Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) appeared on 60 Minutes last night. AOC is the 29-year-old freshman representative of New York's 14th congressional district. She made headlines last year by knocking off Pelosi lieutenant and Democratic caucus chair Joe Crowley in the primary. AOC is a Bernista and a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

AOC was interviewed by celebrity journalist Anderson Cooper. Cooper's questions were far more hard-hitting than Norah O'Donnell's interview last year of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (which 60 Minutes seemed to try to make amends for last night with Scott Pelley's confrontational questioning of Egyptian president Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi).

Cooper was uncomfortable with AOC's intention to raise the effective tax rate on the rich to something closer to what it was in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also uncomfortable with AOC's proposals for a Green New Deal, Medicare For All, and Free College Tuition. "How are you going to pay for all of this?" Cooper snidely asked:

Anderson Cooper: When people hear the word socialism, they think Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela. Is that what you have in mind?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Of course (LAUGH) not. What we have in mind— and what of my— and my policies most closely re— resemble what we see in the U.K., in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden.

Anderson Cooper: How are you going to pay for all of this?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: No one asks how we're gonna pay for this Space Force. No one asked how we paid for a $2 trillion tax cut. We only ask how we pay for it on issues of housing, healthcare and education. How do we pay for it? With the same exact mechanisms that we pay for military increases for this Space Force. For all of these— ambitious policies.

AOC does not come off as super-polished, but her responses to Cooper's questions were spot-on. It's also encouraging that AOC bucked go-along-to-along progressives like Pramila Jayapal and voted against "pay-go" last week, a rule that mandates any spending increase must be paid for by a tax increase or a spending cut elsewhere.

(See "Behind the Pay-Go Battle" by Ryan Grim and Aida Chavez of The Intercept for a superb distillation.)

It must be disturbing for the neoliberals ensconced in the Democratic National Committee to see Paul Krugman, one of the principal ideologists of the Democratic Party, defend AOC in his last two columns, "Who’s Afraid of the Budget Deficit?" and "The Economics of Soaking the Rich."

All the energy in the party is coming from its left. The problem is that the party -- we know this from Obamatime -- is not a left-of-center organization. It's economics are neoliberal and its foreign policy is neorealist of the Robert Kaplan variety. The next two years are going to be spent muffling the AOCs and Rashida Tlaibs in congress and hope that people are not so disenchanted that they fail to turnout to fire Trump.