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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warns 'incompetent' Dem party will lose big in 2022 without progressives in top brass

Some Democrats had blamed the progressive ideals around BLM and the Green New Deal cost the party Congressional seats in the last week's election

Following Joe Biden's emergence as the President-elect, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come forward to criticize the Democratic party for its "incompetence". In an interview with The New York Times, she warned that if the Biden administration does not put progressives in top positions, the party would lose big in the 2022 midterm elections. Some Democrats had blamed the progressive ideals around Black Lives Matter and the Green New Deal cost the party Congressional seats in the last week's election.

However, Ocasio-Cortez rejected these jabs in the interview. "I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for all is not the enemy. This isn't even just about winning an argument. It's that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they're just setting up their own obsolescence."

The Democratic Party aimed to not only win the presidency but also flip the Senate and maintain the majority in the House. With a number of centrist Democratic members defeated in this election and the win of all the Squad members, who are known to be progressives, the future of the administration stands on shaky grounds. And raises a question that we have asked before: Can the Democratic Party, with increasingly progressive clout, be hopeful about winning America's heartlands in elections in the near future?

"If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: 'This is moderates' fault. This is because you didn't let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all.' And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election? They would laugh. And that's what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss," she said in the interview.

Ocasio-Cortez and her closest allies in Congress all won reelection last week. The four-woman group of women under 50 known as "the squad" is made up of Ocasio-Cortez herself from New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

On social media, many support her. "The Democrats spent a combined 200 million dollars trying to unseat three entrenched GOP Senators in McConnell, Lady G and Susan Collins and got routed. I think she has a point calling the party 'incompetent'," one wrote. "Yeah, like a few here, incompetent and lacking core competencies, are different things to me, silly way to put it. I feel like she's real and truthfully wants to make things better, no one's perfect, but she seems good," another added. "AOC is the voice of reason. She won't ever be bought by institutional special interests nor swayed by pressures of career politicians," another raved about her. At the same time, some users on Twitter aren't one for believing her. If anything, they blame her. "AOC was elected by 105,000 voters, AOC’s ideas don’t represent a large majority of the Democratic Party. AOC cost the Democratic Party seats in Congress," one tweeted.