<snip>Ocasio-Cortez is just doing what many Republicans in Congress have done for decades, but in mirror image: She's staking out positions that more moderate members of her party won't, something she can do because her voters are fine with it. When they were in office, Jesse Helms was to the right of his fellow Republicans on race, as was James Inhofe on climate. They were proudly contemptuous of both liberalism and moderation -- but Americans voted for Republican presidents, and for somewhat more reasonable Republican members of Congress in other states, because they were on the local ballots, not Helms or Inhofe. Ocasio-Cortez hopes to ultimately pull her party to the left the way Helms and Inhofe wanted to pull theirs further right. (Helms and Inhofe got their wish.)
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What Strassel and Shapiro can't imagine is that a lot of people likeOcasio-Cortez, and a lot of people are receptive to her ideas. I'm reminded of the standard critique of the mainstream press in the wake of the 2016 election: Coastal elitist reporters missed the Trump phenomenon because they know nothing about millions of their fellow citizens, for whom Trump was a welcome messenger. I think that may have been true before November 2016, but it's certainly not true now -- now we all know what every blue-collar retiree sitting in a Pennsylvania diner thinks. But people like Strassel and Shapiro don't know what non-conservatives think. They're oblivious to the existence of people who might respond to Ocasio-Cortez, or at least to Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.
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But I think every congress person should have to read this before deciding on what "technologies" are best for the future or before any one of them puts this idea down.
