- Ocasio-Cortez said Biden misjudged his ability to get Manchin to agree on his legislative agenda.
- AOC told NY Magazine there's "a real nostalgia" for "this time of buddy-buddy and backslapping."
- She added she has "the utmost respect and confidence in the president."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York gave a frank assessment of President Joe Biden's efforts to persuade Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to join his fellow Democrats in supporting the president's legislative agenda.
"I feel like our politics has fundamentally changed — whether it's for better or for worse is for people's determination — but I was never under the illusion that we can bring Manchin along," the New York Democrat told New York Magazine.
Longtime New York City politics reporter and TV anchor Errol Lewis, the author of the piece, described her conclusion as "President Biden got played by Senator Joe Manchin."
As one of only six House Democrats who voted against Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Ocasio-Cortez has been critical of the administration's decision to "decouple" the infrastructure package from the Build Back Better social spending plan, which has languished in Congress primarily because of resistance from Manchin and fellow moderate Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Ocasio-Cortez's broader critique of Biden is that he is stuck believing in an era of bipartisanship and deal-making in Washington that, in her view, no longer exists.
"I have the utmost respect and confidence in the president, but I just felt like we called two different plays on this one," she told Lewis. "I think that there is a sense among more senior members of Congress, who have been around in different political times, that we can get back to this time of buddy-buddy and backslapping and we'll cut a deal and go into a room with some bourbon and some smoke and you'll come out and work something out."
Citing her political coming of age during the Obama years, the New York congresswoman said she "never felt a nostalgia for something that never existed in my lifetime."