A dynamic Latina activist has defeated a powerful incumbent who’s been in office since she was a child … and Republicans are pushing the claim, and too many in the media are going along with it, that this is bad for Democrats. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez soundly beat Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District, making him the highest-ranking House member to lose a primary since Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014. And as you may recall, Cantor’s 2014 loss didn’t bode ill for his party that November.
If you want to get a sense of the campaign Ocasio-Cortez was running, check out the powerful video that really introduced her candidacy to a broader audience. “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office,” it begins. “I wasn’t born to a wealthy or powerful family.” It focuses on national issues like Medicare for All, but also on the local concerns of a New York that’s getting more expensive and harder for working families to get by in—relevant because Crowley could easily be painted as out of touch, a perception he heightened by sending a surrogate to a debate with Ocasio-Cortez. She’s Latina and Crowley is white in a district that’s 47 percent Hispanic, 11.4 percent African American, and 16.5 percent Asian. There’s a lot going on in this race, and we could see Ocasio-Cortez represent an upsurge in energy and youth involvement and a move toward a Democratic Party with lawmakers that look more like Democratic Party voters—something we’ve seen in the primaries of state after state this year.
Or we could believe Fox News and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when they tell us this is a sign of Democrats in disarray and Democrats going too far left. Or Donald Trump, who suggested that Crowley lost (to a Democratic Socialist) because “he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!” Or we could go with Chris Cillizza and the New York Times in thinking about whether this is Bad News For Nancy Pelosi.
Or—here’s a thought—we could celebrate the ascendancy of a leader as exciting as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez without trying to draw overbroad lessons from a single low-turnout primary.
