Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) responded on Twitter Thursday evening to former Connecticut senator and 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman who told Fox Business that he hoped the young congresswoman was not the “future of the party.”
New party, who dis? https://t.co/2cznisv8tB
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 11, 2019
Lieberman said that Ocasio-Cortez gets attention for being “different” and “controversial,” but her socialist, far-left platform is not the way the Democratic party is leaning.
“If you look at the majority of new Democrats in the house, they tend to be, I say, center-left, if they are not left-left,” he said. “And that is because they had to be center-left to win some of those competitive swing districts that they took from Republicans. So that’s the hope.”
Lieberman also had specific criticism of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.
“We already have a progressive income tax system,” he said.
“If you accumulate income in the country the big bump is still in the middle class” he explained. “So you’ve got to be careful about raising taxes too high and you’ve got to be careful about, a 70 percent tax on high-income people is really done for political reasons.”
Ocasio-Cortez has been very vocal on social media and unafraid of criticizing members of her own party.
Some Democrats recently expressed their concern and criticism over her methods to Politico.
“I’m sure Ms. Cortez means well, but there’s almost an outstanding rule: Don’t attack your own people,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) said. “We just don’t need sniping in our Democratic Caucus.”
“She needs to decide: Does she want to be an effective legislator or just continue being a Twitter star?” a House Democrat who agrees with her on the issues told Politico. “There’s a difference between being an activist and a lawmaker in Congress.”