-Cortez to go beyond "Medicare for All" and embrace a fully nationalized health care system like the United Kingdom’s, in an attempt to further stretch the boundaries of the debate.
Trent’s defenders in the progressive world believe his willingness to make enemies and indifference to what Pelosi thought helped push ideas like the Green New Deal into the mainstream.
Trent, who is working on Sanders' presidential campaign, declined to comment.
The hiring of Hitt as Trent's replacement speaks to Ocasio-Cortez’s new approach. An experienced operative, Hitt has worked for more moderate Democrats like Gov. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Beto O’Rourke during their recent presidential bids as well as left-wing candidates such as former New York gubernatorial contender Cynthia Nixon.
Hitt said in a statement that “there's a lot of staff from the campaign that has stayed — including her deputy district director, her policy director on the campaign, and her field director on the campaign — as well as several junior members of staff."
Chakrabarti was a firebrand on the Hill. After Ocasio-Cortez's victory in November 2018, he earned enemies in the Democratic Caucus by declaring “we gotta primary folks.” They were livid in June when he called some members “new Southern Democrats.”
Ocasio-Cortez replaced him with legislative director Ariel Eckblad, who joined her office in January 2019 after working for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Chakrabarti praised Ocasio-Cortez and her approach. “It’s hard to think of anyone who’s had more impact than her in their first year as a congressperson,” he told POLITICO.
Other progressives said Ocasio-Cortez’s more accommodating stance is a smart long-term strategy for a movement looking for a path forward. “She’s speaking in a way to create a majority in a way that Bernie is not interested in doing,” said Max Berger, the former director of progressive outreach on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign who also worked for Justice Democrats.
“If Bernie is Moses, then AOC is Joshua,” Berger added, referring to the biblical prophets.
“She’s speaking in a way to create a majority in a way that Bernie is not interested in doing."
Max Berger, the former director of progressive outreach on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign
Sean McElwee, co-founder of the progressive group Data for Progress, which collaborated with Justice Democrats in 2018 during Ocasio-Cortez’s primary campaign, agreed that her new approach is savvier.
“AOC gets to Congress and is like, ‘[Wow], there are a lot of people who agree with me,” he said. McElwee added that “she does have these big ideological goals,” but also wants to address immediate issues important to her constituents like ensuring the census materials are bilingual. “AOC is, I think, a very famous person but fundamentally a quite normal representative," he said.
Some left-wing activists believe that criticism of Ocasio-Cortez may be misplaced, more about people wanting her to be something she’s not.
“Bernie is the first leftist politician who has received a national platform in a long time in this country, and so some people say that every leftist politician has got to be like Bernie,” Shahid said. “But AOC is a different person with a different set of life experiences. So how she leads will be different. I don’t think it’s a difference in ideology — it may be a difference in approach.”
Heather Caygle contributed to this report.
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washingtonpost.com
Bernie Sanders says he’s staying in the presidential race. Many Democrats fear a reprise of their 2016 defeat.
Sean Sullivan
11-13 minutes
To some Democrats in that campaign, it was a lesson learned the hard way about the limitations of Sanders’s promises of support and the ferocity of his unbridled backers. Four years later, with the senator from Vermont still running against former vice president Joe Biden despite almost impossible odds of victory, some party leaders are increasingly worried about a reprise of the bitter divisions that many Democrats blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss.
“It’s the equivalent of a World War II kamikaze pilot,” said Philippe Reines, a longtime adviser to Clinton. “They have no better option than to plow into USS Biden.”
The judgment Sanders makes about his fate and the direction taken by his supporters could be among the most consequential decisions of the race, determining whether Democrats speak with one voice against a president who is already aimed at November, or squabble for months more.
Although Sanders has long pledged to do all he can to help the eventual nominee defeat President Trump, Democrats are still haunted by the last grueling battle, which didn’t end after it became clear that Clinton would be the nominee, and instead stretched into the summer convention and beyond. Then, as now, an impassioned band of Sanders supporters voiced their displeasure loudly and widely, sometimes echoing the harshest attacks of Trump and his allies with little reproach from Sanders.
Moved by an urgency to come together against Trump as the coronavirus pandemic has upended the presidential race, some party leaders feel that Sanders should end his campaign and help the Democratic Party position itself for the November general election.
“I just think it’s a terrible decision for him to make because he looks very selfish,” said former Democratic senator Barbara Boxer of California, who backs Biden. If Sanders is genuine about going all in to defeat Trump, “then get out,” she said.
