Politics
Ocasio-Cortez, Once an Outsider, Takes Center Stage at Convention
Four years ago, Democrats allotted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York a scant 90 seconds to speak at their convention. She used it to symbolically nominate Senator Bernie Sanders for president and never mentioned Joseph R. Biden Jr …
Four years ago, Democrats allotted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York a scant 90 seconds to speak at their convention. She used it to symbolically nominate Senator Bernie Sanders for president and never mentioned Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s name.
So when Ms. Ocasio-Cortez took the convention stage on Monday night in Chicago shortly before Hillary Clinton, her prime-time speaking slot offered a vivid display of how far the Democratic Party and the leader of its progressive wing have moved to embrace each other since 2020.
Greeted with chants of “A-O-C,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who made her name by taking on the Democratic establishment, delivered an affectionate tribute to Mr. Biden, laced into Donald J. Trump and forcefully endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as a champion of working Americans.
transcript
Crowd: “AOC, AOC, AOC.” Thank you. Thank you, Chicago, for your energy. Thank you, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for your vision. And thank you, Joe Biden, for your leadership. In Kamala Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class. I see a leader with a real commitment to a better future for working families. And I, for one, am tired about of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trampling on our way of life.
“We know Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing palms of his Wall Street friends,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I, for one, am tired of hearing about how a two-bit union buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed trampling on our way of life.”
She added: “The truth is, Don, you cannot love this country if you only fight for the wealthy and big business.”
