Democratic Socialist wins nomination of the Democratic Party for Congress

Readers outside the U.S. might not have heard about the surprise victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the Democratic nomination for Congress in a district covering parts of the Bronx and Queens that are heavily Hispanic and African-American.   Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, consistent with her ideology, supported Sanders over Clinton during the 2016 Presidential race, and is an actual member of the Democratic Socialists of America:  she is the Koch Brothers' nightmare.  I wish I could say with confidence that this portends a real leftward shift for the Democrats nationally, but I'm not holding my breath.  This isn't the first time that heavily minority communities in New York have sent an iconoclast to Congress--some readers may recall the great communist Congressman Vito Marcantonio, who, while Italian, was beloved in both the Puerto Rican and Italian working class community in East Harlem in Manhattan that he represented continously from 1938 until 1950.  (Back then Italian-Americans, like Jews, weren't really "white.")  He was on the right side of almost every major issue of his time:   an early champion of civil rights, introducing bills in Congress to abolish the poll tax and making lynching a federal crime; an opponent of the Korean War; a stalwart defender of labor unions and the poor; and, unsurprisingly, a supporter of Henry Wallace in the 1948 Presidential race, the most prominent social democrat in the U.S. prior to Bernie Sanders.   I am hopeful that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez will be just as principled (and tactically smart!) and hopefully inspire others so that actual progressives make up a minority that can't be ignored in the Democratic Party.