Representative Cori Bush is on her way out of Congress. Her only regret? That she “could’ve flipped a few more tables.”
The progressive Squad member gave an exit interview to Politico published Wednesday addressing her time in Congress and what lies ahead for herself and the country.
Bush, who was defeated by AIPAC-backed prosecutor Wesley Bell in the Democratic primary, said she wishes she had fought harder for a cease-fire in Israel’s assault on Gaza.
I don’t really operate in regret, but I will say I wish that I could have pushed harder as it relates to our cease-fire now resolution, and done more to save lives.
I left it all on the field. I put my life and my livelihood on the line, because so many have lost their lives. I wish that I could have done more, and I wish that my colleagues who later have said, “OK, this is too much. It’s gone too far,” I wish they would have heard us when we first started to speak to this, because our work was coming from a place of wanting to save as many people as we could — the lives of all people, whether Israeli or Palestinian, people abroad and people in the United States.
I probably could have flipped over a few more tables.
Bush was one of a handful of representatives to call for a cease-fire in Gaza soon after Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s disproportionate response, filing a cease-fire resolution on October 16 of that same year. And she was one of a very small group of congressmen to consistently call for said cease-fire, even donning a keffiyeh and holding a side reading “STOP SENDING BOMBS” during President Biden’s State of the Union address in March.
Bush also spent ample time in the interview deriding the corporatism of the Democratic Party.
“Democratic leadership must make the decision that this corporate money should not be able to be used in Democratic primaries. Because that was the deciding factor in this race,” she told Politico. “Democrats have to ban corporate PAC donations, and specifically have to speak up and push to ban the super PAC spending in our Democratic primaries. That is the only way that this does not happen again, because I wasn’t unseated because I didn’t take care of my community.”
She told Politico she’ll always consider herself a Squad member.
“The Squad is big…. The number of people in Congress on the team will just be smaller. But they’ve never been silent. Anyone who underestimates our power is severely mistaken, because we aren’t going anywhere,” Bush said. “The one thing that we all had in common, or at least most of us had in common entering Congress, was to be authentically ourselves … because we felt like those voices were missing in the Congress. The voices of, for me, being the nurse, Jamaal [Bowman] being the principal, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] being a bartender…. I don’t think that will change.”
Bush also noted that she wished she knew how expensive being a congresswoman was before she started, and how deeply hierarchical the party was.
“Seniority plays so much of a role in who gets what committee assignment, what bills are brought to the floor.… We see in the Republican conference they don’t seem to go by seniority as much. I think that the Democrats, we need to pay attention to that.”
Bush refused to rule out a return to politics in the near future.
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