The election was decided more than four months ago and the next one is years away, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was in full campaign mode when she took to the stage in Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon.
“Are you ready to fight? Are you ready to win?” she shouted to a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 people. “We’re gonna take our country back.”
AOC traveled across the country to join her political mentor Bernie Sanders on a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that will hit several states this week.
They will go to Nevada, Arizona and Colorado over the next few days, where they will hold rallies and “hold town meetings with working people,” Sanders announced this week.
“We are here together because an extreme concentration of power and corruption is taking over this country like never before,” the New York congresswoman told the crowd, before taking aim at Elon Musk and his efforts to cut government spending.
Sanders has been drawing thousands to his rallies on this tour, which has taken him from Kenosha, Wisconsin to suburban Detroit and out to Nebraska. In hitting the road and talking to voters while Democrats in Washington are soul searching, he has taken on the leadership of the anti-Trump resistance, such as it is, the second time around.
Now, he has a partner.
It is not unusual for the progressive pair to hold events together, but coming at a time of deep crisis for the Democratic Party, when its leadership is facing growing rage over its inability to oppose Donald Trump’s agenda, and when calls for a new direction are becoming harder to ignore, their message feels pointed.
It comes just a week after the party’s ostensible leader, 74-year-old Chuck Schumer, helped Republicans pass a spending bill that almost all Democrats opposed, allowing sweeping cuts expanding Trump’s power to control government funding.
Ocasio-Cortez came out as one of Schumer’s strongest critics, calling his move “a tremendous mistake.”
Democratic voters — from moderates to young voters to progressives — were already frustrated at an apparent lack of action in response to Trump’s brazen first months in office. Schumer’s decision added to the outrage.
Democratic lawmakers faced down angry constituents at town halls across the country.
In Las Vegas on Thursday, a man in the crowd summed up the mood not long into AOC’s speech when he shouted: “Primary Chuck!”
The devastating election loss and the party’s failure to find its footing since have sent it into a spin that it has struggled to control. Its approval rating hit an all-time low this week in a national NBC News poll, with just over a quarter of registered voters (27 per cent) saying they have positive views of the party.
