Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Democrat Leadership Stuck in Bygone Era of Soccer Moms and Furbies

Democratic-socialist and congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized Democratic leadership in an interview released Tuesday, deriding the party as being stuck in the era of “soccer moms” and Furbies.

Transcript is as follows:

HOST: There are people who look at what you’re advocating and they say, “I know that we’ve lost a lot, but we shouldn’t go down this path. This is a recipe for failure.” What do you think makes them think that?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: So, what I honestly think that it is, is that we have not had a party that has been investing in its own future. So, we have people who are constantly fundraising for their own re-election. The average age of a House Democrat right now is 65 years old. We’re at the oldest point in American history. Not only are people feverishly working on their own re-election for their second or sometimes third decade, but there’s no investment in future leadership. Like, we’re putting all this money into state parties and those state parties aren’t working on aggressively investing in young people running in state assembly seats, state house seats so they can later go on to Congress. That is not happening. It’s certainly happening on the right, but it hasn’t been happening on the left.

So for me, I think what’s happening is that, you know, a lot of these folks were in their political heyday in third-way nineties politics and they were campaigning and they were really, kind of, connected most to an electorate when they were fighting these seats when they were campaigning most when we had more of an American middle class. So, I think that politically, this, like, upper-middle class is probably more moderate, but that upper-middle class doesn’t exist anymore in America. Thanks to the continued deregulation of Wall Street, thanks to the continued gutting of working and middle-class people, we need stronger champions. I don’t think that [Democrats] see exactly how rising income inequality has resulted in a very stark political reality and it has changed our political landscape. But, their heyday was in the 90s when kids had, like, Furbies, and soccer moms had, like, two vans.

HOST: Furbies and two vans!

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yeah!

HOST: That’s the dream!

OCASIO-CORTEZ: That’s not America anymore!