Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a message for her progressive supporters after President-elect Trump’s big election win: Hunker down.
Acknowledging that many on the left are shell-shocked by the breadth of Trump’s win, the firebrand Bronx/Queens lawmaker told her followers to sit tight while the left regroups and figures out how best to push back.
“What happened is so massive that it’s going to take just a second,” she said in a series of short videos posted on Instagram. “It’s coming but it’s going to take a second.”
Ocasio-Cortez suggested diving into grassroots groups of all kinds as people seek to weather what may be a right-wing political storm unleashed by Trump.
“My recommendation is to join and enter community, like your church or knitting circle or mosque or temple,” she said, adding plugs for left-wing political groups like the Working Families Party and Democratic Socialists of America.
After Trump’s previous presidential victory in 2016, there was a much more immediate and unified response from the left than appears to be happening this time.
This time, progressive and Democratic activists have been stunned by Trump winning the national popular vote and sharply increasing his share of the vote even in deep blue strongholds like New York City.
Ocasio also posted responses from some of her 8.1 million followers to her question about why some of them voted for Trump while still supporting her or other Democrats down the ballot. Some mentioned Israel’s war in Gaza but many focused on the anger working people feel.
“I’m LISTENING,” she wrote. “Sometimes you gotta dig in and see it to understand and adapt!”
Ocasio-Cortez predicted that many Americans who voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all will have an unpleasant awakening when they see the impact of his policies on their lives and their communities.
She said few voters understand the scale of Trump’s threats to deport millions of undocumented immigrants or that tariffs like those Trump has threatened to impose on imported goods would be paid by the importer and passed on to consumers.
Without naming names, Ocasio-Cortez denounced some of the nasty finger-pointing that has erupted in left-wing circles over what went wrong.
She called on progressives to put their heads down instead of looking to impose their preferred solutions for specific supposed shortcomings.
“We’re in a cultural moment where there’s a certain cache from being a a–hole,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “We’ve seen it on the right but we also see it on the left. A lot of people use righteous causes or issues to let loose their worst impulses.”
