AOC Can’t Be President Until She Stops Arguing That We Should Abolish Policing and Prisons
The New York congresswoman is a darling of the left, but she can't win anyone else until she admits that some form of criminal justice is necessary for a civilized society.
It’s no secret that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — the upstart Democratic progressive congresswoman from New York City’s 14 congressional district — wants to be in the White House one day.
Her mom told the press as much way back in 2018, the year Ocasio-Cortez scored an upset victory against then-Congressman Joe Crowley in a shocking Democratic primary.
“Her aspiration is to be the president,” she said.
An article by The Hill speculating about 2028 stirred up a bunch of chatter online about whether AOC, as she has come to be known, would take the plunge in four years:
When Democrats talk about the future of the party, the 35-year-old New York congresswoman’s name always bubbles to the top.
Democrats have long been impressed with Ocasio-Cortez’s ability to “cut through the BS and tell it like it is,” the second Democratic strategist said.
“She’s somebody who can cut through the noise and doesn’t talk like Washington.”
Democrats say Ocasio-Cortez would be a magnet for young voters and would have little trouble using social media, podcasts and other online tools, as she has been doing since she was elected to Congress in 2018.
Does AOC want to run for president so soon? It’s hard to say. But someone with her level of ambition — and broad name ID and fundraising prowess — would be foolish not to consider it.
She’d also be foolish to not immediately reconsider her view on the one issue that could instantly end her presidential bid: policing and prisons.
An advocate for prison abolition
If there was one issue that dogged Democrats in 2020, it was Defund the Police.
Although few Democrats actually supported removing funding from America’s police departments — watch my Fox News documentary about Austin, Texas, one of the few cities that did briefly defund — the unpopular slogan was pinned to Democrats nationwide by their Republican opponents.
As crime surged from coast to coast, the slogan helped portray the Democrats as a radical party that didn’t take public safety seriously.
The political problem for AOC is actually far deeper. That’s because she’s been an advocate not just of defunding police departments but even abolishing prisons altogether.
“We need to have a real conversation about decarceration & prison abolition in this country,” she Tweeted in 2019.
When she was immediately met with social media blowback, she only doubled down.
“I know the term ‘prison abolition’ is breaking some people’s brains. The right is already freaking out,” she wrote in a thread defending the use of the phrase — suggesting that people who are alarmed by the idea of eliminating America’s prisons altogether are the ones who aren’t thinking straight.
In 2022, she joined an event at Boston University with “anti-racist” scholar Ibram X. Kendi where she continued to argue that a United States without police and prisons is possible.
“Abolition, so often I think people try to fast forward to the end of the movie. And they’re like, but what about what do you do if there are no jails in the United States? What do you do without police? And they try to paint that story,” she said. “But it’s important I think for all of us to acknowledge that abolition is not about the destination. The destination is to have a society that doesn’t need prisons. That doesn’t need police.”
She also talked about reading Angela Davis’s 2003 book Are Prisons Obsolete? and watching video footage of bell hooks. It’s worth mentioning that these authors are not criminologists or policing experts. AOC’s view on policing and prisons is deeply ideological, not data-driven.
This video footage above wasn’t hard to find. AOC posted it on her own YouTube page under the title “AOC on Abolition & Healing.”
The crowd at the event at up her words, offering thunderous applause when she said that the goal is to get rid of prisons and policing. But AOC can’t make it to the White House on the backs of the most radical political crowds in America.
Political maturity is possible
None of this is to say that these views have to make AOC politically radioactive forever. Political history is full of people who once held radical views but who later matured into respectable and capable politicians.
Robert Byrd went from a Klansman to a respected member of the U.S. Senate who argued forcefully for the rights of minorities.
John Kerry as a young war veteran was so incensed by the war in Vietnam that he said the United Nations should control when America deploys its troops abroad; he later became a war-time Secretary of State.
It’s possible for AOC to make the same transition from young firebrand to mature lawmaker. This would set her up for a trajectory that could include rising up the ranks of House leadership, running for mayor or governor, or even fulfilling her dream of being president.
But she has to start that journey to maturity as soon as possible. We just saw how little credibility Kamala Harris had when she tried to run away from positions she took just four years ago. For political maturation to be credible, it has to be sincere and thoughtful.
AOC could start by learning more about how prisons are administered abroad. The most progressive places on earth — like Norway — still have prisons and policing. But the system is built completely around rehabilitation. Denying someone their freedom is indeed punitive, as AOC believes, but it’s also…supposed to be?
But the Norwegians believe that denying someone their freedom is punishment enough for a criminal. Beyond that, their prisons are designed to teach people useful skills, inculcate good values, and have them leave a better person than when they came.
The New York congresswoman can just flatly admit that the utopian narrative she’s been promoting around policing and prisons is wrong. There is no place on earth without police or prisons. The goal should be evolution, not revolution. After a few years, she’ll be able to leave her more radical baggage behind.
AOC is a charismatic politician of the left. But as long as she holds such immature views about policing and prisons, she isn’t one that can go the distance beyond an ultra-blue district. If she wants to be a leader for all Americans, it’s time to start listening to them. Americans are completely fine with creating a more humane criminal justice system. They are not, however, in favor of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
You've admitted that she's deeply ideological, entirely ignorant on the subject, and yet aggressively inclined to push extreme policies on a topic she knows nothing about. Yet you think such a person is potentially suitable to lead our nation if she'd just brush up a little and tone her rhetoric down a bit so she doesn't scare off moderates. That puts the cart before the horse and then has it walk backwards.
Instead of starting with a policy idiot who happens to have charisma and hoping to educate her into a halfway decent position before she wrecks the country, how about finding someone who has the good sense to know what they are talking about and try to teach them better social skills?
Anyone who ever even thought this let alone stated it, including AOC, are forever disqualified from ever winning the US presidency. The stupidity of some from the Left is that because perpetrator experienced hurt - that this person’s trauma trumps that inflicted on the victim when it comes to criminal justice. It’s ass backwards, ignorant of human nature, and keeps people on the streets who deserve to be behind bars.