what happened to AOC?

six years ago she was cast as a progressive darling, and now she's giving a 7-minute bullshit speech at the DNC.

i’m sure we all know that the DNC is pure spectacle. kamala harris was the only real choice for delegates to nominate, the party platform remains fundamentally the same as it always has, which is pure complacency and disdain for the average american. i didn’t follow everything that has happened at the DNC, but i’ve been witnessing it in a bit more of a passive way. i saw the lil jon “turn down for what” moment during the roll call when georgia’s delegates were called to cast their votes, i saw that fight song started playing after hillary clinton’s speech (lmao), and the plethora of other moments people were talking about online.

but what really left me feeling especially disgusted was alexandria ocasio-cortez’s speech, which while unsurprising, still felt like an immense betrayal of her past principles.

she began by praising kamala harris, and thanking joe biden for his “leadership” (as if he hasn’t been a walking corpse on vyvanse for years now.) after reflecting on her past, working as a waitress with no health insurance, she says that she was “tired of a cynical politics that’s been blind to the realities of working people,” juxtaposing that attitude to herself, and her own campaign and success at running for congress.

while i might’ve agreed with that last sentiment at the time that AOC was elected, six years later, i would have to say she’s about as cynical as the rest of the democratic party.

one thing that stuck out to me tremendously was when AOC said that kamala harris is “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bring the hostages home,” an obvious lie. if she is working tirelessly toward a ceasefire, she clearly hasn’t shown anyone how she’s doing that, because everything she has said has amounted to “conversations are ongoing.”

ilhan omar put it very well today in her own speech at an uncommitted press conference, saying that it has been unconscionable to witness her colleagues not understand that “working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing and they should be ashamed of themselves.” and she’s right, it’s not a thing at all. you know how you work for a ceasefire? stop sending weapons to israel. stop supporting and directly participating in a genocide. having little conversations with bibi won’t make israel stop slaughtering children and leaving them headless to be held in their crying family members’ arms. how can you say that the government has been working toward a ceasefire when just this last week, the US approved a $20 billion arms sales package to israel?

AOC’s praise of kamala harris and her complacency just shows that AOC is cynically working toward her own career progression, and doesn’t care about constituents or america as a whole. she’s being given the space to speak at the DNC, so obviously AOC isn’t going to say anything directly opposed to the democratic party or kamala harris — but she didn’t have to give that speech. she didn’t have to be there at all. she could’ve been alongside cori bush and ilhan omar today, denouncing the negligence the biden and harris administration has shown toward palestinians. but she wasn’t.

another moment that disgusted me was when AOC said “if you are an immigrant family just starting your american story, kamala is for you.”

two weeks ago the harris campaign released an ad about how “strong” she was as a border-state prosecutor, and how she backed the “toughest border control bill in decades” as vice president, and how she will “hire thousands more border agents” if elected president. maybe a family of immigrants who had absolutely no problems getting to the US, and did everything perfectly by the book, might see something good about kamala harris. but what about undocumented immigrants? are they any less worthy of having a president that will advocate for them?

AOC’s view according to her own congressional page says that “for too long, undocumented immigrants have been villainized, despite the integral role they play in our communities and our economy” and that she is fighting for a “just U.S. immigration policy, where immigrants are treated with humanity and dignity.” does that still apply when you’re endorsing someone who wants to strengthen ICE?

it’s clear that AOC has cynically gone back on any principles she espoused before in favour of being platformed by the democratic party. she doesn’t appear to want to remain part of The Squad. what she wants is to be an establishment politician, and while she said in her DNC speech, in the face of republicans telling her to go back to being a bartender, she would be “happy to, any day of the week, because there is nothing wrong with working for a living,” i don’t believe her for one second, based on her actions and words as of late.

in 2020, she was given 90 seconds to speak at the DNC. this time around, she gave a seven minute speech. it’s clear that the democratic party wants to use AOC to bolster their façade of having a progressive ticket, and AOC is just as happy to play along.