Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likened Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant remarks to the words of Adolf Hitler and sought to rally progressive support for Kamala Harris with Bernie Sanders at a rally on Monday night in Madison, Wisconsin.
The New York congresswoman called the election a “precipice” and condemned the former president’s Madison Square Garden rally, where a comic referred to Puerto Rico as “garbage”, spurring widespread outrage on the island.
“They knew exactly what they were doing; let’s dispense with this idea that this is a joke,” said Ocasio-Cortez. She denounced Trump’s guests for saying “absolutely horrific things” about women and minorities.
“It’s the same kind of logic that says a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx has no business connecting with the community of Madison, Wisconsin,” said Ocasio-Cortez, in a speech that sought to reject Trump’s racist rally and project a vision of unity.
“When we hear an individual, whether it’s Donald Trump or one of his cronies on a stage, talking about our fellow Americans as a pile of garbage, know that he’s talking about us, he’s talking about you,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “When he calls us, our service members and veterans, suckers and losers, he’s talking about you.”
She urged voters to recognize the New York rally not as an aberration but as evidence of the Trump movement’s fascist ideology and accused him of “[echoing] the words of Adolf Hitler”.
Madison and its suburbs reliably generate broad support for Democratic party candidates – and the Harris campaign is especially focused on turning out as many voters as possible there to help deliver the swing state to the vice-president on 5 November.
“A win in this state, if you haven’t yet heard, is decided by around three votes in every single ward,” said Gaby Schmidt, regional organizing director for Wisconsin’s Democratic coordinated campaign. Schmidt described Wisconsin’s nail-bitingly narrow electoral margins and urged audience members to text 10 friends or family members to get out the vote for Harris before the event ended. “We all know that’s the difference between winning and losing.”
“Tonight is about making a progressive case for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” said Mark Pocan, a progressive US congressman who represents Dane county voters. For Pocan – and the speakers who followed – this meant underscoring Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and impulses and casting Harris as open to the bold policy measures of the progressive left.
“Trump is taking the role of the fascist authoritarian, and he wants to scare the shit out of you,” said Pocan.
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Bernie Sanders opened on a similar note. “You have Mike Pence saying I can’t support the guy I worked with for four years,” said Sanders. “We cannot allow someone to be president of the United States who is a pathological liar and who is working night and day to undermine American democracy.”
For the rest of his speech, Sanders focused on his bread and butter issues: protecting the working class and his vision for a social safety net for Americans. He walked through the Biden administration’s efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs and stack the National Labor Relations Board with union-friendly administrators, and called for bold measures to address poverty and inequality. He denounced the student and medical debt crises and called for tax hikes on the ultra-wealthy.
“We have got to cancel all medical debt in America,” said Sanders, noting that many Trump supporters had legitimate reason to be upset. “There are a lot of angry people in America, and you know what, people have a right to be angry.”
Sanders accused Trump of misdirecting legitimate anger over “corporate greed” toward minority communities, calling Trump’s rhetoric a form of demagoguery.
“What we have got to do is bring our people together,” concluded Sanders, “to create an agenda that speaks to the needs of the working class of this country.”