Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Learn the Game Before Enjoying the Fame

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party’s wunderkind, embarked on her political journey by defeating Congressman Joe Crowley in the battle for New York’s 14th congressional district. Her victory over one of the most prominent members of the House was astonishing and has made a lasting mark on American politics.

However, on her current trajectory, she is heading for political ruin. She needs a reality check to prevent herself from shattering her incredible opportunity at political stardom.

Cortez’s road to glory began with Crowley’s chutzpah. It was apparent that Crowley believed victory over Cortez was inevitable and didn’t take the competition seriously. His extreme carelessness was shown on multiple occasions, including when he was absent from the debate and relied too heavily on polling. According to his campaign’s polling, he had more than a 20-point advantage over Cortez. This proved to be the cause of his peripeteia, as his polls only accounted for regular primary voters, while Cortez’s strategy consisted of relentlessly communicating with everyone in the district, particularly those who didn’t vote.

Cortez deserves respect for her efforts. She worked incredibly hard to reach everyone in her district, including those who were not regular voters. She traveled door to door spreading a personalized message among voters, motivating them to vote for her. Doing all of this, and eventually winning at only 28 years old, is an incredible feat, and she should first and foremost be recognized for running an outstanding campaign.

But while it is refreshing to see a younger generation take an authoritative interest in politics, Ocasio-Cortez’s recent interview with PBS Firing Line host Margaret Hoover, among other television appearances, has exhibited that she is a political novice and still has plenty to learn about politics. Her interview was going quite well until Hoover asked Cortez about international affairs and foreign policy. After hitting this speed bump, Ocasio-Cortez admitted, “I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue […] I just look at things through a human rights lens and I may not use the right words […] Middle Eastern politics is not exactly at my kitchen table every night.”

Though it’s not ideal for a politician to admit the lack of knowledge of a subject on television, foreign affairs aren’t on Ocasio-Cortez’s resume. They also weren’t a major part of her campaign, so her lack of knowledge in the field was not a problem. In fact, admitting the lack of knowledge in a subject is the more professional thing to do, considering she could have also fabricated facts and lied her way out of a difficult situation. Her loyalties should lie with her district, so Cortez shouldn’t busy herself with an education of foreign policy. She should work hard in formulating plans for fulfilling her campaign promises and getting well educated in her branch of politics, which will enable her to do her job to the best of her ability.

Though international affairs weren’t her priority, unemployment and a federal job guarantee were high on Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda. However, she again demonstrated her lack of knowledge and experience and showed that she was not ready for the fast-paced politics that came with her job. In the same interview, she said, “Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family.” After this ludicrous statement, she proceeded to say, "Capitalism has not always existed in the United States, and it will not always exist. When this country started, we did not operate on a capitalist economy." And despite making such tall claims, she even failed to define what a capitalist economy was. Considering Ocasio-Cortez is a candidate whose major policy proposals revolve around making important economic decisions, it is frightening to see she plans to alter the economy without even knowing how it runs and what the implications of her proposals will be.

Several fact-checking websites, particularly PolitiFact, analyzed her comments in this interview. Many of her statements have been false (rated “Pants on Fire!”). Her statements are a classic example of sweeping language—kryptonite for politicians—particularly used by those who are new to the scene. Though she may know many people who work two jobs that warrant 60 hours a week, this definitely does not translate to the fact that “everyone has two jobs.” In fact, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the amount of people who work two jobs has deeply declined since the Great Recession. As of July 2018, only 4.7 percent of American workers have two jobs. That may be a handful of people, but is a far cry from “everyone.” Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez’s constituents earn an average of $54,373 a year and work an average of 45 hours per week. Though these economic conditions may be more difficult to live off of, particularly in an expensive place like New York City, Ocasio-Cortez’s claims are erroneous.

Despite these overly glib statements she has made on national television, Ocasio-Cortez can still fix the damage she has inflicted upon herself. Considering her win in New York almost guarantees her a seat in Congress, she still has time to change. Instead of touring the country like a pop star, she should focus on how she could fulfill her constituents’ wishes. She needs to educate herself on political and socio-economic policies on the state and federal level, for she has repeatedly shown a lack of knowledge in these fields. She must study and reexamine her plans and come up with proposals that are not just appealing and impossible to achieve. She will serve both herself and her district well by doing so; after all, the residents of Queens and the Bronx are the ones who gave her the privilege of representing them in Congress. She needs to stop playing a public relations game and trying to become more famous and learn how to do her job and fulfill her voters’ needs. If she educates herself and learns to do the job properly, the people will be satisfied. The gains of her people should be her priority, not her personal agenda for achieving stardom.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been labeled the “Future of the Democratic Party” by many of her Democratic counterparts. This bold statement by contemporary progressives has invited a lot of attention, inadvertently causing her to face significant pressure to deliver on her campaign promises. However, with celebrity comes scrutiny, and she has repeatedly failed to address how her plans would be able to pan out in a practical manner. In particular, she has repeatedly dismissed the exorbitant costs that come with her proposals.

For example, when Ocasio-Cortez appeared on CNN in early August, she was finally questioned about the upscale costs that would come with single-payer health care. To this she replied, “In a Koch brothers-funded study—if any study is going to try to be a little bit slanted, it would be one funded by the Koch brothers—it shows that Medicare for all is actually much cheaper than the current system that we pay right now.”

