Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won Not Because Her Ideas Are Radical but Because They’re Good

In one of those rare moments in primary-election politics that seem to genuinely astonish just about everyone not in the challenger's immediate orbit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated ten-term incumbent Joe Crowley on Wednesday for the right to become the Democratic nominee to represent New York's 14th district in Congress. Barring disaster, the 28-year-old Bronx native, who was making craft cocktails in Manhattan as recently as last year—and who has never before held public office—will head to Washington in January. Crowley will begin his career as a well-compensated "government-relations specialist" a bit earlier than he expected.

Even Ocasio-Cortez was floored when she saw the results.

As congratulations poured in and Ocasio-Cortez's nascent Wikipedia page expanded in rapid fashion, the search for an explanation began in earnest: How could a young Democratic Socialist who spent about one-tenth as much money as her opponent have bested the man widely assumed to become the next Democratic leader in the House?

The answer is as boring as it is important: Ocasio-Cortez's radical socialist ideas aren't radical anymore. They're practical, and popular, and she never apologized for any of them. She favors Medicare for all, and sentencing reform, and the abolition of ICE. She believes housing is a human right and endorses a federal jobs guarantee. She wants Congress to cancel all outstanding higher-education loan balances in order to, as she puts it on her campaign website, "liberate generations of Americans trapped in student loan debt" who are currently barred from meaningful participation in the American economy.

Even during the last election cycle, this brand of progressivism was often dismissed in Democratic circles as silly bumper-sticker fodder, the type of thing favored only by bright-eyed sociology majors who have yet to graduate from college, get a job, take out a mortgage, and otherwise discover How Things Really Work. The party has always been one that favors reasonableness and compromise above all else. Disciplined centrism, said the conventional wisdom, is how Democrats will go about Dr. King's task of bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

But two years of a Republican administration hell-bent on making life demonstrably worse for poor people, brown people, and anyone not in Scott Pruitt's immediate family have exposed the weaknesses of that approach, which insists on searching for common ground with opponents who have no interest in finding it. Suddenly, what was viewed as precious and naïve is seen for what it is: a common-sense response to real-life government policies that have been enacted to destroy lives and livelihoods. Thanks to Trump and company, "radical" socialism has become much more mainstream in the Democratic Party than its elders might believe.

You can see this dynamic at work in Ocasio-Cortez's position statements, which carefully pair grand ideas with numbers and facts. She explains the means with which she would protect that human right to housing: by maximizing the tax benefits available to less-wealthy homeowners, and expanding the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and providing permanent funding for the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. She isn't just talking about student debt because it sounds cool, or because doing so is likely to get young people to show up and chant slogans long into the night. She does it because studies suggest that debt cancellation could boost this country's real gross domestic product by somewhere between $860 billion and one trillion dollars over the next decade. In every case, she is making the argument.

After the vote totals were announced, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi downplayed the significance of Ocasio-Cortez's win and her colleague's defeat. Democratic Socialism may be "ascendant in that district," she opined, but it is not in the national party. Her comments are not quite as condescending as that tiny snippet might suggest—she went on to explain that members represent their districts, and that every district is different, and that trends in one district are not necessarily accurate accurate reflections of the prevailing sentiments in other districts.

These are fair points. No policy position enjoys a universal approval rating, or earns national acceptance overnight. (Also, in what is probably not a coincidence, Ocasio-Cortez has declined to endorse Pelosi's speakership candidacy should Democrats take back the House.) That said, Pelosi's wholesale reluctance to even contemplate what Wednesday's primary might mean for the other 434 seats in play this fall is, at the very least, alarming. Her party is evolving because it must evolve. If its current leaders continue to pretend otherwise, Joe Crowley won't be the first big name splashed across the headlines in elections to come.

Opponents on either side of the aisle can disagree with the merits of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's vision for the future, if they want. That is how politics works. But should they dismiss her—and other candidates who may follow her lead—as unserious pie-in-the-sky idealists, they will do so at their own peril.