The most radical socialists in America just told Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez she’s not one of them anymore.
The DSA’s Liberation Caucus — a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist faction inside the Democratic Socialists of America — put out a statement this week that reads less like a press release and more like an excommunication. AOC, they said, has engaged in a “continued retreat from socialist politics.” They will not, they wrote, hand her the “presidential standard-bearer” mantle for the movement.
The charge sheet: she voted to affirm Israel’s right to exist. She joined House Democrats defending Israel’s right to a defense system, after voting against supplemental weapons funding — a distinction the caucus wasn’t interested in making. She sat on a panel with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which the group brands a Zionist organization. And she told ABC that the “Woke 1” era of 2020 — her word choice, not theirs — got “crazyyyyy,” walking back the defund-the-police language that helped launch her into Congress in the first place.
That last one stung the caucus most. Her own rise, they noted, came riding the wave she now calls embarrassing. “This is the action of an opportunist dilettante, devoid of any principles whatsoever, not a socialist,” the statement read.
Worth sitting with that phrase for a second. Not “too moderate for us.” Not “we disagree.” An opportunist. Devoid of principles. From people who list Mao’s mass starvation under a “misconceptions” tab on their own website.
Here’s the part that actually matters for 2028: the national DSA is refusing to endorse a woman currently polling as Democrats’ top pick for president. Meanwhile the DSA just rolled out a new platform demanding candidates support abolishing the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court to even qualify for the group’s backing. New York City’s DSA chapter, which has always been friendlier to AOC, is reportedly weighing a split from the national organization altogether.
So AOC is caught in a pincer. Run further left, and she looks like exactly what swing voters already suspect. Run toward the center — which, by any normal measure, is what she’s doing — and the people who built her now call her a fraud.
