We are in a television studio…perhaps an ABC or NBC morning show. The blazing TV lights are focused on a couch where a long dark haired, dark eyed young woman with bright red lipstick and fingernails to match is sitting and talking to us and to the TV hosts.
She has lifted the blouse she is wearing and has pinched the skin of her now bare abdomen and is about to inject herself with a long needle and syringe containing a hormone which she says is part of her plan to freeze her eggs so that someday she may give birth to a child. (We understand she is 37 and Gen Z and millennial women talk of having a child not children.)
She handles the whole scene with ease and clarity. She seems a born performer. Perhaps she is an actress or one of the show’s staff… or maybe an attractive influencer selling herself and products on Instagram and YouTube.
But no. She is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez – a genuine Instagram star and a member of Congress since 2019 – the youngest ever to be elected. She is best known by her initials (so cool) as AOC – and seen most often as Bernie Sanders’ travel companion.
Upon entering politics, she had called herself a “Jenny from the Bronx” – though she was born and raised in Yorktown Heights, an attractive middle class neighborhood in Northern Westchester – some distance in every way from the Bronx. She did not come from poverty. She is the daughter of a Dentist.
She attended Boston University and graduated with a BA degree in international relations and economics. She worked for a time in the Boston office of JFK. No Jenny. No Bronx.
Coming home, she worked as a bar tender and attended quasi political meetings led by an organization called the Democratic Socialists of America. Founded in 1983 by Michael Harrington, a historian and university professor and protégé of America’s singular socialist, Norman Thomas, Harrington knew America would never be socialist. He believed the Democratic Party needed a full time “left wing” to its otherwise blue-collar related, and often crooked political activities. Sadly, he died of cancer before he could establish the ways and means of establishing that position as an organization and not a “third” political party.
And so, the DSA languished in anonymity for years and years.
When Sanders made a late season run for the Presidency – after then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had already wrapped up the nomination – he found to his delight and the country’s stunned amazement that he attracted tens of thousands of young people across the nation to his words and beliefs. He spoke with energy, focus and anger about the millionaires and billionaires…the ten percent who literally owned 90% of America and were able to dictate policies that impacted the nation.
He was then not associated with the DSA but the organization had finally found an opportunity to make itself heard
The DSA was not one of New York State’s numerous “third parties” which either alone or in concert with the major parties helped them win elections. New York State was always the host of ‘third parties’– but the rest of the States looked away from them.
NEEDING A CANDIDATE
The DSA was headquartered in the right place: New York. It had identified a Congressional district in NYC which might show promise for them – a piece of the Bronx, a piece of Maspeth, Queens – led by a longtime Congressman who had decided to try to replace House Leader Nancy Pelosi and so wouldn’t take anyone running against him in a Democratic primary seriously.
DSA enlisted a young woman working as a bartender to run for that office.
They were right. Seeing the opposition as a young woman who came from nowhere, the overconfident Congressman never bothered to come home to his district to actually challenge his new opposition.
So she won…with lots of help from the DSA’s fundamental approach to campaigning: flood the area with young people knocking on every door in the district to introduce its candidate on a one to one basis…spending hours, days and weeks canvassing the entire district again and again with a focus on the Maspeth section…and keeping their activities all over Instagram and YouTube.
DSA was run by young people in their 20’s who understood something about their fellow young people: they felt most confident working in groups -whether they gathered outside of Madison Square Garden to catch a glimpse of Taylor and Travis, or flooded the streets of New York heralding the NY Knickerbockers finally winning a title.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fit right in. She didn’t say very much in public but worked the neighborhoods with her teams of volunteers again and again.
It worked. Alex from Yorktown Heights was in Congress…the youngest member ever elected to the position.
And the former Congressman? Gone…and quickly forgotten.
THE RESULT
AOC’s campaign was not very public. There was relatively little PR and no endless TV commercials. So controlled, she seemingly did not appear. For instance, she had difficulty fully explaining the three forms of government that were the basis for American democracy.
But it didn’t matter. All those young volunteers knocking on doors in Maspeth were enough to give her the Democratic nomination. THERE WAS NO Republican opposition and so the primary victory brought her to Congress.
AOC seemed the most welcoming and she was placed on several important committees. Pelosi saw the possibilities. AOC didn’t disappoint.
