AOC’s Biggest Problem Is That She’s AOC

I don’t know if the purpose of GQ‘s profile of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was to make its subject look like a whiny, cartoonish, spoiled, self-indulgent mediocrity, but that’s certainly the effect it had on me. At no point during the interview, it seems, did it occur to either the writer, Wesley Lowery, or his interviewee that the core problem that AOC faces is AOC — not other people. Take this line, for example, which represents just one part of a rambling, embarrassingly pseudo-eloquent answer to the question of whether, one day, she might be elected president:

People ask me questions about the future. And realistically, I can’t even tell you if I’m going to be alive in September. And that weighs very heavily on me. And it’s not just the right wing. Misogyny transcends political ideology: left, right, center. This grip of patriarchy affects all of us, not just women; men, as I mentioned before, but also, ideologically, there’s an extraordinary lack of self-awareness in so many places. And so those are two very conflicting things. I admit to sometimes believing that I live in a country that would never let that happen.

The reason that it is unlikely that this country will “let” AOC be president is not that she’s a woman. It’s that she’s a dimwitted socialist. This country is also not going to “let” Marjorie Taylor Greene be president. That’s not patriarchy; it’s taste. In his next paragraph, Lowery gets quite close to understanding this, but then swiftly backs away from the implications of his own words:

Even were she theoretically to become president, then what? She’d face a system—from the Senate to the Supreme Court—both empowered and inclined to thwart her most sweeping ambitions.

This is true. But it’s not because AOC’s a woman. It’s because she’s a fringe radical. Sure, the Senate would — will — “thwart” some of what AOC wants to do. Why? Because the Senate is elected, and because, absent some cataclysm in American politics, the people who elect it are not going to vote for AOC’s proposals — which, to bring it full circle, is why the American people are unlikely to “let” her become president. As for the Supreme Court: Yes, it is likely to block much of what AOC hopes to achieve, because much of what AOC hopes to achieve is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution that it exists to defend.

For some reason, AOC is as incapable of following her thoughts all the way through as is her interviewer. “Since I got here,” she complains,

literally day one, even before day one, I’ve experienced a lot of targeting diminishment from my party. And the pervasiveness of that diminishment, it was all-encompassing at times. I feel a little more steady on my own two feet now. But would I say that I have the power to shift the elected federal Democratic Party? No.

Right. Again: That’s because . . .

Elsewhere, Lowery complains that AOC’s “opponents on both the left and right have gleefully dissected her every utterance, hunting for ways to dismiss and ridicule her.” Here, the word “hunting” is doing a lot of work. Hunting is an active endeavor; AOC has opened a butcher’s shop. AOC is not dismissed and mocked because her critics are searching desperately for reasons to dismiss and mock her; AOC is dismissed and mocked because she’s highly dismissible and mockable. Hell, she’s even mockable throughout the very piece in which she’s complaining about being mocked.

Consider this little gem: 

“It’s my resolution that perhaps we can be engaged by the end of the year,” she recalled him telling her. “And I said, ‘Oh, really? Well, you’re going to have to woo me. You’re going to have to convince me, after all this time, why I should.’ ” Ocasio-Cortez told me that she never considered marriage inevitable. Her relationship with Roberts, who is white, raised its own particular questions about identity and belonging: She wasn’t positive that an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit for her.

Sorry, what? Is there anyone in America who, having read these words, can still insist that AOC is treated unfairly? If anyone else in politics had told a friendly journalist that they were not positive that “an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit” for them, it would have yielded a hurricane of criticism. Per Gallup, 94 percent of Americans approve of interracial marriage — and by “approve,” one must assume that they do not mean “. . . but only for other people.” What the hell does “she wasn’t positive that an intercultural, interracial relationship would be the right fit for her” mean in practice? And who, besides AOC, would be given the benefit of the doubt when one considered such a question. I’m sitting here trying to imagine the reaction if, say, Senator Tim Scott had said that. Or Glenn Youngkin. Or Marco Rubio. Or anyone. They’d have been crucified.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s her?