During Blackout for Human Rights’ fifth annual MLK Now event, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the Democratic Party is a “center-conservative” party. She cited the inability of Congress to vote on “Medicare for All” as the sole reason for this claim.
“The Democratic Party is not a left party, the Democratic Party is a center, or center-conservative party,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We can’t even get a floor vote on ‘Medicare for All,’ not even a floor vote that gets voted down. We can’t even get a vote on it, so this is not a left party. There are left members inside the Democratic Party that are working to try to make that shift happen.”
AOC: “The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center, or a center-conservative party” pic.twitter.com/6TNAC50nXi
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2020
Ocasio-Cortez continued her speech by contrasting the gun rights protest in Richmond, Virginia, with protests against the killings of Freddie Gray and Eric Garner, insinuating police officers are racist because when people protested the death of Freddie Gray and Eric Garner, officers were present in riot gear. During the gun rights protest, however, she said there were almost no police officers.
“Here are all of these people, flying Confederate flags with semi-automatic weapons, and there’s almost no police officers,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
.@AOC contrasts today’s gun rights march in Richmond with protests against Eric Garner’s killing: "Why were there almost no police officers” despite protesters “flying confederate flags and [carrying] semiautamtic weapons”? pic.twitter.com/JRL9B76EQW
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2020
Ocasio-Cortez is wrong on both counts. The Democratic Party is not “conservative,” and the gun rights protest was not a free-for-all for gun-toting white supremacists.
The current Democratic Party stands for far left-leaning ideas. Every single 2020 Democratic candidate is running on some form of expanded government-issued insurance, whether “Medicare for All” by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, “Medicare for all who want it” by Pete Buttigieg, or expanding Obamacare, as Joe Biden suggests.
These Democrats are also running on removing remaining abortion restrictions, canceling existing student debt, and attempting to establish free college for everyone. These radical proposals are the epitome of far-left ideologies. The Democratic Party isn’t “conservative” in any sense.
Ocasio-Cortez suggesting the gun rights protest was a racist free-for-all was also false. Journalists who actually attended the rally, instead of virtue-signaling like Ocasio-Cortez, found the protest to be quite diverse and safe.
Townhall’s Julio Rosas pointed out the diverse crowd at the rally, also noting the safe atmosphere. “With the #VirginiaRally coming to a close, I can definitively say that I had zero concern for my safety once I got there. Had zero problems with the protesters and they were quite nice. Can’t say the same when I covered protests in Portland,” Rosas said.
With the #VirginiaRally coming to a close, I can definitively say that I had zero concern for my safety once I got there. Had zero problems with the protesters and they were quite nice. Can't say the same when I covered protests in Portland.
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 20, 2020
The Federalist’s Tristan Justice also covered the rally and pointed out the real race problem in Virginia: It isn’t the protesters standing up for their Second Amendment right, but rather Gov. Ralph Northam’s wearing blackface and being reelected solely because he’s a Democrat.
Man reminding the crowd that Governor Northam wore blackface pic.twitter.com/l9JMrksPXx
— Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) January 20, 2020
Later in the event, Ocasio-Cortez equated Jeff Bezos and the Amazon business model to “modern-day slavery.”
“You didn’t make those widgets. You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern day slave wages, and in some cases real modern-day slavery. … You made that money off the backs of undocumented people, you made that money off of the backs of black and brown people paid under a living wage,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Finally, Ocasio-Cortez suggested the Jeff Bezos turn Amazon into a workers cooperative.
“If Jeff Bezos wanted to be a good person, he’d turn Amazon into a worker cooperative,” she said.
https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1219376445769814016?s=12
Ocasio-Cortez’s assumption that the gun rights protest was racist in its police presence was as incorrect as her baseless claim that the Democratic Party is “center-conservative,” or that Amazon’s business model is a form of modern-day slavery.
