Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is the most dangerous person in congress

Now I mean that in a good way so don't get all upset.

I don't think it can be overstated how women, especially minority women, terrify the conservative wing of the country. They will go to any lengths to discredit and degrade women seeking power on a platform of anything other than "traditional values". Case in point, apparently Rep. Cortez made a video in high school or college with some classmates that includes her dancing... to music. This is apparently unacceptable to a certain portion of society, so it was posted by a now deleted account with comments along the lines of "this is the ditz you voted for" or something of that nature.

Women having fun in public has long been unacceptable of course, and that disdain has not only come from the right. But there is literally nothing objectionable about the video unless you don't care for the music, which, fair.

This isn't limited to sexism of course, it's more like, you know how there is the classic stoner question that goes "what if the green you see, isn't the green I see? Woah."? It's something like that, It's why conservative commentators can say "Why not just give everyone free healthcare?" and actually think that this is a good point. During the Texas midterm, the Cruz campaign hit O'Rourke with evidence of his past in... a punk band. Suggesting that doing a cool thing makes you unfit for government, despite the complete lack of relevance to current politics, or even it having been a scandal in the past.

Back to Cortex though, for someone who has been on the job for about 24 hours now, she has taken a lot of shit for everything from the clothes she wears to her statements about how she can't afford an apartment until her salary kicks in and we all know it won't stop. This is down to more than being a young attractive woman barging into the sausage fest that is Washington DC. It's also because those in power can see right now that barring some sort of tragedy, she is going to be markedly effective, and for many of the same reasons the president was/is.

The president's ability to "straight talk" directly to his supporters is not to be underestimated, like we all did during the election, that the straight talk was lies, racism,  and bloviating is not irrelevant, it was in fact the point, his base latched on to someone willing to say what they were all thinking, and who promised them directly that he would make things better, what things? Everything you could ask for of course! And they turned out for him. Oh indeed they did, now he needed virtually everything else to go right as well, but without that communication with the base there would be no presidential run.

Cortez has the same strength, albeit at a smaller scale at the moment, with "only" a million or so Twitter followers, but she is "telling it like it is" too, laying out policy goals, engaging with critics, and doing so in a forum that feels more directly connected than with TV ads, she has the added benefit of not being a lying monster as well of course which makes this form of communication much less creepy than when the president does it. Energizing the progressive left is hard as hell, it requires more than the most progressive platform in history and a history of political competence, as we discovered in 2016, no, we progressives are fickle, we want to be inspired and to feel heard, even if it means staying home and letting the Nazis gain power.

A year ago I would have said the above paragraph was the truth, and continued in the vein of attacking those on the left who stay home during important elections due to ideological purity reasons. And even now I have mixed feelings about it, but if Clinton had won in 2016, I don't know if Cortez wins today, or twenty plus other congresspeople coming from the left of the party. The long term consequences of that might outweigh all the harm this administration has committed once all is said and done, but that is a discussion for another time.

The reactions from the right to this new crop of politicians are pretty knee-jerk right now, a deep suspicion of the young, women, and minorities means the establishment was never going to welcome them with open arms, but this group seems to also have no intention of settling in, they feel they were elected to do work and are getting right to it. A motivated progressive caucus in the house is perhaps the scariest long term threat imaginable to the Republicans, it's easy to put down progressives a unable to work together and provide solutions when they aren't getting anything done, a lot less harder when the only thing that is stopping them is a presidential veto. And intentionally or not, Cortez is at the head of it. Already there is talk about a presidential run in 2024 which, lord, may be just a tad premature, but I think the establishment of both wings have the possibility fixed firmly in their minds that she, or someone supported by her, will be a power to deal with when we get around to it.

Remember she could be just the tip of the iceberg, dozens of other motivated progressives won this year as well, and more will keep showing up,  if they can't be contained they have to be accommodated, and the existing power structure really doesn't want to do that.