2018 election: New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez elected the youngest woman in Congress

Knock Down the House is the rare documentary about today’s American political landscape that might make you shed happy tears. And after a triumphant festival run — including winning the Audience Award for US Documentary and Festival Favorite Award at its Sundance premiere in January — it’s coming to Netflix and select theaters on May 1.

The first trailer captures the hopeful spirit of the film. For months during 2018, director Rachel Lears followed four progressive Democratic candidates, all women, who ran primary campaigns against establishment Democrats in the midterm elections: Amy Vilela in Nevada, Cori Bush in Missouri, Paula Jean Swearengin in West Virginia, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York.

In January 1996, the centerpiece of President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address was a declaration that “the era of big government is over.” 23 years later, the brightest young star in the Democratic Party is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who wants to nationalize the health insurance industry and pass a Green New Deal that would zero-out US carbon emissions in the next 12 years.

When Anderson Cooper labeled this a “radical” agenda in a Sunday night interview with the Congress member, she proudly embraced the label.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) proposed a top tax rate of 70 percent to finance a Green New Deal — an array of programs to sharply cut down America’s carbon emissions — in a 60 Minutes interview over the weekend. Conservative critics, including prominent Republican leaders, immediately tried to paint her proposal as an effort to take away 70 percent of Americans’ income.

That’s a common misunderstanding of how tax brackets work. Rather, Ocasio-Cortez’s informal proposal would take away 70 percent of your income over a certain threshold.

In an interview that aired Sunday on 60 Minutes, America’s most widely covered new House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) floated the idea of a top marginal income tax rate as high as 70 percent as part of a plan to finance a “Green New Deal” that would aim to drastically curb America’s carbon dioxide emissions.

This is not a formal policy proposal. Indeed, the whole idea of offsetting the budgetary cost of decarbonization with taxes is somewhat at odds with the main currents of thought in the Green New Deal universe, which lean more toward the idea that deficits don’t matter and the costs shouldn’t be paid for at all.

Prominent conservatives lined up to dunk on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) after she floated a top marginal tax rate as high as 70 percent during a 60 Minutes interview that aired in full on Sunday. In the process, however, some of them revealed they either don’t understand how marginal tax rates work or are being intentionally dishonest about it.

On Saturday morning, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), posted a tweet claiming Ocasio-Cortez’s tax proposal would result in government seizing “70% of your income and [giving] it to leftist fantasy programs.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is fine with being called a “radical,” believes President Donald Trump is racist, and is okay with sometimes fudging facts as long as she is “morally right.”

Those were among the key moments from the new Congress member’s interview with Anderson Cooper aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to high school in the Westchester County town of Yorktown — a fact that was “uncovered” on Tuesday by the leading conservative intellectual journal Gateway Pundit, which breathlessly reported “EXCLUSIVE: PHOTOS of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or ‘Sandy’ as She Was Known at Her Elite High School in Yorktown — NOT in the Bronx.”

The reporting in question consisted of a former classmate of Ocasio-Cortez’s sending Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft what appear to be a couple of shots of pages from their school yearbook.

Congress suddenly looks very different — in a good way.

The midterms swept in a historic new class of diverse lawmakers who are due to dramatically reshape the centuries-old government body and transform not only the kinds of policies that end up being prioritized but also how Congress actually functions on a day-to-day basis.

It’s officially the start of a new congressional term and the dawn of Democratic House control under President Donald Trump.

A historically diverse body of lawmakers are due to get sworn in on Thursday for a term that’s likely to include a rise in investigations of Trump and an ongoing reckoning among Democrats about which direction the party should go.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of Democrats’ biggest stars from this midterm cycle, is now officially the youngest woman elected to US Congress. Ocasio-Cortez — a democratic socialist who rose to fame after upsetting Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley earlier this year — easily won her race for New York’s 14th Congressional District on Tuesday, with over 75 percent of the vote.

Ocasio-Cortez first stunned many in June when she unseated Crowley — a top leader among House Democrats — by running a campaign decidedly to the left. She’s since raised the profile on a number of progressive priorities, including efforts to abolish ICE, establish a federal jobs guarantee, and promote Medicare-for-all — not to mention joining a chorus of Democrats who have withheld their support for Nancy Pelosi as a potential speaker of the House.

