AOC accuses moderate Dems of being 'irresponsible' with anti-progressive criticism

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., pushed back against criticism from moderate Democrats who claimed progressivism has hurt their party, calling such rhetoric “irresponsible” in a Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

After Tuesday’s election, in which the Democrats lost House seats to Republicans, moderates such as Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., expressed hostility toward some of the more left-wing ideals that dominated much of the party’s political conversation in 2020.

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“When we kind of come out swinging not 48 hours after Tuesday, when we don’t even have solid data yet, pointing fingers and telling each other what to do it deepens the division in the party, and it’s irresponsible. It’s irresponsible to pour gasoline on these already very delicate tensions in the party.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that instead, moderates should seek the help of progressives like her as they try to pick up more swing seats in the House in the future. She said that she is not calling for everyone to necessarily campaign on progressive principles, although she later said that every candidate in a swing state who co-sponsored Medicare-for-all won their race.

“And so the conversation’s a little bit deeper than that, than just saying, you know, anything progressive is toxic and a losing message,” she said.

Fox News learned that during a House Democratic Caucus call that Spanberger was particularly animated, claiming that the “defund the police" movement almost cost her reelection, and that "we need to not ever use the word 'socialist' or 'socialism' ever again."

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One Democrat told Fox News that their party “should have won big,” but that issues such as defunding the police and the Green New Deal “killed our members.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that she does not believe that Joe Biden has the same attitude towards progressives, and that this is “one of the reasons why he won election.” She said that Democrats were better able to unify in 2020 compared to 2016.

“That being said, you know there are—at least in the House caucus—very deep divisions within the party, and I believe that we really need to come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart.”

While President Trump did try to portray Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives as representative of the Democratic Party as a whole, the division was not merely a result of Republican framing. Ocasio-Cortez herself was in a heated battle of words with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2019, after the Democratic leader dismissed Ocasio-Cortez and other freshman congresswomen by saying, “these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world, but they didn’t have any following.”

Ocasio-Cortez then suggested that the speaker is "singling out" her and her colleagues based on their race.

Ocasio-Cortez also spoke to the differences between her and Biden himself in an interview with New York Magazine that was published earlier this year.

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When asked what her role could be during a possible Biden administration, Ocasio-Cortez reportedly groaned, said, “Oh God,” and noted that “[i]n any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”

The New York congresswoman, who was just elected to her second term, said Sunday that with Democrats holding a slimmer majority in the House after November’s election, “it’s going to be more important than ever for us to work together and not fight each other.”

Fox News’ Mike Emanuel, Marisa Schultz, and Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.