How AOC became a Dem ‘pariah’

‘Dem’onized progressive a ‘pariah’ among her side in Congress: book

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quickly emerged as a darling of progressive activists, but inside the halls of Congress she became a “pariah” among fellow Democrats, a new book claims.

Even before Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) ascended to the House of Representatives in 2019, she rankled party leadership and progressive luminaries in the lower chamber, according to “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” out on Tuesday.

“While somebody like Obama wants to be seen as being all things to all people, Ocasio-Cortez actually thinks she can be all things to all people while leading a political

revolution,” author Ryan Grim wrote, according to a preview published by the Daily Mail Sunday.

Grim recounts how the firebrand progressive — who unseated 10-term incumbent and Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley — upset top members of the party early on in her career.

In July 2018, the month after AOC beat Crowley in the Democratic primary, she met with then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who urged the 28-year-old lefty to drop the slogan “Abolish ICE.”

Pelosi believed the phrase, targeting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had been “injected into political discourse by the Russians,” according to Grim, the Washington, DC, bureau chief for The Intercept. He writes: “AOC wondered, ‘This is how the leader of the party thinks?’ ”

Not long after Ocasio-Cortez won the general election that November, she roiled Democrats with some of her antics — including joining 150 climate activists for a sit-in at Pelosi’s office.

“She believed she could occupy the Speaker’s office and have Pelosi appreciate it,” Grim recounted.

Although in public Pelosi treaded carefully around OcasioCortez, behind the scenes, she made the political neophyte’s life miserable, according to Grim.

“The amount of times she told me that . . . ‘I have protest signs older than you in my basement’ s--t. Like yeah, but mine don’t collect dust,” Ocasio-Cortez once told Grim in a text, HuffPost previewed.

Fighting ‘the system’

AOC touts over 13.2 million followers on X and has a penchant for going viral with her far-left hot takes. Pelosi was not impressed.

“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi vented to The New York Times in 2019. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people, and that’s how many votes they got.”

Ocasio-Cortez, whose district covers parts of The

Bronx and Queens, called the slight “outright disrespectful.”

Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), meanwhile, was “firmly usurped” by the Empire State upand-comer and this wasn’t “something

[she] would quickly forgive,” he writes, according to the Mail.

Ocasio-Cortez and her thenchief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti were summoned to a meeting with Jayapal, who demanded she “keep her staff in line,” Grim writes. Chakrabarti described the meeting as akin to Ocasio-Cortez being called into “the principal’s office.”

Shortly after she was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2019, Ocasio-Cortez bucked her own party by voting against a rule mandating new tax cuts or entitlement spending be paid for.

She deemed the measure a “dark political maneuver,” rankling many rank-and-file Democrats, Grim writes.

“The gap between AOC’s power outside the Capitol and the display of it on day one inside could hardly have been greater,” he writes. “To reshape that landscape she was rapidly sacrificing her relationships with colleagues.” Grim, the progressive co-host of the Counterpoints show on YouTube, posited that she sought “to remake the system and to be thanked for doing it.”

“Ocasio-Cortez’s curse was her desire to win consensus that she was there to help, coupled with her radical politics,” he wrote.

Even when she tried to show colleagues “personal warmth,” it only made them “more suspicious” of her motives, Grim writes.

They could “not accept and even have a working relationship with someone from a different party faction,” the book states. “They simply didn’t believe that OcasioCortez didn’t plan to oust them.”

One of her early signature issues was the Green New Deal, a vague pitch for deep reforms to curtail climate change. Evan Weber, cofounder of Sunrise Movement, had been allies with AOC in her quest.

“I think we had done such a good job up until that point of massaging the language that there was a kind of arrogance of like: ‘We can actually appease everyone here’ instead of sticking to our guns and making a real choice about charting a different direction,” he told Grim, per the Mail.

But Weber then zeroed in on a “frequently asked questions” sheet Ocasio-Cortez’s team compiled that he called a “s--t show disaster” that gave her critics a “silver platter.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s former spokesperson Corbin Trent surmised they had attempted “half a revolution” and that their staff got “too big for [their] britches,” Grim writes. “If we weren’t going to move fast and break things, if you’re not trying to f--k with people, why are you f--king with people?” Trent said.

‘Sense she’s failed’

Ocasio-Cortez also angered establishment Dems by supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary, though she ultimately backed the nominee, now-President Biden, Grim writes.

In September 2021 she showed up to the Met Gala wearing a dress with “Tax the Rich” in red letters splashed across her back. Her appearance “infuriated every organization that had either been told she couldn’t attend their event or, more commonly, simply been ignored by her office,” Grim writes.

Ocasio-Cortez is now the vice ranking member on the powerful House Oversight Committee. Still, Grim concluded that, though outspoken in public, she was crippled by being too “conflict averse.”

“This constant sense she’s failed at something. And she lets it in her head. She really takes that s--t to heart,” the book states.

The Post has contacted OcasioCortez’s office for comment.