Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "Had an great time with @breakfastclubam - you can catch this morning’s interview here: [url]https://t.co/H2xLw2NtpU https://t.co/sTJM8ViCVz" / Twitter[/url]
noting
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Talks 2020 Race, Trump Tweets, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Socialism + More - YouTube
She started off with how she ran for office, seeking out new voters. Bernie Sanders has been a mentor for her. She suspects a generational difference in what people consider socialism, based on experiences like the cold war (older) and capitalism run amok (younger). AOC's anti-capitalist tendencies are from MLK, Howard Thurman, Albert Einstein, etc. Stuff like Social Security, Medicare, roads, firefighters, ... she considers socialist or at least non-capitalist. Democratic socialism - labor unions, worker cooperatives. She acknowledges that some people may prefer to call it "compassionate capitalism."
She thinks that her fellow Congresspeople understand that she is not trying to be annoying for the sake of being annoying when she does what she does. She also thinks that going after big donors means being willing to do what they want.
She dislikes Michael Bloomberg, for rather obvious reasons. She also says that while political redemption is possible, it must be earned. She also criticized "saviorism", expecting some elected official to save us, and she says that as an elected official. It's necessary to have mass movements in addition to good elected officials. She also says that race and class are mixed up with each other in the US. Then she gets into taxi medallions and predatory lending involved with them. She wants a bailout for taxi drivers saddled with huge debt. That was because of taxi drivers becoming activists.
After discussing how nasty people can be on the Internet, she gets to how much President Trump craves attention, how he can't stand it when someone gets more attention than he does - whether Nancy Pelosi or Adam Schiff or Colin Kaepernick. She refuses to reject primary challenges on principle, because that's how she got into office. As to charter schools, she does not reject them outright. She helped a relative's daughter get into one because that relative had the alternative of sending her to an awful local public school. She prefers having good public schools. She says that property-tax funding of public schools is a big problem, because it makes people want to live among people richer than them.
About a public option, she is concerned that the private insurance companies will push their sickest patients onto it and load it down. About impeachment, she thinks that it's the principle that counts, even if it was unsuccessful at removing Trump from office. The Democrats, by doing their part in the House, put the burden on the Senate. She thinks that it's not going to be any one person who will beat Trump, that it will take a mass movement, especially in electoral-college swing states. She recommends focusing on cities, like Philadelphia and Detroit and Minneapolis. We need to inspire people to turn out who didn't turn out last time, she says. She's describing how she won her upset victory - getting new voters.
She doesn't have any career goals in the sense of wanting some position, and she is willing to take stances that may limit her future career. She feels good about calling the border detention camps concentration camps and for calling for a 70% marginal income-tax rate on top incomes. She sees herself as less aspiring to a position than having a mission. The last few years have been an unpredictable whirlwind for her, and if she had been planning to run for office 5 years ago, she wouldn't have been a bartender in a restaurant. She is a "spiritual person" and when she wakes up she tries to think "Given the way that things are now, what are the best ways I can be a vessel for good." Elsewhere, she has said "I just ask the question, how can I do the most good right now?" For her, it could be continuing in politics, writing books, being a university professor, getting a cabin somewhere, "I have no idea". So it's a day-by-day thing for her. She thinks that too many politicians think about running for President, and that they are unwilling to take courageous stances because of that. "F that". That may be an overstatement, but I think that that's even true of politicians who are content to continue in their current offices. She mentioned elsewhere how fearful many politicians are of doing anything that may seem to limit their careers. She then confessed to having a potty mouth, though not in public.
photo by @eric_kelly 
huge shout out to Eric for allowing me to go through his campaign photos of Bernie and AOC and letting me utilize them to create work supporting their individual and joint political efforts 
#AlexandriaOcasioCortez #TrabajadorasDelHogar https://t.co/UJhtg5PGSN" / Twitter
https://t.co/rhv2Y54ktP" / Twitter