It was a historic night for women in politics. Women won more seats in Congress than at any point in history — 92 in the House and 10 in the Senate — including the first Native American and first Muslim women ever elected to Congress and the two youngest Congress members ever to serve.

Among the latter was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York’s 14th Congressional District, a Latina 29-year-old democratic socialist who defeated the Democratic incumbent during the primaries in June in a major upset, then went on to easily beat her Republican opponent in the general election.

The record-breaking number of women candidates running for office in 2018 drew comparisons with the last time there was a so-called “Year of the Woman” 26 years ago: in 1992.

That year, as in 2018, a surge of women candidates ran for office and won. When the ballots were counted, America had elected a record-breaking four women as senators and 24 women as representatives to Congress. These included lawmakers who are still in Congress today such as Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patty Murray (D-WA).

The 2018 midterms could sweep Democrats back into power in Congress. But that might not be the only change: Young, mostly Democratic women running for Congress in districts across the country could also win and take their place in a body historically dominated by older men.

The effects of their involvement could reshape American politics far beyond 2018.

The president is the billionaire head of a global business empire, and his mostly millionaire Cabinet may be the richest in American history. His opponent in the 2016 election was a millionaire. Most Supreme Court Justices are millionaires. Most members of Congress are millionaires (and probably have been for several years).

On the other end of the economic spectrum, most working people are employed in manual labor, service industry, and clerical jobs. Those Americans, however, almost never get a seat at the table in our political institutions.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t just a House hopeful; she’s an emerging Democratic star who’s been barnstorming the country with Sen. Bernie Sanders for progressive candidates since she defeated an establishment Congress member earlier this year.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are both self-described democratic socialists. They both energize the left. And they both rocketed out of obscurity to the center of the political debate. But there’s a difference in how the Washington establishment treats them. Sanders skeptics attack his ideas; they challenge him. Ocasio-Cortez’s critics not only critique her words but question whether she should have a voice in the public debate at all.

In a stunning upset in June’s New York Democratic primary, Bronx-born political organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist in the vein of Bernie Sanders, defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic Party’s House leadership.

Ocasio-Cortez is part of a larger trend of progressive women candidates of color running for Congress and for statewide office who are enjoying record success so far this year. Whether Ocasio-Cortez’s victory is indicative of a larger leftward trend among Democratic candidates, however, is hotly debated.

“They are not traditional socialists. There is no call for communal ownership of production,” said an MSNBC anchor while attempting to define “democratic socialism,” a term that has burst onto the political scene since the unexpected win of democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a New York primary for a House of Representatives seat.

“I am open to persuasion on this, but my instinct is that if what you mean by ‘democratic socialism’ is ‘stuff FDR proposed’ you might be better off using a more all-American reference point like the New Deal or FDR,” Vox senior correspondent Matt Yglesias said.

Since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s surprise victory in New York’s 14th District Democratic primary on June 26, there’s been much hand-wringing and debate over what she and her candidacy mean for the Democratic Party. Her victory electrified the left, but moderate Democrats (and Republicans) were quick to dismiss the possibility that Ocasio-Cortez’s win represents a watershed moment for the party — or that as a self-avowed democratic socialist, she personifies a winning electoral future for Democrats.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth best encapsulated the centrist response to Ocasio-Cortez in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper where she said Ocasio-Cortez is only “the future of the party in the Bronx, where she is.” She added: “I don’t think that you can go too far to the left and still win the Midwest.” Leftist outlets like Jacobin and In These Times quickly denounced Duckworth, arguing that a muscular left-wing message would and has resonated in the Midwest.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is apparently so popular that she won a primary in a New York congressional district she wasn’t even intending to compete in.

Ocasio-Cortez, the newly minted Democratic nominee for New York’s 14th Congressional District, won a Reform Party write-in primary in the 15th Congressional District next door in the Bronx. Her (second) surprise win was first reported by the New York Daily News’ Kenneth Lovett.

If you hadn’t heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez before last night, you’re sure to know the name now. Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Bronx native, beat longtime establishment Democrat Joe Crowley in the primary for the 14th Congressional District in New York City. The district includes much of the Bronx and Queens. The upset was so unexpected (she won 57 percent of the vote), even Ocasio-Cortez was shocked.

What makes Crowley’s defeat so striking is not just that he lost to a young progressive. He also lost to a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). You’re likely to hear a lot about the DSA in coming days, some characterizations that get it right — and a lot that gets it wrong.