AOC’s Former Allies Blast Her As ‘Establishment’

Noah Rothman writes for National Review Online about angry progressives turning on one of their own high-profile national stars.

In an ominous sign for the future integrity of the Democratic Party, if the GOP’s evolutionary trajectory is any indication, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s jilted supporters have taken to denouncing their erstwhile ally — branding her with one odious epithet: “establishment.”

From her embittered supporters in the nosebleeds who pilloried AOC as “an enemy to the working class people of America” to the New York Times, which appeared to welcome her capitulation to “her own party’s political establishment,” Ocasio-Cortez is learning that preserving ideological purity means sacrificing political relevance. The congresswoman has declined to court a reputation as a perpetual backbencher, and her core supporters may never forgive her.

The event that has so disturbed the balance of the fragile progressive ecosystem was Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to finally contribute a portion of donations she raises from Democratic donors to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In the second year of her third term in Congress, AOC abandoned her boycott of the DCCC, transferring a meager $260,000 to its coffers in advance of the 2024 general election cycle.

“If Democrats do not retake the House in November, I do not have confidence that a Republican majority would certify the results of a presidential election,” AOC said in defense of her decision. “The threat of fascism is very real and very serious.” The statement marks an about-face for the New York congresswoman. “DCCC made clear that they will blacklist any org that helps progressive candidates like me,” she said of her party’s congressional campaign committee in early 2020. “I can choose not to fund that kind of exclusion.” Ocasio-Cortez had lived up to those scruples until now.

Although her stated rationale for abandoning this position is the threat posed by the GOP’s growing electoral appeal in the Empire State, her surrender comes amid declining tolerance for the progressive left’s ambivalence toward the Democratic Party’s prospects as a whole.