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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been the subject of much conversation since she secured the Democratic nomination in the District-14 of New York in late June. During the campaign, Ocasio-Cortez unapologetically identified as a “democratic socialist” and campaigned for Medicare for all and the abolition of ICE. These were all good things. However, it wasn’t all good. It appears that the debate over whether the Democratic Party can serve as a vehicle for progressive change remains open. This should be troubling to radical leftists and especially the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) activists who invested considerable resources in her election. The Democratic Party is incapable of reform and serves not as a vehicle for change but rather as a graveyard of social movements. It will be the graveyard of Ocasio-Cortez’s principles too if we don’t build independent institutions and organizations capable of moving popular excitement over her campaign away from the Democratic Party’s corporate grave diggers.

We need to build a political alternative to the Democrats because when it comes to the Democratic Party, there is nothing left to hold to account. Left-leaning youth and workers must break free from the ball and chain that keeps them shackled to the Democratic Party. Social movements are the only vehicle that can convince struggling people in this country that the Democratic Party is accountable to Wall Street and Wall Street only. And there are early signs that Ocasio-Cortez may be more of a sheepdog for the Democrats then a radical leftist. Shortly after her victory, the peace platform was removed from her campaign’s website until social media pressure forced the platform back up. Ocasio-Cortez has also been making the rounds in the corporate media of late and has refused disassociate her campaign from giving future support to mainstream Democrats like Nancy Pelosi.

Black Agenda Report editor Bruce Dixon analyzed the significance of Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the context of the objective conditions of the electoral system. Dixon noted that New York is a special case where machine politics ensure Democratic Party nominations. District-14 is one of the few left where neoliberal Black and Brown politicians do not dominate the political landscape. It will be difficult to replicate Ocasio-Cortez’s victory across the country because neoliberal, Black politicians in other districts are protected by the politics of representation. The question is, do we want to replicate this victory?

There is no doubt value in raising the demands for Medicare for All and a rollback of racist police-state repression of ICE to the forefront of the U.S. electoral arena. The challenge is that the U.S. political system is not capable of addressing these demands in substantive ways. U.S. electoral politics reflect a larger crisis in the U.S. imperialist system. This crisis is characterized by stagnation, decline, war, and economic misery. The Democratic Party has become the “more effective evil” in the management of the crisis. Black voters, working class voters, women voters, and other left-leaning constituencies have been ruthlessly targeted by the Democrats in a desperate attempt to ensure that an independent, even nominally social democratic movement is not allowed to emerge in the United States.

Ocasio-Cortez is currently being assessed by the ruling elites toward this end. They are testing her loyalty to the Democratic Party brass now that she is all but guaranteed a spot in Congress. Ocasio-Cortez has played ball so far. She has endorsed the Democratic Party line on Russia that the nation was “aggressive” in its (unproven) interference of the 2016 general election. Her peace platform includes the notion that the bloated military budget “damages” the U.S.’ image as a “force for good” in the world, as if the U.S. was ever a force for good in the first place. We have seen this playbook before. During the 2016 election, Bernie Sanders ran for the Democratic nomination on a pro-war platform while attempting to speak to the material grievances of working people in the United States. The Democratic Party apparatus cheated him out of the primary and then promoted him. He has since been more vocal against Trump’s so-called collusion with Russia then his own demise at the hands of Democratic leadership.

People in the U.S. tend to view individuals as the motive force of history. American individualism has always been a barrier to political consciousness. Ocasio-Cortez possesses her own limitations, but she doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Her campaign is propelled by very real material conditions. The Democratic Party is in a crisis of legitimacy and the base of the Democratic Party is failing under its current brass of corporate leadership. This is not a bad thing, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t institutional realities to consider. The Democratic Party is designed to stop progressive and radical movements in their tracks. It has corrupted the labor movement, the Black movement, and yes, the immigration movement. This requires us to examine whether any amount of energy should be invested in electing more radical-sounding Democratic Party politicians.

How has the Democratic Party acted as the graveyard of social movements? By promoting itself to left-leaning constituencies as the “lesser evil” of the two political parties. The Democratic Party has supported war and Wall Street and purged all progressive pretenses since the formation of the Democratic Party Leadership Council (DLC) in 1985, all the while posing as the only viable option for Black Americans, women, and labor unions. Leading Democrats such as Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of Iraq, the invasion of Libya, and most of them have voted in favor of an increase to the most recent military budget larger than even the one proposed by Trump. Democrats have also facilitated the erection of the deportation machine. Few remember Clinton’s crime bill of 1996. This bill received bi-partisan support and massively criminalized undocumented immigrants. Then there is the fact that the Democrats abhor what Ocasio-Cortez has to say about the healthcare reform, jobs, and education. The Democratic National Committee is headed by Tom Perez, a Trans-Pacific Partnership enthusiast and longtime friend of Wall Street.

There is no reforming the Democratic Party. It cannot be saved from the clutches of Wall Street and the Pentagon, and we shouldn’t want to save it. There are plenty of people in the United States who are ready for an alternative. During the 2016 elections, most Americans reported that neither of the two political parties truly represents them. It isn’t the politics of the two parties that we need to change. It is their grip on political power. The two-party duopoly is a manifestation of a broader set of relations dictated by corporate power that no one in the two-party electoral circuit is willing to address.

Excitement over Ocasio-Cortez should not take precedence over these critical issues. Ocasio-Cortez should be held accountable for her platform, but we should spend just as much time thinking about ways in which we can make issues such as Medicare for All a reality beyond voting for a Democrat whenever an election cycle comes around. Washington will never be full of Ocasio-Cortez-like politicians. This is not fake news. It’s a political reality that urges us to unapologetically challenge the U.S. left’s political investment in the Democratic Party electoral arena.