AOC Questions If U.S. Will Have a Democracy in 10 Years: ‘There’s a Very Real Risk’ It Won’t Last

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Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) raised the notion that democracy could end in America within the foreseeable future.

Ocasio-Cortez sat with The New Yorker’s David Remnick for a wide-ranging interview in which she reflected on her 3 years in Congress and her progressive political stardom. Speaking of what she has seen in the House of Representatives, Ocasio-Cortez called the working atmosphere a “sh*t show,” adding “it’s scandalizing, every single day. What is surprising to me is how it never stops being scandalizing.”

“Some folks perhaps get used to it, or desensitized to the many different things that may be broken, but there is so much reliance on this idea that there are adults in the room, and, in some respect, there are,” she continued. “But sometimes to be in a room with some of the most powerful people in the country and see the ways that they make decisions — sometimes they’re just susceptible to groupthink, susceptible to self-delusion.”

The interview touched on Ocasio-Cortez’s thoughts for where President Joe Biden’s agenda has faltered, plus her frustrations with moderate Representatives Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Asked what she makes of the situation, Ocasio-Cortez brought up the Democrats’ infrastructure pursuits…which came with a gloomy outlook on the health of American democracy:

The infrastructure plan, if it does what it’s intended to do, politicians will take credit for it ten years from now, if we even have a democracy ten years from now.

Remnick asked the congresswoman if she doesn’t think America will be a democracy anymore within 10 years, to which, she answered “I think there’s a very real risk that we will not. What we risk is having a government that perhaps postures as a democracy, and may try to pretend that it is, but isn’t.”

Asked how America could reach that scenario, Ocasio-Cortez said the situation is “not beyond hope,” but she attributed the nation’s unrest to “white-nationalist, reactionary politics,” plus Republican opposition to plans for the expansion of voting rights. She also called out GOP lawmakers who try sowing doubt on elections whenever they lose.

“What we have is the continued sophisticated takeover of our democratic systems in order to turn them into undemocratic systems, all in order to overturn results that a party in power may not like,” she said.

Putting aside the congresswoman’s pessimism about the continuity of American democracy, her belief that politicians will take credit for infrastructure down the line isn’t completely unfounded. Months ago, Congressman Gary Palmer (R-AL) voted against the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package Biden signed into law, then he seemingly tried to take credit for how the bill would advance a major infrastructure project for his district.