Let me rephrase that: It’s high time the Right started taking the phenomenon of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez seriously. Because that is what she has morphed into. According to an Axios/Survey Monkey poll released yesterday, 75% of Democrats said they would be open to voting for her as president. And if that’s not enough to warrant your concern, consider that 28% of nonwhite Republicans said the same thing.
I’m the first to admit that AOC is low-hanging fruit. Scarcely a sentence emanates from her mouth or keyboard that isn’t mangled in some fashion and whose content isn’t laughable. But there is a danger in laughing too hard, and that resides in her boundless energy and youth, both of which have made her a star among Millennials.
So far the liberal media have demonstrated a willingness to play along. On Monday, for example, she joined far-left author Ta-Nehisi Coates at New York City’s Riverside Church to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. I have little use for Coates’s ideas, but I’m willing to acknowledge his intellectualism and ability to form a rational thought. But neither of those traits was evident once Ocasio-Cortez began to pontificate. When she claimed that the world was “going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” he didn’t challenge her, though I’m fairly sure he knows better.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
He held his tongue again when she said:
[A] system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.
If nothing else, Coates could have pointed out respectfully that ringworm is a harmless fungal infection akin to athlete’s foot and that Alabama does indeed have a Department of Public Health that steps in whenever global health issues arise. Instead, he sat mutely taking in Ocasio-Cortez’s gibberish, and the audience, which seemed equally intellectually challenged, applauded.
Eventually AOC will be forced to defend her “ideas,” but by that time it may be too late.
