LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y. (CN) – This week’s presidential debates ended with an announcement that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez planned to throw her clout behind the presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Just south of the young firebrand’s congressional district — under the backdrop of the Queensboro Bridge — the “Squad” leader made that endorsement official on Saturday afternoon at a time that Sanders needed a lift.
“Holy cow!” Ocasio-Cortez yelled at the mass of thousands of Sanders supporters crowding the park on Saturday afternoon.
After some introductory remarks, the congresswoman launched into her well-known origin story as a waitress in downtown Manhattan working without a living wage and health care.
“I didn’t think that I deserved any of those things,” Ocasio-Cortez recounted, saying that she accepted the “very basic logic” that she said had been used to hold back working people.
“It wasn’t until I heard about a man by the name of Bernie Sanders that I began to question and assert and recognize my inherent value as a human being who deserves health care, housing, education and a living wage,” she added.
Now the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, the 30-year-old Ocasio-Cortez hopes to rescue her political inspiration at a critical time. One generation of democratic socialist, the longest-serving independent in the U.S. Senate, embraced the other, the youngest Latina woman in Congress, at the end of a speech. Both kicked off their oratories by marveling at the crowd size.
“Let me begin by making an apology: We made a permit for 20,000 people and we had to close the doors,” Sanders said, walking a fine line between a deadpanned boast and regret that he could not accommodate his backers.
The campaign later reported the above-capacity crowd at 25,872.
“I look at this YUGE crowd,” the senator continued, hamming his Brooklyn-ese delivery. “Brothers and sisters, I have no doubt that the political revolution is going to sweep this country, drive Donald Trump out of office and bring the change that this country has long needed.”
Roughly two weeks after his heart attack, Sanders bounced back to fiery form at this week’s Democratic debate, laying out his pitch — “as somebody who wrote the damn bill” — for why he believes “Medicare for All” is attainable. Saturday’s rally marked his first since his release from the hospital.
“I’m here to tell you Bernie is back,” his wife Jane Sanders announced, as first speaker of the afternoon.
Tired of headlines about the senator’s hospitalization and stagnant polling in third place, Sanders supporters hammered a defiant chant throughout a roughly two-and-a-half hour rally: “We will win.”
Any chance for a reversal would require a strategy change and powerful support: Sanders has polled consistently behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, even as his fundraising drives consistently outpace both on small donations. Even a strong debate performance in Ohio this week, which drove New York Magazine to declare “Bernie Sanders’s Campaign is Alive and Well,” did not meaningfully move those numbers.
Filmmaker Michael Moore skewered critics who call Sanders too old or ill to be viable.
“The only heart attack we worry about is when Wall Street hears Bernie Sanders is president of the United States,” Moore quipped.