Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the dangerous allure of ego

It was certainly a stunning victory by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as this unknown 28 year old defeated one of the leaders of the U.S. House Democratic caucus. Hers has been characterized as a rags-to-riches story of a former waitress with no political experience overcoming the local political machine.

The actual story is actually somewhat different. Ocasio-Cortez is actually a child of privilege, the daughter of an architect who grew up in Westchester and graduated at the top of her class from Boston University. She interned in Ted Kennedy’s office. She did suffer a tragedy when her father died and she and her mother had to work to save their home from foreclosure. But after college, she started a successful business and was a well-regarded educator when she ran for Congress.

In fact, Ocasio-Cortez is a very impressive person on a number of levels. It says something about our political culture that this impressive background has been ignored in favor of the narrative of her as a “local girl makes good,” as Maureen Dowd in The New York Times called her.

What’s more is that Ocasio-Cortez owes her victory, more than anything, to low turnout. She won the election with less than 16,000 votes. Joseph Crowley, the incumbent got less than 12,000. By contrast, Nancy Pelosi won over 118,000 votes in her recent contested primary victory. The percentage of her victory sounds astounding — 57.5% against a powerful incumbent member of Congress. But in reality, Ocasio-Cortez was elected because Crowley was asleep at the switch. He just failed to get his supporters out to vote.

In reality, then, Ocasio-Cortez’s victory does not represent the start of a revolutionary movement, as she has characterized it. And her election does not suggest that Democrats need to shift their strategy, as some have suggested. She is really an old story: an aggressive, impressive challenger defeats a long-time incumbent who took the race for granted. Much more shocking was Conor Lamb’s special election victory for Congress just a few hundred miles away from Ocasio-Cortez’s district. He won, by the way, with over 113,000 votes. Nobody would characterize Lamb as a revolutionary.

All this notwithstanding, Ocasio-Cortez’s victory was certainly big news, and the media…