The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution

The celebrated coterie of congressional progressives—representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and their glamorous leader, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—has started a civil war in the Democratic Party, according to this insightful political study. Grim (We’ve Got People), the D.C. bureau chief for the Intercept, recaps the Squad’s initiatives and controversies, including AOC’s flubbed introduction of a Green New Deal bill; Tlaib’s and Omar’s criticisms of Israel; and Bush’s sleep-in on the Capitol steps to pressure President Biden into extending the Covid eviction moratorium. Grim is sympathetic to the Squad’s politics, but clear-eyed about their shortcomings, especially those of AOC, whose clashes with mainstream Democrats and aversion to political schmoozing, he maintains, limit her effectiveness. He situates his subjects amid a larger struggle between progressive Democrats and the Party’s centrist establishment, led by a pro-Israel lobby that abhors the Squad’s pro-Palestinian leanings, and fought out in primary battles that he deftly analyzes. Grim skillfully elucidates the political substance beneath the bewildering complexity of congressional legislating, election strategizing, and influence peddling, conveying it all in prose that’s perceptive and pithy. (“Her ‘present’ vote was the epitome of Ocasio-Cortez’s effort to be the consensus builder and the radical all at once,” he writes of AOC’s vacillation on a bill to fund Israeli missiles.) The result is a fresh and penetrating take on a divided Democratic Party. (Dec.)