'I'll Be Damned': Ocasio-Cortez Blasts Biden's 'Middle Of The Road' Plans
A day after calling Republicans "sea sponges" for believing she was serious when she said "the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change," democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took clear aim at a key figure on her side of the aisle: Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, who is reportedly working on plans to provide a "middle ground" approach to address the "existential threat."
"I'll be damned if the same politicians who refused to act (in past decades) are going to try to come back today and say we need a 'middle of the road' approach to save our lives," Ocasio-Cortez declared at a rally Monday hosted by the radical left Sunrise Movement, the same group the incoming congresswoman joined in a sit-in protest at the office of presumptive Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi just days after getting elected last year.
As CNN notes, Ocasio-Cortez's "middle of the road" comment appears to be "aimed directly at Biden," about whom fellow democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders had just blasted on the same stage for not being progressive enough. Their complaints appear to be in reference to a recent Reuters report on Biden's plans to find "middle ground" on climate change.
"Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters who elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists," Reuters reported Friday. "The backbone of the policy will likely include the United States re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and preserving U.S. regulations on emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has sought to undo, according to one of the sources, [former Obama adviser] Heather Zichal, who is part of a team advising Biden on climate change."
But Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez made clear Monday that they want none of Biden's "middle ground" when it comes to the issue that Ocasio-Cortez has said is "our World War II." To combat what she and Sanders portray as an existential threat, the freshman congresswoman has proposed her radical "Green New Deal," which even CNN admits would "fundamentally overhaul the US economy," and includes unsustainable promises, like a federal jobs guarantee and complete carbon neutrality in ten years — costing what a former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates could cost anywhere from $50 trillion to over $90 trillion over ten years.
The Sunrise Movement also piled on the idea of "middle ground approach," a spokesman telling CNN that such policies would be a "death sentence for our generation and millions of people around the world."
Biden isn't taking criticism from the far-left sitting down, insisting that there's been nothing "middle of the road about my effort in dealing with the environment," CNN notes. He too is declaring global warming an "existential threat."
A day before her "save our lives" comments and the Sunrise Movement's "death sentence" assertion — Ocasio-Cortez attempted to walk back her previous apocalyptic declarations about climate change by ridiculing those who have taken her warning that "the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change" literally.
"This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and 'fact check' it. Like the 'world ending in 12 years' thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows," she tweeted Sunday.
