AOC celebrates socialist mayor, takes shot at ‘old guard’ Dems

Moments after Zohran Mamdani won Tuesday’s election to become the next mayor of New York City, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired a shot across the bow at her party’s establishment.

“What I think is so impressive about what Zohran Mamdani accomplished tonight – as well as the entire movement of New Yorkers that came out to vote for him – is that he had to not just defeat a Republican, he had to defeat a Republican and the old guard of the Democratic Party,” she told CNN’s Abby Phillip.

“And I think the message that that sends is that the Democratic party cannot last much longer by denying the future, by trying to undercut our young, by trying to undercut a next generation of diverse and upcoming Democrats that have the party’s – the actual party – that are actual electorate and voter support.”

Phillip then asked if Chuck Schumer is afraid of her potentially challenging him for his Senate seat next year.

Ocasio-Cortez tried to deflect and say it was Republicans and not Schumer that fear her candidacy, but the two statements appear in conflict, since Schumer embodies the party’s old guard.

In another interview with NBC’s Sam Brock, the Democrat lauded the benefits of socialism, such as “free buses, rent freezes and universal child care,” only to moments later dismiss the inference that Democrats are socialists.

“I’m a millennial. I’m 36 years old, and my first election was for Barack Obama when I was 18 years old. And we’ve been hearing Democrats be called socialists our entire voting lives,” she told Brock. “I think that as time goes on, this is not a threat that is really resonating with the majority and large pluralities of the electorate, and that this kind of name calling doesn’t really have the weight that results do have.”

When asked to define a Democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez likened it to fighting for more government programs.

“I mean, to me, it’s this radical idea that working people have economic rights. And when you read the Constitution of this country, we have beautiful, incredible freedoms of speech, and we have so many liberties and due processes.

“But should we not also have the right to housing, the right to a livable wage, the right to attempt to provide health care and child care to the best that we are able and capable of providing in this country?”

Voters may get their say on that if Ocasio-Cortez announces a primary challenge of Schumer, the Democrat’s Senate minority leader who is widely viewed as prolonging the government shutdown to appease the party’s far-left base in advance of such a challenge.

The lawmaker also took shots at President Donald Trump on Tuesday, saying he “operates through threats. He operates through criminality,” citing his 34 felony convictions in a civil case widely viewed as a political prosecution. She added that the Supreme Court has “essentially authorized” him “to commit crimes in office” through its rulings.

When asked about the lasting message from Mamdani’s win, Ocasio-Cortez took a more cheerful tone, saying:

“As dark as this time is, as challenging as this moment can be, anything is still possible in America.”

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia Commons)