Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stopped by Pod Save America this week to discuss her unexpected candidacy, democratic socialism, President Trump, and the Democratic Party’s incredibly self-defeating approach to voter outreach.
The New York congressional candidate repeated a point she’s been making a lot lately, which is that the real “swing” voters the Democrats need to focus on are non-voters to voters, rather than those who oscillate between Republican and Democrat.
“[The political establishment] thinks that running to the center, moderating our policies, being as close to a Saltine cracker as possible is what’s going to make us win elections… and I don’t think that that’s the case,” she said. “I think what animates non-voters is feeling like someone is really fighting for them.”
“Not just saying ‘we care about education, health care, and housing,’ but ‘we believe in single payer healthcare,’” she continued. “In order to turn out non-voters we need to be really explicit in how we are fighting for them.”She also addressed how conservatives have long dominated the political narrative and the ways that establishment Democrats started buy into conservative talking points:
There’s this really myopic and just…misunderstanding of politics as this flat, two-dimensional, left-right thing. So they always feel like, ‘Okay, the right says this thing, we have to respond to it!’ That’s why [the right is] winning. That’s why they’ve won for the last ten years; because they’ve dragged us onto their court. And we’ve refused to have our own strong message to force them to play defense on.
Makes sense if you ask me! Check out the rest of the interview here.