Who’s Afraid of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? A Message To All The Haters (Strong Language)

Its hard to believe but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in her first term in the United States Congress. But already, she is by far the most famous member of Congress elected in my lifetime- and I go back a while. I crashed this party way back when Richard Nixon was wandering around the White House at night in a deranged and drunken stupor. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is so famous that she’s got a catchy nickname that we all love to say so much that I think we steer our conversations in whatever direction will let us say it over and over. “AOC” sounds like a cross between a hip-hop star, a Marvel super-hero and the kick-ass villain in of one of those dopey “ Fast And The Furious “ movies. She is without a doubt the biggest star born into the American political multiverse since Barack Obama took the mic at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. We all know how that turned out and we now have legitimate hope that we can capture that energy again.

But just like Barack Obama before her, AOC is seasoned with the same special spices that can only be loved or hated by anybody who gets a taste. To be sure, that dynamic is not her fault anymore than it was Barack’s fault. If you are a person that hates AOC but pretends that your caustic commentary about her is objective and non-emotive, it says everything about you and virtually nothing about her. What it says about you above all else is that you are deeply afraid of her. And you probably should be. Nobody likes to be exposed publicly as a fraud, a racist, a sexist or even just as a mediocre, pedestrian politician. Anybody who knows deep down that they are ANY of these things was bound to react to her like a demon when holy water gets thrown on them.

Considering objectively what this young woman has accomplished and what she represents, the reflex to reject her exposes a weakness of the mind or wickedness of the heart- or both. There is no objective reason to react with hostility toward a 28 year old woman who ran for Congress with no experience, no connections and on a shoestring budget- and won. Hers is an irresistably inspirational American story that…