It had created the surprise two years ago by unseating an influential member of the Chamber, and a laying of the democratic Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), a waitress of the bar, socialist declared (so a real leftist for America), had become in 2018 the youngest elected to the House. Today 30-year-old, she has won again the primary of his party by an overwhelming majority : more than 50 points ! A foot of nose to the financiers of Wall Street and the Chamber of commerce who supported his rival, a former tv journalist centric. Beginner’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera has raised two million dollars from its support, but has not made the weight in front of AOC, which raised a war chest for five times larger. The re-election of this past November is now ensured, since the republicans have no chance of carrying the district.
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above all, AOC has been emulated. The most striking, are the new faces that are emerging in districts of the surrounding area. Even if all of the bulletins for voting by correspondence have not yet been counted, in the Bronx, part and parcel, and Bowman, a former director of college 44-year-old, is almost assured of a win against Eliot Engel, 73-year-old crocodile, a democrat, entered Congress in 1989. It is a sacred victory. This Black recruited by the group, which has launched Ocasio-Cortez has campaigned on positions that are very left – a social security to the French, a Green New Deal, an increase in the budget for public Education – while the attacker Eliot Engel about his links with Wall Street, his support for Israel and its vote in favour of the war in Iraq. Part and parcel, Bowman was supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the two senators, from left, candidates in the presidential elections, and, of course, Ocasio-Cortez.
His nomination has really taken off in recent weeks with the protests against police violence, following the death of George Floyd. It has also benefitted from the blunders of Engel. While his district was ravaged by the coronavirus, it was discovered that the representative had taken refuge in his home in Maryland. And before the start of a press conference on police brutality, he said, without understanding that the microphone was open : “If I didn’t have a primary, I ficherais of it all. “Anxious to avoid a new defeat of the laying of the party, the entire democratic establishment – including Hillary Clinton – mobilized behind him. In vain.
The “babies AOC”
north of New York city, Mondaire Jones, another protected Ocasio-Cortez, has arrived well ahead of the election to replace the representative Nita Lowey, who is retiring. This lawyer of 33 years, black also, coming from a poor background, is a graduate of Stanford and Harvard and has worked in the Obama administration. He campaigned on a program very much to the left and advocates for the university free of charge. His victory is all the more amazing that a part of his district includes Westchester, a corner very posh. “If the advance of the lawyer Mondaire Jones is confirmed, this will be the first Black, supported by AOC, to represent this riding, white 60 %, very AB+, which includes Chappaqua [the home of Clinton],” said Dave Wasserman, a political analyst at the Cook Report. If he wins, he will also be the first Black gay said at the Congress.
Still in New York, representative Carolyn Maloney, who was a 15th term at the age of 74, finds himself in a tight election with Suraj Patel, 36, a lawyer-activist, the son of immigrant indians. And in Kentucky, Charles Booker, a Black left representative in the local Congress of the State, seems to follow Amy McGrath, an ex-fighter pilot centre which, however, is the endorsement of the party and has raised more than $ 40 million.
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This is clearly good news for the left wing of the party, especially after the failure this winter to primary Bernie Sanders, his candidate favorite. “When I won, we took our victory to luck, aberration “, has tweeted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But these results show that the progressive movement is ” not an accident “. “It is a mandate. “
It is also the sign of the profound impact that had on the voters ‘ racial manifestations. “The rage and the grief that we have seen on the streets are felt in the elections from New York to Kentucky,” says Maurice Mitchell, the director of the Working Families Party, a left group.
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Even if their number is still limited, these new elected officials will most certainly push for reforms and to positions more radical. What particularly concerned the establishment-old and very centrist of the party. In fact, he knows that if the democrats regained control of the Chamber in legislative elections in 2018, it is primarily thanks to the victory of moderate candidates in districts so far right, but now hostile to Donald Trump. “The democratic Party is at risk of having a stroke, because he is going to have to sit through the wing AOC,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant.
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the new faces of generation anti-Trump
