Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., won a difficult election once, during the 2018 primaries five years ago. Since then, she’s cruised to victory in every election for her deep-blue district.
Yet, Ocasio-Cortez has some advice for candidates running more difficult races… and MSNBC host Jen Psaki is encouraging her.
Psaki interviewed Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday.
“You’re also a pretty politically astute observer,” Psaki said. “Donald Trump, people think — some say — is the easiest person for Joe Biden to run against. What do you think about that?”
Ocasio-Cortez said, “I think there’s something to be said that the dynamics of these races change from day to day. I think that Gov. DeSantis has made some very large, critical errors, and I think he’s weaker than –”
Psaki interrupted, “What are his biggest errors, do you think, if you’ve watched?”
“He has sacrificed, I think, the one thing that others may have thought would make him competitive, which is this idea that he would somehow be more rational than Donald Trump, which he isn’t,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Well, you can’t out-Trump Trump, right? And that’s what he’s really been trying to do. His attacks on teachers, on schools, on LGBTQ+ Americans, I think, go way too far in the state of Florida. And I think that they are a profound political miscalculation and an overcompensation.”
Ocasio-Cortez mentioned “overcompensation” in the context of DeSantis’ lackluster polling in the primaries. DeSantis is polling 28 points behind Trump According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregate from Sunday.
Psaki followed up, “Now, you’re very familiar with surprising people and winning a primary. Is there anyone in the Republican field that… could take on Trump?”
“To be honest, I don’t,” Ocasio-Cortez replied. “I think right now the Republican Party is so disorganized that I don’t see someone who can unite that party, even beyond Donald Trump… The individuals that have wanted to appeal to people’s cooler senses in the party have been driven out. Every Republican who’s voted for impeachment has been — is no longer there. And so I really struggle to find anybody who can both accomplish that task and unite their party.
In fact, Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., voted to impeach Trump in 2021, and he’s still in Congress.
Psaki concluded the interview not by correcting Ocasio-Cortez, but by asking softball questions. Psaki asked, “What do people get wrong about you?”
Take a look —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRKZx66zzxM
The Horn editorial team