Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is the Perfect Ideological Complement to President Trump - WSJ oped

A week into the new Congress, there’s a gathering consensus among the commentator class that the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bubble is already bursting. Her inexperience, knowledge gaps and alarmingly ahistorical belief in impossible ideologies are unflatteringly visible, it is said, under the glare of the very media exposure she has brilliantly attracted. I am not so sure. Indeed, the more I see of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (I refuse to do the AOC thing, which I thought was a designation used in French wine labeling), the more I think she is building a claim to be one of the most important political figures of our age.

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She’s as natural a politician as anyone on the Democratic side. But she is more than that. She’s a symbol—and an exponent—of the radically altered nature of American politics in 2019. The country is in very unfamiliar territory. Assumptions about ideological verities and what the public will or won’t accept from politicians have been battered in the last three years.

Faith in the American model of capitalism has been crumbling for a decade—and not just on the left. Both wings of the partisan divide are challenging the existing order. Donald Trump has brilliantly ridden dissatisfaction with it among conservatives. His more thoughtful advocates are articulating something much deeper than “drain the swamp” populism. They’ve grasped that the old nostrums of free-market, growth-maximizing economic efficiencies no longer appeal to many disadvantaged Americans.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez may be the perfect complement to President Trump. True, much of what she says may be ill-informed and naive. But, Lord, she’s 29 years old! What kind of a human being are you if you’re not naive and ill-informed at 29? Mr. Trump is 72. What’s his excuse?

The eye-catching proposals—the Green New Deal, universal free health care and education—seem like unfundable pipe dreams, and you don’t need a slide rule to know that a 70% top marginal tax rate really isn’t going to get you there. But if you think these messages—idealized symbols rather than developed policy proposals—don’t appeal to a rising generation of voters, for whom, opinion polling tells us, capitalism is a failure, then you need to get out more.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-the-perfect-ideological-complement-to-president-trump-11547224962 (paid subscription)