Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says Democrats should drop Pelosi as leader, right after defending her against the left

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the Democratic Party leadership needs to change, after earlier refusing to buck Nancy Pelosi’s bid for Speakership to force a vote on a universal healthcare program.

“I do think that we need new leadership in the Democratic Party,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview on the Intercept’s podcast on Wednesday.

She added, however, that currently the party’s progressive wing would not be able to fill the created power vacuum. “If you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse,” she explained.

Ocasio-Cortez lamented that the longtime Democratic leaders, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, spent years concentrating power without any “real grooming of a next generation of leadership.”

The New York congresswoman’s scathing critique of the top Democrats appears to be a far cry from her own previous rhetoric.

Over the weekend Ocasio-Cortez rejected a widely-discussed idea that progressives in Congress should withhold their vote for Pelosi as House Speaker unless she puts the Medicare For All universal healthcare plan up to floor vote.

Ocasio-Cortez argued, that political leverage would be better spent on somewhat incremental change like assigning progressives to lead House committees as well as pushing for ideas already agreed upon by the more right-wing democrats like a $15 minimum wage law.

That, in turn, disappointed some of her followers, who called the former activist a conventional politician for seeming to be overly cautious while pursuing the progressive agenda.

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