Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a strong message for any Democrats in Congress who have “resigned” themselves to a Donald Trump victory: Retire.
A Sunday report in Axios about Democrats discussing Joe Biden’s prospects following Saturday’s assassination attempt against Trump included an anonymous quote from a senior House Democrat: “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s response on X (formerly Twitter) got right to the point.
“If you’re a ‘senior Democrat’ that feels this way, you should absolutely retire and make space for true leadership that refuses to resign themselves to fascism,” she said. “This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s point seems to be that the anonymous Democrat’s attitude flies in the face of the message the party has tried to convey over the past several months, even years, about the right-wing threat to democracy. Ocasio-Cortez was widely criticized for calling Trump a fascist following the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and ever since, that language has become part of mainstream Democratic discourse. No Democrat who has loudly criticized the fascist tendencies of Trump should be now saying, “Well, he’s probably going to win now.”
Trump has never officially conceded losing the 2020 election, repeatedly accusing the media, courts, and voting mechanisms of being rigged against him. When Trump engages in antidemocratic rhetoric, the entire Republican Party falls in line behind him. Ocasio-Cortez has tried to back up her words with actions like initiating impeachment proceedings against conservative Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. If other Democrats in Congress, no matter how senior, are now responding to Trump and Republicans with shrugs after months and years of sounding the alarm, what purpose are they serving in office?