During these years in office AOC has been able to work across the aisle with Republicans to sponsor bills ending the Congressional ability to purchase stock on an insider basis; an effort to bar members of Congress from becoming lobbyists; the inclusion of select psychedelic drugs in the treatment of former service members suffering from PTSD traumatic brain injuries.
But for travel with Bernie in select situations, AOC is seldom seen in person in her district or in Washington. But she is a constant on Instagram giving us very personal looks at her life, her interests, her ideas on living—light, easy to understand, very linked in to the ways influencers relate to their potential buyers – or in her case – her potential voters.
She’s got it down to a science and she thinks enough of her latest personal decision – to freeze her eggs – to bring it to a much wider audience, which will certainly appreciate her approach to and understanding of the lives they lead.
And that’s the point. Because what we see is a simple and certain approach to campaigning – bring people into your life on personal matters and the business of government follows comfortably behind.
Neither have millions of others – many of whom work with salaries making them quite able to do so. Student loan debt amounts to one trillion four hundred billion dollars and taxpayers are helping to pay for what this money should be covering.
McCaughey suggests that by not repaying her loan she puts herself in comfortable company with many of her followers and they are delighted that she is among them still.
The column is both amusing and cunning…slamming AOC as a phony who is just working an early campaign effort and who can afford a very expensive arrangement like freezing her eggs, (between $11,000 and $32,000) buying very expensive red lipsticks and dressing carefully and expensively in the kind of clothes that show a lot of style while revealing a lot of the woman within them.
AOC has been quietly backing away from the image of DSA that has been established in the media. The organization and some of its candidates have been dubbed ‘communists’ by politicians and the media in certain areas of the country.
It’s true that some of the few actual DSA candidates throw around that word themselves but they haven’t a clue about how to actually be one.
AOC wants none of that especially not in New York State where she will first raise some important money and then seek a different level of involvement in government.
SELLING A LIE
The success of some progressively minded Democratic candidates in primaries around the country has given the impression that the DSA is everywhere causing great problems for the Democratic Party.
By so doing DSA seems for more important than it genuinely is although their approach to supporting and promoting candidates has proven to be especially successful in the age of ignorance now surrounding so many of our present generation.
All three candidates won their present positions – Mayor of New York City and Democratic candidates for two Congressional seats – because their opposition was either non-existent as in the Mayoral race or long term and not impressively impactful for their Hispanic constituents.
The effort to knock on all doors worked without anyone seeing or knowing much about the DSA or its leadership. That is changing.
Mr. Gordillo’s family purchased that home for just under one million dollars and spent another million in renovations.
His father says he does live in that home with them after being evicted from his former residence for owing back rent.
The DSA is living Michael Harrington’s dream of becoming the Democratic Party’s left wing. Luckily for him, he is not alive to see how very poorly selected and elected candidates are going to do if they are elected to management rather than legislative positions.
Zohran Mandami clearly knows little or nothing about how to manage any of the programs he has initiated.
Whether it is the plan to tax New Yorkers owning expensive second or third residential properties, the plan to open a single grocery story in each borough, the plan to redo sections of the BQE highway or even to speed buses along their routes…nothing is working and most plans are now being put off until he is no longer Mayor…because he will not win a second term.
LOOKING AHEAD
There is no question that Chuck Schumer will seek another term as New York Senator in 2028. Men and several women in that job cannot seem to step away unless they are either defeated, get seriously ill or pass away.
As the Democratic Party’s leader he has done nothing to give that party a face that encourages voters to want to be part of it.
Is that his job alone? It is not. But he has shown absolutely no aptitude about making such a change possible. He has been a very successful Senator for New York. But he sought to be head of the party and as such he has clearly come up very short in finding a new identity for the party as might be expected.
He cannot and will not do it.
But if he is to be reelected…if he is to win a primary race against Alexandria Ocasio Cortez… he needs a very special kind of help.
She is a sure bet to win a primary contest against him if the current status holds.
What he might do about it will be explored after the midterm elections although indications are already present – Trump’s son-in-law meeting with the Democratic House Minority leader to discuss working relationships – that Democrats will win the House of Representatives back…if not the Senate.
In the meantime, if you want to find out about how the egg freeze is coming along or anything else AOC is working on, visit her on Instagram and enjoy the journey.
If she does as well in the US Senate – she will be worthy of her role as…Star.