Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has revealed that she considered walking away from politics over the Democrats’ “hostile” attitude towards progressive causes.
Speaking to The New York Times after president-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, she said she was not certain that she would even run for reelection this year.
“I genuinely don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to be in politics,” she said. “You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for reelection this year.”
Ocasio-Cortez continued: “The last two years have been pretty hostile. Externally, we’ve been winning. Externally, there’s been a ton of support, but internally, it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive.
“Is the party ready to, like, sit down and work together and figure out how we’re going to use the assets from everyone at the party? Or are they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach? And that’s going to inform what I do.”
Last week, reports surfaced that House leaders were furious over the Democrats’ loss of several Congress seats. The progressives were blamed for the losses.
Ocasio-Cortez decided to run for reelection and won.
“I chose to run for reelection because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke. That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them,” she told the publication. “But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.”
