It’s unfair to say Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has unhinged Republicans, both among the base and in elected office — many of them have been unhinged for years. But her mere existence has evinced in them the kind of existential horror that accompanied the Black Death. The principal signs of the infection are sneering and incoherent babbling.
Most notable about her election for me was that she ended something I used to point out about Congress: You never saw anyone elected from a normal 9-to-5 job, one on the shop floor instead of in an office. Granted, bartending isn’t 9-to-5, but very little is these days. What makes AOC unique in the House, more than her age, gender or ethnicity, is her elevation directly from the gig economy’s working class. She brings a perspective on labor issues unique in Congress.
Plenty of Congressmen get elected from labor unions, but almost always from jobs well removed from the shop floor. Small business people are vastly overrepresented when you consider that most doctors, dentists and lawyers operate as or in small businesses. This all makes perfect sense when you consider how much time and effort is involved in running for Congress. Normal working people can’t afford to take a year off from their job to do it. We typically try to insure minority groups have a seat at the table, and rightly so, but rarely does anyone solicit the perspective of this group that comprises the majority of voters, despite their total absence from representation.
That, I think, much more than the Green New Deal, is what scares Republicans and pro-business Democrats. As far as they’re concerned a fox has been elected to the henhouse — look at how she outed the “orientation” of novice Congresspeople as the indoctrination by banking interests it actually was. It’s like a drawing-room version of “BlacKkKlansman” if you told it from the Klan’s side.
So let the Republicans rage. They are roaches who know a can of Raid when they see one.