Stunning defeat emboldens left as Dems eye new identity
NEW YORK — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez surprised herself. And a lot of other people, too.
The 28-year-old liberal activist, who worked as a bartender at times last year, knocked off the No. 4 House Democrat Tuesday in New York City. And in so doing, the former Bernie Sanders campaign organizer threw a spotlight on the surge of energy on the left that’s re-defining the Democratic Party’s search for a new identity in the age of Donald Trump.
“We always thought it was possible,” Ocasio-Cortez said of her win against 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. She added: “I just felt like we could do so much better, and we could be so much better.”
But hardly clearer for the party.
Her stunning victory in the Democratic primary offers a new window into the tug-of-war for the direction of the party as Trump’s presidency stretches through its second year, a fight often overshadowed by the more explosive intraparty debate on the Republican side.
Ocasio-Cortez’s unlikely win elevated the Democratic Party base’s leftward lurch on some issues — the embrace of Medicare for all and the abolition of the federal agency that enforces immigration laws, among them — even if the party’s establishment leaders are reluctant to promote such liberal priorities as Democrats fight for control of Congress this fall.
Some party leaders fear that Ocasio-Cortez and her Sanders-style message could alienate voters in key races this fall where vulnerable Democrats must appeal to conservative Democrats and even some Republicans.
The GOP was more than happy to highlight Ocasio-Cortez’s victory, with the Republican National Committee blasting out a canyou-believe-it statement about Democrats moving “drastically to the left” as they “elected a selfavowed socialist.”