Obama Campaign Manager: ‘Dumb S***’ AOC Is Doing Could Cost Democrats the House

Jim Messina called out Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday, criticizing her for backing progressives over incumbents in Democratic primaries and arguing that “dumb s***” like that could ultimately cost the party.

Messina, who served as the 2012 campaign manager for former President Barack Obama, was responding to the news that Ocasio-Cortez was endorsing Alessandra Biaggi in her race to unseat Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Sean Patrick Maloney. . .

This is so counter-productive. The Supreme Court is about to outlaw abortion. We could lose both houses. So we are going to focus our time running against each other? Now we’re primarying commited progressives because. . .why? If we lose house it’s because of dumb shit like this https://t.co/fErOy85yrI

— Jim Messina (@Messina2012) June 7, 2022

Elections analyst Geoffrey Skelley argued that Messina might be missing part of the larger picture, noting that Maloney had opted to run in Congressional District 17 rather than defend his current seat in Congressional District 18.

This conveniently ignores the fact Maloney opted to run in NY-17 instead of NY-18, which has ~70% of his current constituents, because it’s more competitive, thus big footing a Black Democrat out of NY-17 instead of defending NY-18 as the chair of the DCCC. https://t.co/Z18uHvZjtD

— Geoffrey Skelley (@geoffreyvs) June 8, 2022