But Sanders has given no indication that he is preparing to do that. He recently said he wants to debate Biden in April. His team announced it is expanding digital organizing efforts ahead of the New York primary, which on Saturday was moved from April 28 to June 23. And Sanders has signaled a strong desire to use his campaign megaphone to advocate for liberal policies like Medicare-for-all — which allies said are more crucial than ever because of the public health crisis.
Some people close to Sanders voiced confidence that the senator would stay in the race until the July convention, though they said they had received no final word on his plans. Others close to the senator have sounded less certain of that, noting only that he continues to be a candidate at the moment.
One of the people close to Sanders — who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal deliberations — said Biden would have to make significant policy and personal overtures to Sanders to potentially persuade the senator to leave the race, and to win the trust of his followers.
On Wednesday, Sanders delivered a fiery address on the Senate floor excoriating his Republican colleagues for trying to reduce the financial support some workers could get in a coronavirus bill. “Oh my word, will the universe survive?” a gesticulating Sanders wondered aloud, suggesting sarcastically that giving struggling workers a bit more would be devastating.
For many loyal supporters, the address was a stark reminder of why they feel it’s important for him to stay in the contest. “This is why @BernieSanders should be President of the United States,” the activists known collectively as “People for Bernie” tweeted to 228,000 followers.
Bernie Sanders supporters occupy media tents at the Wells Fargo Center in protest of the proceedings at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 26, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Some Democrats, including veterans of the 2016 contest, said they see signs of hope that the party can avoid the intraparty viciousness that marked that race. Sanders has a much better relationship with Biden than he did with Clinton, they noted, and for the moment he has ceased direct attacks on the former vice president. Plus, they added, the Clinton-Sanders fight was a more than year-long bout that left deep battle scars.
“Last time, it was a two-way race — it was person on person. And that just made for more conflict. Here, there was a lot of conflict, but it flew in 15 different directions. Among the final run of candidates, it went every which way,” said Mark Longabaugh, a top Sanders strategist in 2016 who worked in 2020 for Andrew Yang, one of the many rivals Biden and Sanders fended off.
Sanders argued in a Thursday radio interview with “1A,” a program broadcast on NPR, that the postponement of upcoming primaries because of the pandemic makes this race “very different than 2016.” He ticked through steps his campaign has taken to adapt to a landscape he said had “changed very profoundly.”
Although Sanders personally is not waging a scorched-earth campaign against Biden, some of his most visible supporters continue to rail against the former vice president’s policy ideas and question his cognitive abilities — a trend that worries party leaders.
“Biden begins to ramble an incoherent point about being proud of some people, but stops himself mid-sentence on air and just ends the thought,” tweeted Shaun King, an activist who supports Sanders and has introduced him at events. He was commenting Tuesday on a series of TV interviews Biden had done about the coronavirus. Trump allies have launched similar strikes on Biden.
Senior Democrats have expressed concern in recent days that Sanders is once again obliquely giving his supporters permission to continue to question Biden’s fitness as the Democratic nominee.
“There is growing anticipation for him to start to help,” said one senior Democratic strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more frankly about the concerns. “For his movement to be successful, he needs to find the right way to land the plane at Joe Biden international airport.”
Inside the Biden campaign, apprehension peaked during the last debate, when Sanders went beyond the policy discussion that he said he was seeking and moved instead to attack Biden’s honesty and question whether his current promise to protect Social Security could be trusted. After the debate, Anita Dunn, a senior Biden adviser, punched back by comparing Sanders to “the kind of protester who often shows up at campaign events on live television.”
For some Clinton alumni, the debate brought back bad memories of the spring contests last cycle. In April 2016, the Sanders campaign was pushing videos of Clinton talking about her “wonderful donors” and campaign ads that talked about Washington politicians who are paid “over $200,000 an hour for speeches” from Wall Street firms. Those messages became central themes in Trump’s campaign against Clinton, who he called “corrupt” all the way through the general election.
Clinton defeated Sanders in New York in mid-April, a defeat that made it nearly mathematically impossible for Sanders to overtake her lead in delegates. But he continued his campaign. Clinton in June won the California primary, closing off Sanders’s path to the nomination for good, yet he did not endorse her for another five weeks.
Shaping the party platform that would be ratified at the convention was one Sanders’s main goals in keeping the campaign alive, Longabaugh recalled.
