Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez is a 28 year old woman from the Bronx. In 2011 she graduated from Boston University with a degree in economics and international relations. In the seven years that followed she held four jobs -- waitress, bartender, teacher and entrepreneur.
As best I can tell, the first three actually paid her.
A week ago, in a shot heard round the world only a short distance from the Coogans Bluff site of the original, her employment history changed dramatically. She unseated a ten-term incumbent and became the Democratic Party's nominee for Congress in New York's 14th Congressional District. Absent some earthquake-like change in voting patterns in that district this fall, she will become the youngest member of Congress next January.
This is good news for the Democratic Party and even better news for the country.
Ocacio-Cortez is for single-payer health care and free public college, thinks housing should be a right, wants to abolish ICE and would have the federal government guarantee jobs. When asked to explain what she means when she says she is a Democratic socialist, she is crisp -- "In a modern, wealthy and moral society, no American should be too poor to live." Echoing that sentiment, she recently noted that "in the last three years or so, the median price of a two bedroom apartment" in her district "has gone up 80%. Our incomes certainly aren't going up 80% to compensate for that." The result has been "a wave of aggressive economic displacement", a "New York . . . changing to be a temporary playground rather than a place for people to actually raise families and transform their own economic opportunities and their own lives."
Were that all there is, Ocacio-Cortez could easily be silo-ed as just another New York lefty.
But there is a lot more.
She got into politics by organizing. She is not a wonk spouting position papers or a focus-grouped candidate carefully playing to a select crowd. In fact, when told by political pros to focus on those who actually voted in primaries, she rejected the advice and enlarged her effort to attract those who hadn't.
She is also young.
And that is good news for the country.
In the past month, the gratuitous cruelty of Donald Trump and his enablers has been on full display. Migrant children have been caged and separated from their asylum-seeking parents, and even after reversing course, the government has not reunited the families. The Supreme Court -- Trump's court with Neil Gorsuch's appointment last year and Mitch McConnell's theft of the seat from Obama the year before -- gutted unions financially by refusing to allow assessments against non-members who nevertheless receive the benefit of union wages and bargaining agreements, more or less eliminated the ability of employees to sue employers by sanctioning adhesionary arbitration-only agreements as conditions of corporate employment, and endorsed Trump's racism by refusing to recognize the travel ban for what it was -- a Muslim ban. Meanwhile, North Korea is re-nuking after Trump told us the problem was solved, Canada and Europe are engaging in a trade war in response to Trump's asinine tariffs (faux justified on national security grounds), Robert Mueller continues to indict, and Trump's acolytes continue to embrace hate at his regular rallies.
All this has put the country on outrage overload and the Democrats -- especially after the announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Court and the almost certain fact that his replacement will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate any campaign financing regulation -- on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But then came Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez.
She is not the magic wand we can wave to rid ourselves of this seminal moment of discontent.
But she is telling us what that wand looks like.
First, the wand has a message. Whether you are for single payer, Obamacare that is funded and enforced, free college, any of the myriad solutions to the housing crisis or any of the myriad programs designed to create good middle class jobs, she has a message -- "in a modern, wealthy and moral society, no American should be too poor to live." Say it loud and often. It take less than five seconds. It is the antidote to Trump's narcissism . . . and racism . . . and wannabe fascism.
And it fits on a bumper-sticker.
Second, the wand is young. I have no problem with Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and Nita Lowey and Joe Crowley and Chuck Schumer and all the other Congressional Democrats that have been fighting the good fight for most of my adult life. I've met many of them and admired lots of them. But they have been there too long, and fair or not (and I think largely the latter), they have become the face of a Democratic Party that voters think of as tired and worn out. They have also frozen out a whole generation of new leaders by virtue of occupying their positions for what seems like . . . forever.
Third, the wand is electoral. If we count on op-ed columnists and impeachment Congresses to rid ourselves of Trump, we are likely to be very disappointed. The first will never do it, and unless Mueller finds evidence of Trump's treason (which he might), the second is likely to fail as well. In fact, the second might fail even with evidence of treason. Republicans like Trump and Republican office holders have turned enabling into an art form. There is no Trump outrage too great to ignite their opposition. Consequently, there really is only one answer.
Democrats have to win elections.
At the local, state and national level.
Something Ocacio-Cortez just did.
Against enormous odds.
Finally, because you have to win elections in the age of Trump, the wand is also psychological. And this may be Alexandria Ocacio-Cortezes greatest lesson. Trump doesn't throw her. To be honest, Trump doesn't throw a lot of women; it's the guys who go postal, not the girls. Why? My own view is that women have always dealt with the type that is Trump -- the blowhard with bucks, the sexist who wants to get laid, the man-child caught in a perpetual mid-life crisis because he never was forced to . . . grow up.
For them, Trump is so much more than a source of outrage, a decadent who assigns them numbers based on bust size. He is pathetic, an empty vessel easy to ignore.
They refuse to engage him and enable him.
They move on.
And in doing so, a number of them are winning elections.
Which, on the eve of America's 242nd birthday, is a gift that . . .
May well save the republic.
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