Source: Hank Berrien

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who recently declared, “I’m the boss!” is taking her power-hungry dreams to stomp on some of her fellow Democrats, reportedly informing them on Thursday that if they vote with Republicans she will “put them on a list” for a primary challenge.

According to The Washington Post, the Democrats conducted a closed-door session during which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned over twenty supposed moderate members of her party, “We are either a team or we’re not, and we have to make that decision.” The Post then said Ocasio-Cortez, “the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class, upped the ante, admonishing the moderates and indicating she would help liberal activists unseat them in the 2020 election.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesman Corbin Trent added that she fumed that any Democrats voting with Republicans “are putting themselves on a list.” He asserted, in reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “She said that when activists ask her why she had to vote for a gun safety bill that also further empowers an agency that forcibly injects kids with psychotropic drugs, they’re going to want a list of names and she’s going to give it to them.”

Preceding the brouhaha in the Democratic camp, 26 Democrats joined Republicans to amend a bill increasing federal background checks for gun purchases. That bill included a section stating that if an illegal immigrant attempted to buy a firearm, ICE would have to be alerted. Some Democrats were rankled by that proviso.

Some of the so-called moderate Democrats are freshmen in Congress, and the Post noted that they are bucking Ocasio-Cortez and her cohorts, saying that the reason the Democrats secured a majority in November was because they were elected as moderates. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), a co-chairman of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, said, “It’s this class of members that got elected that are the reason we have the majority. Many of them come from these [moderate] districts, and their promise to their constituents was that they were going to put people over politics.”

Another new congressman, Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.), reportedly took issue with Ocasio-Cortez’s high-handedness and spoke of the realities of representing a district that was more moderate.

The Post reported, “Later, when one lawmaker talked about the peril of persistently voting with party leaders on these motions, Pelosi responded that the party stood ready to help team players: ‘We have a massive MASH operation and, frankly, it should be there for those who have the courage to take the vote.’”

Just after she was elected in November, Ocasio-Cortez was on a conference call hosted by Justice Democrats, urging like-minded individuals to run for office. She said, “Long story short, I need you to run for office. All Americans know money in politics is a huge problem, but unfortunately the way that we fix it is by demanding that our incumbents give it up or by running fierce campaigns ourselves. That’s really what we need to do to save this country. That’s just what it is.” Her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, a co-founder of Justice Democrats, said bluntly, “We need new leaders, period. We gotta primary folks.”