If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins her general election in November, as seems all but certain, she’ll be the youngest member of Congress. She is 28. She beat incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th district, and since then has become a kind of celebrity among progressives.
Ocasio-Cortez describes herself accurately as a democratic socialist—meaning that she believes in the gradual implementation of socialism by democratic means rather than the immediate imposition of it by revolution.We assume there are few activities Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t think the state should fund and control, but for now she’s content to emphasize only three of them. “I believe in health care for all, I believe in education for all, I believe in housing as a human right,” she remarked recently to Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson, “and then if people are going to call me a socialist for believing in those things, alright, call me a socialist.” Like Sen. Bernie Sanders, she believes college education ought to be free—“free” in the sense that government pays for it. “Capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world,” she recently remarked. The current problem, in this aspiring officeholder’s view, is the concentration of wealth at “the tippy-top” of the 1 percent.
Her opinions on foreign policy are consistent with those of the European Left. During her campaign she called Israel’s response to Hamas-funded suicide missions at the Gaza border a “massacre.” Asked by Margaret Hoover to explain, Ocasio-Cortez, in an embarrassing interview full of awkward pauses and word-salads, answered: “I am not the expert on geopolitics on this issue.” Growing up, she continued, “Middle eastern politics is not exactly what was at my kitchen table every night . . . I’m willing to learn and evolve on this issue.” The leftist activist-journalist Glenn Greenwald, noting the vacuity of her responses to queries on the same question, insists (quite wrongly in our view) that “she has the right instincts.” But nobody, he says, “can be an expert in everything. Give her time.”
Well okay, but she’ll soon have to come up with intelligible answers to some pretty tough questions. One of those questions: Why do we need the state to put people to work when, in a semi-capitalist economy, unemployment has fallen to under 4 percent? Her current answer—“unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs”—does not inspire confidence.
We are very far from believing that today’s U.S. Congress is packed with learned and serious members, but it’s fair to question the preparedness of a candidate who holds unflinchingly extreme views but who can’t seem to express a coherent defense or explanation of those views. Our Democratic friends will point out that Republicans are hardly in a position to raise questions about a candidate’s preparedness for office. We agree. But Ocasio-Cortez isn’t unqualified for higher office because she’s an unserious person or because she’s unethical. She’s unqualified because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
The phenomenon of political polarization is a very real thing, and we offer no easy solutions. But we fervently hope we haven’t reached the point at which voters prove their zeal by supporting the candidate with the craziest opinions and the least understanding.
