{"id":7711,"date":"2018-07-01T09:57:48","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T07:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7711"},"modified":"2018-07-01T10:02:23","modified_gmt":"2018-07-01T08:02:23","slug":"alexandria-ocasio-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/7711\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The media on both sides of the Atlantic is getting all giddy over a young Latina who will be the Democrat candidate for a New York congress seat. As the BBC reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

A millennial candidate has shaken up the US Democratic Party by defeating the incumbent congressman for his seat.<\/p>\n

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated political veteran Joe Crowley, 56, on Tuesday night in their party’s congressional primary in New York City.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

She led a progressive campaign, supporting universal healthcare, tuition-free college and criminal justice reform.<\/p>\n

Following Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s win, Merriam-Webster tweeted that socialism emerged as their top search item.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, and I think we’re going to see more of this. As the ZMan pointed out<\/a>, if you import a lot of people from Latin American cultures pretty soon you’re going to get outbreaks of Latin American politics. Ms Ocasio-Cortez sounds in many ways like Hugo Chavez, promising lots of free stuff while making a big deal about her humble origins:<\/p>\n

One of the many new female faces joining US politics this year, Ms Ocasio-Cortez is a Bronx-born Latina, a community organiser and educator from a working-class background.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A community organiser, eh? Where have I heard that before?<\/p>\n

Now\u00a0Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist politics might be daft, but Americans are going to have to take her seriously anyway. A lesson the British political classes ought to have learned from Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpectedly good showing in the last general election is that waving your hand dismissively and saying “Ha, socialism doesn’t work!”<\/em> doesn’t work any more. People think by pointing to the failures of the Soviet Union they can undermine a candidate’s socialist policies, but you might as well point to the Ming Dynasty for all the relevance that has to a Millenial. To counter someone like Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Americans are going to have to be smarter than Theresa May was when she ran against Corbyn. That means acknowledging that, while her solutions might be insane, she is probably highlighting genuine concerns among her supporters. One of\u00a0 the few things Corbyn’s detractors are willing to admit is his fans do have genuine grievances, not least a housing market which has been utterly rigged to benefit those older than them.<\/p>\n

Republicans and sane Democrats (if there are any left) are going to have to come up with policies to address certain problems ordinary people have, especially feelings of alienation and isolation from an elite ruling class. This stuff is the bread-and-butter of populists and basing a campaign around it is a good way to get elected. In this regard,\u00a0Ms Ocasio-Cortez is not too different from Trump who tapped into such resentment and suddenly found himself in the White House. The worst thing Republicans can do is ignore where her supporters are coming from and scoff airily about socialism as a concept. Given most American politicians are multi-millionaires and Washington D.C. functions like an imperial capital, hoovering up every loose dollar, redistributing billions along political lines, and enriching the ruling classes in the process, many young Americans might be forgiven for thinking socialism is what they have already so a little more can’t hurt. They’re wrong of course, but a proper case needs to be made as to why. Unfortunately, the American right are as firmly entrenched in the status quo as the left, and presenting alternatives, e.g. a smaller federal government and increased localism, would require a level of introspection and reform they’ve been unwilling to undergo in generations. This is a major reason why the likes of\u00a0Ms Ocasio-Cortez can find a willing audience.<\/p>\n

However, there’s another side to\u00a0Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign:<\/p>\n

She says she decided it was time her New York City district was represented by a young progressive woman of colour after watching the election of Donald Trump as president.<\/p>\n

She described her congressional district in an interview with US news outlet Mic during her campaign.\u00a0“Our median income is around $47,000 a year, we’re about 70% people of colour,” she said. “We’ve had the same representation for a generation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Embracing identity politics seems to be the direction in which the left is heading in the US: if you’re black, you vote for a black person. If you’re Latin American, you vote for a Latin American. This is actually how it works in most of the world, i.e. you vote for the person with whom you share an ethnicity. Europe and the US are notable exceptions, but that is rapidly changing. If\u00a0Ms Ocasio-Cortez believes Latin Americans in the Bronx should vote for her because she’s Latina and this view becomes widespread, eventually white people are going to vote for white candidates. In a generation, a candidate being an old white man might be his greatest asset rather than the liability it is now.<\/p>\n

Ms Ocasio-Cortez has burst onto the political scene waving the dual flags of socialism and identity politics. I suspect it will be a matter of time before the Democrats are completely consumed by both, and the America right had better be ready to deal with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The media on both sides of the Atlantic is getting all giddy over a young Latina who will be the Democrat candidate for a New York congress seat. As the BBC reports: A millennial candidate has shaken up the US … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,42,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7711"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7714,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7711\/revisions\/7714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}