Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attends a news conference outside a U.S. Postal Service post office in the Queens borough of New York on Aug. 18, 2020. Photo: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

AOC: NANCY PELOSI NEEDS TO GO, BUT THERE’S NOBODY TO REPLACE HER YET

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to Jeremy Scahill on the Intercepted podcast.

Aída Chávez
The Intercept

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ believes the Democratic Party needs new leadership, telling The Intercept in an interview that it’s time for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to go. But the left, she said, currently has no plan on how to fill the subsequent leadership vacuum.

“If you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse,” she told Jeremy Scahill during an interview aired Wednesday on Intercepted this week.

Pelosi cruised to reelection in a virtual caucus vote last month and will face a full House floor vote for the speakership in January. She’s expected to remain speaker but has almost no room for error, after a disastrous performance in the general election cost the caucus at least a dozen seats. With a single-digit majority, she can only afford to lose a handful of Democratic votes on the House floor or else she’ll be short of the required 218, which would then throw the contest back to the caucus.

The rest of Pelosi’s octogenarian leadership team, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn, has held these top positions for over a decade and won their slots without any opposition. On the Senate side, Schumer won reelection unanimously.

Continue reading at: https://theintercept.com/2020/12/16/aoc-nancy-pelosi-needs-to-go-but-theres-nobody-to-replace-her-yet/