Although opposition to President Donald Trump certainly serves as a unifying factor heading into 2020, the Democratic Party still has other issues to deal with. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) continues to establish herself as squarely on the side of the forward-pushing “moderates” among Congressional Democrats, going to even more blunt lengths to dismiss allegations of dissent during an interview that aired on 60 Minutes this Sunday.
She referred to the “progressive” wing led by figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (d-N.Y.) as “like five people,” adding to host Lesley Stahl:
‘By and large, whatever orientation they came to Congress with, they know that we have to hold the center, that we have to go down the mainstream.’
They do? Trump certainly didn’t rise to power via some kind of commitment to formal party unity. He rose to power via trampling the institutions of the Republican Party and leaving some of the rotten core out in the open for everyone to see and for him and his camp to capitalize on. At least, that’s one way to view the situation.
Can the Speaker of the House unify the Democratic party while getting pushback from the left and self-described democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? https://t.co/f4VUYTYIdw pic.twitter.com/a9wOobPj5g
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 14, 2019
Even still, Pelosi has dismissed pushes from interests like Ocasio-Cortez before in an apparent effort to focus the party on legislative accomplishment. In an interview USA Today released not too long ago, she offered:
‘While there are people who have a large number of Twitter followers, what’s important is that we have large numbers of votes on the floor of the House.’
Making Pelosi’s implication pretty clear, Ocasio-Cortez has made waves with her social media usage, routinely going live on Instagram, for instance, where she’s answered questions and shone a light on the lives of first-term members of Congress that’s rare, to say the least.
During a recent Instagram live broadcast, she explained her straightforward perspective:
‘[Truth] will always rise, and so long as I can go home every single day and look to myself in the mirror and say, ‘You did what you thought was right and you did not compromise people and their well being along the way,’ as long as I can sleep at night, that’s all I care about. And I can sleep at night knowing that I did everything I could for all people.’
She’s still facing plenty of criticism from inside and outside her party all the same. For instance, earlier in the year, Pelosi again went after her in a roundabout way, explaining her take on the “Green New Deal” to address climate change that the Congresswoman and others put forward:
‘It will be one of several or maybe many suggestions that we receive. The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?’
Over in the GOP camp, Fox News and Republicans at large seem endlessly paranoid about Ocasio-Cortez to the point of mentioning her a whopping 3,181 times on Fox News and Fox Business for the six weeks ending April 7. Previous analyses of Fox News have found the network mentioning her more than most to all presidential candidates at times.
In other words — she’s obviously onto something with her staunch support for policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for all, among other points that Republicans have struggled with.
Featured Image via screenshot