“He talked about wanting to move the party and move it to the left. That was one of the objectives of his presidential candidacy, in addition to trying to win. I think the platform became his mechanism for doing that,” Longabaugh said. “He also had millions of supporters who had contributed to his campaign and traveled to other states to campaign. He felt they deserved a chance to cast a ballot for him.”
Many Sanders supporters argued that they made real efforts to work together with the Clinton team at the convention. One indicator of high-level cooperation: The Sanders officials and Clinton’s aides worked out of the same workspace. Sanders also made another key concession to avoid discord, according to Longabaugh: not escalating a fight over trade, Medicare-for-all and convention “superdelegates” during negotiations among party insiders.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) listens as the Vermont delegation casts its roll-call vote at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 26, 2016. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Nomiki Konst, a liberal strategist, was among the Sanders delegates placed on the platform committee. Over two hot days in an Orlando hotel ballroom, their mission was to get as much of the Sanders agenda as possible into the platform. They managed to influence the document with ideas such as a $15 dollar minimum wage.
“When the California primary was over, we knew he’d lost the nomination, but getting more delegates meant that we had more members of the platform committee,” Konst said.
Some Sanders allies say their goal is similar this time, and they are publicly urging Sanders to stay in the race to gain leverage over the proceedings.
“A political party is supposed to be a place where you actually debate. There are huge differences here,” said Larry Cohen, a Sanders friend who heads a nonprofit aligned with the senator. “There needs to continue to be a reform movement in this party, not a coronation.”
Supporters of both Clinton and now Biden, however, say they dramatically moved in Sanders’s direction during the campaigns. Clinton adopted liberal policies in 2016 to reach out to Sanders’s backers; Biden more recently has adopted programs that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others have proposed, and he has rhetorically invited Sanders’s supporters into his campaign.
Among the moderates, there remains a frustration that the Sanders forces demand that the winning primary candidates conform to his views, and not the other way around. They suggest the situation is even more dire this year than in 2016, given the party’s antipathy toward Trump.
Biden, for his part, has sought to strike a welcoming posture toward his former Senate colleague. Both teams remain in touch on the coronavirus crisis and its effect on the economy, according to one Biden adviser.
It is their personal dynamic — they are two men of similar ages who both served in Congress and who associates said genuinely hold each other in high regard — that gives some Democrats hope for averting the ugliness of 2016.
“I sense that there is a personal respect that he has for Joe Biden that he did not extend to Hillary in 2016, so I assume that that will extend some guard rails,” said Brian Fallon, who worked as press secretary for Clinton’s campaign. The bigger challenge, Fallon said, will be reining in Sanders supporters while their candidate extends his presence in the race.
Scott Brennan, a Democratic National Committee member from Iowa, expressed hope that the party’s divisions will not repeat because Biden “doesn’t generate the same sort of fevered hatred” from Sanders allies that Clinton did.
But other veterans of the last campaign expect the worst.
“Everyone should stop pretending that Bernie is doing anything other than helping Bernie,” Reines said.
@wire28 @Th3G3ntleman @ezrathegreat @Jello Biafra @humble forever @Dameon Farrow @Piff Perkins @Pressure @johnedwarduado @Armchair Militant @panopticon @Tres Leches @ADevilYouKhow @dtownreppin214
the cac mamba
Veteran
i think a lot of you are underestimating how strong the "anyone but trump" sentiment is gonna be, by the time november rolls around
yes, joe biden isn't leading a socialist revolution. but he's an acceptable alternative for the middle of the country, and it should be an easy vote for any democrat who hates trump, which is most of them
trump moving the goalposts to 100k dead being a good thing is
and embarrassing. he won't come out of this as some kind of victor
yes, joe biden isn't leading a socialist revolution. but he's an acceptable alternative for the middle of the country, and it should be an easy vote for any democrat who hates trump, which is most of them
trump moving the goalposts to 100k dead being a good thing is
and embarrassing. he won't come out of this as some kind of victor
the cac mamba
Veteran
sounds like AOC would rather win in november, than look good and lose. clearly a dilemma for bernie bros
The Sanders-Trump voter is real and was enough of a factor to cost Hillary Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That's why I said Bernie would be a great VP pick to prevent that crossover.
AOC breaks with Bernie on how to lead the left
AOC breaks with Bernie on how to lead the left
The congresswoman is declining to back primary challengers following in her footsteps — and working within the system in Congress.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images
By ALEX THOMPSON and HOLLY OTTERBEIN
03/30/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Soon after her upset primary victory against a Democratic Party boss in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to St. Louis to prove her victory wasn't a one-off by campaigning for Cori Bush, who was similarly taking on a longtime Democratic congressman.
