Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is taking Washington by storm, but some Senate Democrats see her exploding appeal as more of a sideshow than meaningful statement about the future of their party.
Centrist Democrats worry that Ocasio-Cortez’s advocacy for adopting a 70-percent tax rate for the nation’s highest income earners, funding “Medicare for all” and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn’t play well in their home states.
In 2020, Democrats need to pick up at least three seats to capture the Senate majority, which means winning in centrist or Republican-leaning states such as Alabama, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa and North Carolina. They would prefer to focus instead on bipartisan ideas to lower health care costs, rein in the federal deficit and help veterans — priorities that drive votes in battleground states but don’t usually draw much national media attention.
“Her views don’t represent a lot of my constituents,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who faces a competitive reelection in 2020.
Ocasio-Cortez drew a storm of media attention earlier this month when she told Anderson Cooper in a “60 Minutes” interview that her ambitious plan for a “Green New Deal” — a huge federal investment in clean-energy jobs — could be paid for by taxing people who earn $10 million a year at 60 percent or 70 percent, a level not seen since the early 1980s.
Calls to jack up tax rates and spend trillions on government-provided health care conjures up the days when New Hampshire was a Republican stronghold in New England and when bashing Democrats as “tax-and-spend liberals” was a favorite tactic in the GOP playbook. – READ MORE