Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s staff has been in talks with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s team over the past few days, she admitted in a new interview.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) revealed in an interview with Politico Wednesday that her aides were “having conversations with Biden’s team” in order to “figure out what some of these policy conversations will [be] looking like” as the general election takes shape.
The comments come two days after she took part in an interview with the New York Times in which she said she had not yet heard from the Biden campaign since Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped out of the race.
The New York Democrat has long been a critic of the moderate former vice president, once saying that the two would be in different political parties if they were in another country. She softened her tone slightly as Biden began to run away with the nomination.
The political lightning rod said earlier this week that the process of the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party working to unify around Biden should be “uncomfortable.”
“The whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved — that’s how you know it’s working. And if Biden is only doing things he’s comfortable with, then it’s not enough,” she told the Times while acknowledging that voters know there are “limits to what Biden will do.”
“There’s this talk about unity as this kind of vague, kumbaya, kind of term. Unity and unifying isn’t a feeling, it’s a process. And what I hope does not happen in this process is that everyone just tries to shoo it along and brush real policies — that mean the difference of life and death or affording your insulin and not affording your insulin — just brush that under the rug as an aesthetic difference of style.”
Speaking to Politico, AOC offered some praise of Biden, specifically that she was heartened by his pledge to name a female running mate and his interest in that person being of color.
The Democratic socialist went on to advise the presumptive nominee on what type of woman he should choose.
“What’s really important is not only just that woman’s identity, in terms of gender and cultural terms, but … who that woman is and [what] her stance is,” the progressive darling said.
“There is a wide spectrum, politically, of women of color. There’s some that are very conservative, in terms of Democratic context, and there’s some that are more progressive,” she continued.
“Biden was more conservative than [party nominee Sen. Barack] Obama” when he was chosen as a running mate,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that it would be “encouraging if Biden also picked someone who was a little bit more progressive, that he knows may push him.”