Yesterday was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first day of school Congress, and she saw to it that her “inaguration” was every bit the public spectacle that her tweets over the months leading up to it promised it would be.
For starters, she showed up clad all in white. Fashionistas would admonish that wearing white between Labor Day and Memorial Day is a no-no, and while Ocasio-Cortez is probably not a slave to fashion, she had ulterior motives in dressing as she did. Which is to say she was making a “statement.” Refinery29 explains:
[T]he Bronx native donned a white pantsuit in a not-so-subtle nod to suffragists before her — like Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress who wore white for her first day, and Geraldine Ferraro, who wore the suit during her presidential campaign (the first woman to do so), and, of course, Hillary Clinton. During her presidential run, Clinton wore the suit three times — most notably to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
This wasn’t the only statement she made. Prior to the swearing in, she announced her plan to defy Nancy Pelosi by voting against the party’s rules package, which includes a “pay-go” provision that Ocasio-Cortez says will hinder getting progressive legislation passed. The rule would require that all new spending be paid for, by either increasing taxes or cutting the budget.
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On Wednesday, the firebrand, who has shared her “economic theories” before, tweeted out:
Tomorrow I will also vote No on the rules package, which is trying to slip in #PAYGO. PAYGO isn’t only bad economics, as @RoKhanna explains; it’s also a dark political maneuver designed to hamstring progress on healthcare+other leg. We shouldn’t hinder ourselves from the start.
Not everything went as planned yesterday — or did it? She complained that was mistaken for an intern or a spouse because of her youth and the fact that she is a “person of color,” but that sounds a lot like Barack Obama’s alleged beef about being mistaken for a waiter at a formal event in 2003. Neither story is probably true, but both make for good grievance mongering. Except in O-C’s case, the anecdote may have been borrowed, which cheapens it further.
Then of course there was the inevitable kerfuffle over her white outfit and her ever-changing story about her impoverished youth:
Eddy Scarry, a reporter for the Washington Examiner, posted a photo of Ocasio-Cortez’s backside, saying the Congresswoman-elect’s clothing showed she wasn’t struggling.
“Hill staffer sent me this pic of Ocasio-Cortez they took just now,” Scarry wrote. “I’ll tell you something: that jacket and coat don’t look like a girl who struggles.
The only thing Ocasio-Cortez genuinely struggles with is keeping idiotic comments from leaping from her mouth, but that appears to be a permanent condition.
Let’a see what Day Two holds in store.
