Washington Free Beacon senior writer Elizabeth Harrington said division amongst House Democrats over Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D., N.Y.) proposed Green New Deal could be good news for Republicans in 2020.
Harrington's comments came during a Wednesday appearance on Fox Business Channel's Neil Cavuto: Coast to Coast where she said attempts by Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow freshman members to move the Democratic Party toward democratic socialism are damaging the party's chances of retaining House control.
"[T]he more Ocasio-Cortez leads this party into more division and Ilhan Omar and this more radical wing, the socialist wing of the Democratic party, the more it's a gift for Republicans to try to take back the House," Harrington said, comparing the situation in the House to how President Donald Trump will benefit in the 2020 election from Democratic presidential candidates's similar shift left.
"The Democrats won't have the majority much longer if they keep moving much farther to the left," she said.
Harrington said the party's embrace of young radical figures has hurt it in a wide variety of ways.
"It's not just Ocasio-Cortez. It's also Ilhan Omar. I mean, look at the division," she said. "They can't even condemn anti-Semitism. They're having all kinds of problems with their resolution they're working on."
Democrats in 2020 may have a harder time attracting moderate voters who helped the party win back the House in 2018, Harrington said.
"You're not going to win Obama voters who voted for President Trump on issues like the economy," she said. "You are not going to win those voters back with fear mongering, with climate change hysteria—like Ocasio-Cortez is doing—and with the Green New Deal, saying you can't have a car, you can't have meat, you probably shouldn't have kids, and it will cost us $94 trillion while we're at it."
In addition to the controversial Green New Deal, Ocasio-Cortez has drawn criticism for a series of tweets on Tuesday defending fellow freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) for her repeated anti-Semitic comments. The response to Omar's most recent comments this week has exposed division in the caucus. The Washington Free Beacon reported:
After news broke of Democrats planning to vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism in response to Omar, and later adding language condemning anti-Muslim bias as well, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) said there may be no vote on one at all. Adding to the embarrassment for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and her members is the resolution would be the second congressional maneuver made in as many months to indirectly respond to Omar's anti-Semitic statements.
At a closed-door meeting reported on by the Washington Post, nerves and emotions were raw following party leadership's reaction to Omar's latest broadside: questioning the political influence in the United States that she says forces "allegiance to a foreign country." This came after her remarks last month, where she tweeted "it's all about the Benjamins" for pro-Israel politicians, suggesting they were paid off by Jewish lobbyists. She apologized for the latter remarks "unequivocally."