Ocasio-Cortez rejects ‘extremist’ label–and fears for her life

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is pushing back this week against charges that she’s an “extremist,” saying the liberal policy prescriptions she champions are in a far different category than the violence sometimes promoted on the far right.

In an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace, the Queens liberal acknowledged that some voters are thirsty for policymakers in both parties to move away from “the fringes” and towards the center. But she was quick to warn against false equivalencies. 

“It’s important for us to dig into the substance of what that actually means,” she told Wallace. “As someone who is often … characterized as ‘extreme,’ I, of course, would object to that. I do not believe that I am extreme in the way that Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Republican side is extreme.” 

As one example, Ocasio-Cortez pointed to her support for a Medicare-for-all health care system, arguing that the fight for universal health coverage — a benefit program — should not be equated with support for the separation of undocumented families at the Southern Border, which has been shown to have harmful effects on children’s health. 

“The idea that there is an equating of … someone who believes in guaranteed universal health care in the United States with someone who believes that undocumented people should incur physical harm — [that those] are somehow in the same level of extreme — is something that I would object to,” she said.

First elected in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez quickly built a national following as a no-apologies champion of progressivism and a master of self-promotion on social media. The attention has come with a price, however: She’s regularly on the receiving end of violent threats, to the point that she says she fears every day for her life.

“I felt that my life has been in danger since the moment that I won my primary election in 2018,” she told Wallace. “And it became especially intensified when I was first brought into Congress in 2019.”

Like Ocasio-Cortez, Greene (R-Ga.) has also emerged as a national figure since arriving in Congress last year. The conservative firebrand has been among the most outspoken supporters of former President Trump and his spurious claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.” And she became a martyr of the right when Democrats stripped away her committee assignments following revelations that she had promoted the execution of prominent Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), before coming to Congress. 

Greene has also been the focus of attacks by her critics. Over the summer, she was repeatedly the target of “swatting,” when an anonymous caller summoned police to her Georgia home on the false pretense of violence happening there. Greene said leftists were out to kill her. 

“Yes, they are trying to have me murdered,” Greene told Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, afterwards. “They are trying to get me killed.” 

Ocasio-Cortez rejects the notion that partisan extremism is symmetrical, however. She was a key target of the violent, pro-Trump mob that stormed into the Capitol last year. And she told Wallace this week that the constant threat has altered her approach to governing in a grim way.  

“It very much shaped my political decisions, because I started to feel even in 2019 that it was possible that I may not see the end of the year,” she said. “I don’t know if I have time. So I need to be as robust and urgent as possible.”

The full interview will air on CNN on Sunday night. 

The comments came in the wake of Tuesday’s midterm elections, when both parties were warning voters that the other side supports extremist ideas. 

For Republicans, that meant arguing that President Biden and the Democrats, who enacted a series of massive spending bills since Biden took office, were pushing a socialist agenda that threatens to undo the country’s capitalist traditions. 

“You have seen us pull together these last few months and focus on the attack against big government socialism,” Rep. Steve Scalise (La.), the Republican whip, told Fox News this week. 

Democrats, meanwhile, had countered with warnings that Republican election denialism — a national, right-wing movement championed by former President Trump — was the real danger, jeopardizing the nation’s very democratic foundations.

“I don’t think the American people have given up on democracy,” Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.), the head of the Democrats’ campaign arm, told reporters Wednesday in Washington.

The result was essentially a draw. Both Ocasio-Cortez and Greene won easy reelections. 

And three days after voters went to the polls, both the House and the Senate remain too close to call.