“What I’m asking for you to do is to support my sister, Cori Bush,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally. “It is so important what we did, we just came off of this win in New York, but people were trying to say, ‘It’s just one place.’”
Bush lost that race but is challenging Rep. William "Lacy" Clay again in an August primary. She has more money and higher name recognition, and earned the endorsement of Bernie Sanders. But Ocasio-Cortez isn’t helping Bush this time.
After her victory in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez encouraged progressives to follow in her footsteps and run for Congress with the backing of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, even if it meant taking on powerful incumbents. Sixteen months later, the Missouri primary isn’t the only one Ocasio-Cortez is steering clear of.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Of the half-dozen incumbent primary challengers Justice Democrats is backing this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed just two. Neither was a particularly risky move: Both candidates — Jessica Cisneros in Texas and Marie Newman in Illinois — were taking on conservative Democrats who oppose abortion rights and later earned the support of several prominent national Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez’s reluctance marks a break with the outsider tactics of the activist left, represented by groups like Justice Democrats. This election cycle, the organization is trying to boot not just conservative Democrats but also some liberal Democrats and to replace them with members who are more left-wing. In other words, to replicate what it pulled off against Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018 by recruiting Ocasio-Cortez.
Ocasio-Cortez’s shift coincides with turnover among top aides in her congressional office — replacing some outspoken radicals with more traditional political professionals — along with a broader reckoning on the left on how to expand Sanders’ coalition after his failure to significantly do so in the presidential primary. Some progressives have questioned whether Sanders should have softened his anti-establishment rhetoric and tried to build bridges with mainstream Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 rather than betting big on turning out disaffected and first-time voters.
Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement moves are not a fluke but part of a larger change over the past several months. After her disruptive, burn-it-down early months in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez, who colleagues say is often conflict-averse in person, has increasingly been trying to work more within the system. She is building coalitions with fellow Democratic members and picking her fights more selectively.
The changes have divided her supporters, with some lamenting she's been co-opted in short order by the system — and others asserting she's offering the left a more viable path toward sustained power.
Gone are her plans for a “corporate-free” caucus, modeled on the uncompromising tactics of the conservative Freedom Caucus. The goal then was to force leadership's hand to go further left.
After starting some high-profile fights with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and tweaking Democratic colleagues on Twitter early in her tenure, Ocasio-Cortez has been more conciliatory toward other House Democrats. In February, she dubbed Pelosi the “mama bear of the Democratic Party.”
“The Democratic Party is the party of coalitions, not a cult."
James Carville, a top strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign
Over the past few weeks, Ocasio-Cortez has also chided Sanders supporters for online harassment and delivered soft critiques of Sanders and some of his allies for being too “conflict-based.” The moves have drawn surprise praise from some moderate and veteran Democrats.
“The Democratic Party is the party of coalitions, not a cult,” said James Carville, a top strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign and vocal critic of Sanders during the primary. “I’ve observed her. I think she’s really talented, that she’s really smart. Maybe she is — I don’t speak for her — coming to the conclusion that she wants to be part of the coalition.”
Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, called Ocasio-Cortez's shift "a sign of leadership."
"There are some people on the left who thought that their views represented a strong majority, and the primary process has shown that voters diverged, that Sanders is winning a minority and smaller minority than he had four years ago,” Tanden said.
Instead of supporting Justice Democrats' full slate of incumbent challengers, Ocasio-Cortez launched her own PAC earlier this year that's been more focused on electing progressives in Republican-held or open seats. Ocasio-Cortez declined to be interviewed, but her new communications director, Lauren Hitt, noted that Bush’s August 4 primary is still several months away and that the congresswoman is monitoring other primaries.
"We don’t usually endorse so far out," Hitt said. Ocasio-Cortez, however, endorsed Newman six months before her primary and backed Cisneros more than four months before hers.
Of course, it's easier to endorse a primary challenger as an outsider than as an incumbent working with the people she'd be trying to remove. Some of the campaigns for incumbent challengers said they understood that dynamic but still hoped that things might be different.
Bush’s campaign manager, Isra Allison, told POLITICO that despite the lack of an endorsement this time, “We support AOC and the work she’s done and the attention she’s brought to these important issues. Our opinions on that trump any of her recent decision-making.”
