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Column: The May-December relationship between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was doomed to fail. But did the breakup have to be so ugly?
It was an awkward relationship from the start, a marriage of convenience for the good of the Democratic Party.
Their friends hoped it would last at least until the 2020 elections — long enough to get Donald Trump out of office — but the alliance never made it through the honeymoon stage. But it seems now the older establishment wing of the Democratic congressional caucus has parted ways with its much younger, progressive “squad.â€
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the moderate old guard, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the head of the liberal “squad,†are no longer trying to make a go of it. They’re done with their loveless working relationship, and neither is willing to continue faking it.
The public fallout began when Pelosi appeared to dis Ocasio-Cortez and her squad of three other freshman minority women in an interview with the New York Times. Ocasio-Cortez retaliated by calling Pelosi “outright disrespectful†to newly elected women of color. Somehow, that got translated into labeling Pelosi a racist.
How quickly things can sour when politics are involved.
Just five months ago, a diverse coalition of Democratic women, many of them recently elected and all wearing white, formed a sea of unity at Trump’s State of the Union address. How impressive it was to watch Pelosi, presiding from her perch behind the president’s lectern, direct them with a single hand motion or subtle facial expression, when to applaud and when to stay silent.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-pelosi-aoc-romance-failed-20190712-6ias5mjmfjgsvpvg5bj3mjuzpm-story.html