It comes as no surprise now that, once again, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said something completely untrue. Many Democrats have alluded to a finding in a study performed by those at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which is partly financed by the Koch Foundation. This note read that the universal Medicare plan forwarded by Bernie Sanders would lower the American spending on health care by $2 trillion within a span of nine years. However, what the Democrats fail to voice is that the reason the expenditures are lowered by so much is that 40 percent of payments accrued by health care providers would be cut. If health care providers lose their profits, restrictions on health care will become more rigid in order to avoid incurring a loss. People with more than two pre-existing conditions, which make up 90 percent of the American population above the age of 50, would have an extremely low chance of getting affordable health care. And like many of the progressives’ plans, Sanders’s plan is highly unrealistic, a fact which is corroborated by the study. In fact, his plan would see a sharp increase in government investment by $32.6 trillion over the same period of nine years. Moreover, realistically accounting for the fact that providers will not allow such steep cuts in accrued revenue, the federal budget would amount to nearly $40 trillion. The point is, there is no way the plan would be “much cheaper” than the existing system, which is a whopping $10 trillion lower than the cost of her proposal.

A major part of Ocasio-Cortez’s progressive agenda is her ruthless advocacy against conservative immigration reforms and overly eager support for the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In an interview with the Intercepted Podcast, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about her opinions on ICE. “ICE is the only criminal investigative agency, the only enforcement agency in the United States, that has a bed quota. So ICE is required to fill 34,000 beds with detainees every single night and that number has only been increasing since 2009,” she said.

According to many fact-checkers, including PolitiFact, what Ocasio-Cortez stated is popular rhetoric among Democrats but is nothing but an urban legend. What she may be referring to is a 2016 appropriations bill which reads, “ICE shall maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds through September 30, 2016.” Though ICE needs to maintain 34,000 detention beds, the clause does not include the fact that ICE is required to fill them. The objective of the language was to ensure that the funds behind ICE were not spent on anything else.

In light of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s heavy advocacy for a $15 minimum hourly wage and a federal jobs guarantee, she was bound to be asked about the economic aspects of her plan. Time and time again, she has failed to account for the monetary inadequacies that her plans entail, including when she was asked to explain her federal jobs guarantee plan on Pod Save America, an American progressive political podcast. In an interview on this network, she stated, “[National Democrats] were campaigning most when we had more of an American middle class. This upper middle class is probably more moderate, but that upper middle class does not exist anymore in America.”

This is yet another example of Ocasio-Cortez’s sweeping rhetoric. In a desperate effort to strengthen the argument for the validity of her plans, she forwardly claimed that the “upper middle class does not exist anymore.” However, data from the Urban Institute, an organization widely respected for its statistical accuracy, shows that the upper middle class has actually grown. Though the middle class as a whole has diminished in size, Urban Institute economist Stephen J. Rose recorded a substantial increase in the upper middle class: from 12.9 percent of the population to an impressive 30.2 percent in 2017. Furthermore, his analysis demonstrates an extensive shift in the median population of the economy, with a rising amount of income going strictly to the upper middle class and rich. This goes directly against her rhetoric; she argues that the upper middle class doesn’t exist, yet there are more people in the upper middle class now than there were in recorded history.

And when it comes to her plan of a federal jobs guarantee, the costs that come with it are so exorbitant that the odds of her proposal actually being implemented are next to impossible. Yet again, Ocasio-Cortez has failed to account for the gargantuan cost of her proposal, which approaches $500 billion. The cost would skyrocket even higher after adding this to existing welfare policies. In addition, her plan entails a $15 hourly wage, along with benefits. Many jobs in the current economy, particularly in heavily populated areas, pay below $15 an hour. Her plan, even if it was economically possible, would bring such an enormous imbalance to the market that it could cause another Great Depression. Any successful capitalistic economy, especially one like the United States, relies on the private sector for economic dominance. An overwhelming 75 percent of all jobs, in fields from manufacturing to businesses, lie in the private sector. With a federal jobs guarantee, it once again raises a socialist flaw: the lack of incentive. The jobs guarantee would prevent people from working in the private sector, which would bring such an enormous imbalance to the market that it would not only cause a fiscal crisis but also result in a period of economic turmoil resembling that of the Great Depression. All of these problems lead to another important issue: jobs for all these people don’t actually exist. Improving the nation’s infrastructure sounds like a brilliant way to employ people, but it isn’t a “guarantee.” Only a small fraction of people could be useful in the various positions the government offers. This would cause a significant rise in the price of goods and a substantial amount of people to be unemployed, resulting in major economic problems and hyperinflation.

Though the taste of being treated like a global pop star is appetizing, it can be overwhelming and clearly isn’t what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs at the moment. Her outstanding win in New York is to be admired, but if she is truly dedicated to representing her hundreds of thousands of constituents, she really needs to take a step back.

Ocasio-Cortez needs to work for her district and her voters, not the entire country. The entire country didn’t vote for her. She needs to go back and reflect upon her plans and rectify them so that they are feasible and that they can be successful among her voters. She needs to be reminded that she was elected on her attractive Democratic Socialist agenda to tackle serious problems, and she needs to educate herself on how to approach and solve these problems.

Though Republicans will harshly criticize and deeply disagree with her rhetoric, our nation is at a critical point in its history, and all our representatives must be well prepared for the issues they must deal with. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could become the face of the “Future of the Democratic Party,” but she isn’t yet. She needs to prove herself. That is a title that she needs to earn.