Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), has a controversial take on today's moderates in the Democratic Party. In a now-deleted tweet, Chakrabarti compared centrist Democrats to old, racist, southern Democrats.
Whoa. @AOC’s chief just deleted this. pic.twitter.com/xRJphPAkwb
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) June 27, 2019
Strangely, despite making the message disappear, Chakrabarti later doubled down on it.
This is in reference to my comparing Blue Dogs and New Democrats to 1940s Southern Democrats. Southern Democrats enabled a racist system too. I have no idea how personally racist they all were. And we're seeing the same dynamic play out now.
— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) June 27, 2019
We shouldn't be surprised by this, because we already know AOC has no tolerance for anyone who isn't as progressive as she is. When former Maryland representative and presidential candidate John Delaney told the California Democratic Party's convention this month that Medicare for All was not morally acceptable or economically feasible, Ocasio-Cortez told him to "sashay away."
She's also distanced herself from other Democrats by demonizing big corporations like Amazon. When the company tried to set up shop in New York City for its second headquarters, AOC led the effort against it and lost a fan in Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo accused her of being part of a group who put their "narrow political interests" over what's best for New Yorkers. The city would have benefitted from thousands of new jobs, but Ocasio-Cortez said it doesn't matter because those jobs would have been "subsidized."
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