Why Joseph Crowley’s Defeat Should Scare Joe Biden
The Democratic Party’s shift to the left will leave centrist politicians hard-pressed to defend their records.
There are plenty of reasons to downplay the ideological significance of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset win yesterday over House Democratic powerbroker Joseph Crowley. Even by the standards of congressional primaries, turnout was low. In a district of roughly 650,000 people, Ocasio-Cortez won with only . Ocasio-Cortez’s victory can also be chalked up to ethnic succession. Crowley is an Irish American representing a district, in Queens and the Bronx, that was once filled with white ethnics. Today it is less than . Ocasio-Cortez exploited that shift by her Puerto Rican roots. Finally, Ocasio-Cortez is a woman running in a year in which the #MeToo movement and
