Progressive firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., fired back at Democrats who have pinned blame on her squad for party losses in the House and working with Republicans as Joe Biden suggested Saturday night.
No thanks, she said.
Instead, she vowed to work to help Georgia deliver the Senate to Democrats "so we don't have to negotiate in that manner," AOC told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
AOC also responded to criticism from Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., saying moves to the left will work to unwind the Democratic Party.
"There are, at least in the House caucus, very deep divisions within the party, and I believe that we need to really come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart," she told host Jake Tapper.
"We have a slimmer Democrat majority; it's going to be even more important to work together and not fight each other," she continued.
"It deepens the division in the part and it's irresponsible. It's irresponsible to pour gasoline on very delicate tensions within the party and exploit it."
AOC fueled some division herself to The New York Times on Saturday saying the House Democrats who lost their seats were moderate "sitting ducks" that she did not endorse nor spend time helping them lure millennials.
"I've been begging the party to let me help them for two years," she told the Times. "That's also the damn thing of it. I've been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they're blaming us for their loss.
"So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy."
AOC added a rebuke of Democrats who have historically abandoned the base that got them election.
"The history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grassroots to get elected, and then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election," she told the Times.
"I think the transition period is going to indicate whether the administration is taking a more open and collaborative approach, or whether they're taking a kind of icing-out approach."
When asked about where she takes her political career, AOC even suggested it might not be in Congress.
"I don't even know if I want to be in politics," she told the Times. "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.
"It's the incoming. It's the stress. It's the violence. It's the lack of support from your own party. It's your own party thinking you're the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you're bad because you actually append your name to your opinion.
"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."
Concluding, "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."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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