“It’s understood that she’s in a precarious position endorsing incumbent challengers at all being in Congress,” said Brandon Sharp, a senior adviser for Morgan Harper, a Justice Democrats-backed candidate challenging Rep. Joyce Beatty in Ohio. That primary was scheduled for earlier this month but was delayed by the spread of the novel coronavirus. Sharp added that the campaign hasn't formally asked for an endorsement.
Justice Democrats aides said Ocasio-Cortez remains the most anti-establishment Democrat in Congress. They pointed to fundraising and advocacy work she has already done for Cisneros and Newman. Cisneros lost her race, while Newman won.
“I can’t think of an elected politician who’s doing more to support primary challengers and a new generation of progressive leadership in the Democratic Party than her,” said the group’s spokesperson, Waleed Shahid.
Still, some left-wing supporters have been less enamored with Ocasio-Cortez’s evolution. Many were reluctant to speak publicly, however, given her stature and the fact that Sanders’ expected loss makes her a likely heir to his movement.
The changes go beyond rhetoric and include personnel. Two of her most senior aides who worked on her insurgent campaign have left her operation — chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who co-founded Justice Democrats, left in August, and communications director Corbin Trent left her team earlier this month.
Some associates of Ocasio-Cortez thought Trent was hurting her by calling for tactics they felt were politically foolhardy. One ally recalled Trent wanted Ocasio-Cortez to go beyond "Medicare for All" and embrace a fully nationalized health care system like the United Kingdom’s, in an attempt to further stretch the boundaries of the debate.
Trent’s defenders in the progressive world believe his willingness to make enemies and indifference to what Pelosi thought helped push ideas like the Green New Deal into the mainstream.
Trent, who is working on Sanders' presidential campaign, declined to comment.
The hiring of Hitt as Trent's replacement speaks to Ocasio-Cortez’s new approach. An experienced operative, Hitt has worked for more moderate Democrats like Gov. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Beto O’Rourke during their recent presidential bids as well as left-wing candidates such as former New York gubernatorial contender Cynthia Nixon.
Hitt said in a statement that “there's a lot of staff from the campaign that has stayed — including her deputy district director, her policy director on the campaign, and her field director on the campaign — as well as several junior members of staff."
Chakrabarti was a firebrand on the Hill. After Ocasio-Cortez's victory in November 2018, he earned enemies in the Democratic Caucus by declaring “we gotta primary folks.” They were livid in June when he called some members “new Southern Democrats.”
Ocasio-Cortez replaced him with legislative director Ariel Eckblad, who joined her office in January 2019 after working for Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
Chakrabarti praised Ocasio-Cortez and her approach. “It’s hard to think of anyone who’s had more impact than her in their first year as a congressperson,” he told POLITICO.
Other progressives said Ocasio-Cortez’s more accommodating stance is a smart long-term strategy for a movement looking for a path forward. “She’s speaking in a way to create a majority in a way that Bernie is not interested in doing,” said Max Berger, the former director of progressive outreach on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign who also worked for Justice Democrats.
“If Bernie is Moses, then AOC is Joshua,” Berger added, referring to the biblical prophets.
“She’s speaking in a way to create a majority in a way that Bernie is not interested in doing."
Max Berger, the former director of progressive outreach on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign
Sean McElwee, co-founder of the progressive group Data for Progress, which collaborated with Justice Democrats in 2018 during Ocasio-Cortez’s primary campaign, agreed that her new approach is savvier.
“AOC gets to Congress and is like, ‘[Wow], there are a lot of people who agree with me,” he said. McElwee added that “she does have these big ideological goals,” but also wants to address immediate issues important to her constituents like ensuring the census materials are bilingual. “AOC is, I think, a very famous person but fundamentally a quite normal representative," he said.
Some left-wing activists believe that criticism of Ocasio-Cortez may be misplaced, more about people wanting her to be something she’s not.
“Bernie is the first leftist politician who has received a national platform in a long time in this country, and so some people say that every leftist politician has got to be like Bernie,” Shahid said. “But AOC is a different person with a different set of life experiences. So how she leads will be different. I don’t think it’s a difference in ideology — it may be a difference in approach.”
Heather Caygle contributed to this report.
@wire28 @Th3G3ntleman @ezrathegreat @Jello Biafra @humble forever @Dameon Farrow @Piff Perkins @Pressure @johnedwarduado @Armchair Militant @panopticon @Tres Leches @ADevilYouKhow @dtownreppin214
Can't wait to vote for her in a presidential primary
