Dems as well as GOP scoff at Ocasio-Cortez at their own peril

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-New York) waves to the crowd after speaking at Women's Unity Rally organized by Women's March NYC at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan on Jan. 19, 2019, in New York. Credit: AP/Kathy Willens
In an historic year when the Dems took back the House of Representatives and there are more women serving in Congress than ever before, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is hands-down the biggest political show in America.
It’s making Republicans and right-wingers nuts.
But Democrats, especially the throng running for president, should be wary as well. Ocasio-Cortez is already stomping all over their turf.
Ocasio-Cortez came out of nowhere to beat Queens Rep. Joe Crowley, a long-entrenched power player, in a Democratic primary last year.
From that moment on, Ocasio-Cortez has quickly her stamp on the American political scene, and at a volume loud enough to be heard over even the biggest voice out there: President Donald Trump’s.
It’s been amusing to see those on the right tie themselves into knots trying to knock Ocasio-Cortez down. She doesn’t always have her facts correct! She shoots from the hip! She tweets at a moment’s notice! She doesn’t respect her elders!
Sound like anybody you know, Trump fans?
So now the left has their own version of the hyperbolic Trump. And just like with Trump, her supporters are only too eager to forgive or overlook any of Ocasio-Cortez’s foibles.
Ocasio-Cortez may not always be able to keep the branches of government straight. She may have grown up in the hardscrabble Bronx or in tonier Westchester. She may be alarmist in saying that climate change will end the world in 12 years. She may think that a world that allows for billionaires is immoral, thus undermining the very foundation of a country that rewards individual initiative and aspiration.
So what?
Republicans have tried to shush her. Senior Democrats have told her to mind her place and wait her turn. Ocasio-Cortez gives all of them zero you-know-whats. She’s even got that cool “AOC” handle. Fight me!
Dems who thirst for the White House are lucky that Ocasio-Cortez is only 29 and thus ineligible under the Constitution to run for president. Can you imagine the hoopla she’d cause showing up in Iowa or New Hampshire? Ocasio-Cortez on the same stage would make Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders look like the old, Establishment Dems they are.
Warren and Sanders may have been the darlings of the left, but the left is leftier than it was three years ago. Their time has passed. And Ocasio-Cortez may just hit the presidential hustings anyway. Nothing should surprise you. At least for the moment.
But even if Ocasio-Cortez isn’t running for president, her influence is still going to be felt as Dems look to defeat Trump next year. Because she has electrified the left and other Dems in a way that others in the party can only hope to do. And 2020 definitely looks like a year of the left in presidential politics.
A C-SPAN tweet of Ocasio-Cortez’s first speech in Congress got a record 1.6 million views in the first 12 hours. The cameras follow her wherever she goes. The more she aggravates people, both left and right, the more her supporters like it. She’s probably already thinking which Cabinet post she’d like were a Dem to win in 2020.
It can’t last, you say. People will see through her. The attraction will wear off. People will come to their senses.
Right. They said that about Trump too.
Tom Wrobleski wrote this piece for the Staten Island Advance.