America is changing, we’ve been told for the last 20 years, and that portends a more Democratic future. And some people wouldn’t even stop there. The temptation, in fact, is to extend this theory to the Democratic Party’s internal politics as well. Increasingly left-wing socialist candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are being nominated in Democratic primaries to replace standard liberal Democrats because of demographic change within Democratic districts. Right?

Well, no. Or at least, not quite in the way you’d think. The power behind Ocasio-Cortez isn’t a darker complexion within the Democratic Party, but rather the gentrification of urban Democratic districts. The idea that nonwhite Democratic voters are the ones pulling the party toward socialism is just a false assumption, and Politico magazine’s study of Ocasio’s election victory helps disprove it. It’s the wealthy white gentrifiers who are doing it: