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Ocasio-Cortez Heralds a New Political Era



We’re entering a new political era. The issues are bigger, they’re far outside the mainstream, and they’re reminiscent of an earlier time. And the stakes are higher.

One of the first to recognize this was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I can pretty safely say this is the first time in my political career that I thought the essence of America was being debated,” he tells me in an interview.

“I never thought we [would be] debating things that were debated in the ’30s, both communism and socialism,” Mr. McConnell says. Those ideologies were “largely discredited at a time when Americans could have found these arguments pretty appealing in the middle of the Great Depression.”

Mr. McConnell thinks socialism ought to be a tough sell today, given the prosperous economy and low unemployment. But maybe not. Polls show socialism has risen in stature, which Mr. McConnell sees as evidence of the new era. Last year, he notes, Gallup found for the first time that Democrats have a more “positive view” of socialism than of capitalism.

Another poll—this one from 2016—showed Democratic primary voters “in every age group, every gender, and every race view socialism favorably.” Among Democrats 45 and under, 45% preferred socialism to 19% for capitalism.

That changed a bit when the pollster offered definitions of socialism and capitalism: 40% of Democrats preferred socialism and 25% picked capitalism. Still, nearly 60% said socialism would have a “positive impact.” The poll of 1,000 Democrats in 2016 was conducted for the American Action Network, a right-of-center organization.

Socialism may not dominate the new era, but neither is it likely to fade. Two things will keep it alive. One is the proliferation of left-of-center ideas that meld easily into socialism. The second is the emergence of New York’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the newest Democratic star. She calls herself a “democratic socialist.”

At the top of the Democratic agenda is a campaign to enact enormous tax hikes on the rich. One might think it’s premature to jack up taxes less than 14 months after Republicans passed tax reform. It might be wiser to let it play out first. But Democrats believe the blue wave that swept the 2018 midterm election changed everything. They interpret their capture of the House as a mandate to reverse the nation’s political direction. Though Republicans still control the Senate and White House, Democrats regard them as relics of the past.

As tax raisers, Democrats are not timid. They’re targeting the richest of the rich. Their boldest weapon is Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s unprecedented wealth tax, dubbed the “multimillionaire’s tax.”

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is only a step behind Ms. Warren with her proposal to hit the wealthy by nearly doubling the top income-tax rate, to 70% from 37%. Sen. Bernie Sanders, another self-described socialist, is eager to raise the estate tax’s top rate to 77%.

That’s not all. Not only would health insurance be nationalized as Medicare for All, and everyone forced to give up private health insurance; a vast Green New Deal would propel America in a socialist direction. The Green New Deal has something for everyone on the left. It promises additional billions in welfare, a ban on fossil fuels, and the replacement of air travel with railroads. That’s a partial list.

The Green New Deal is another of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s ambitious ideas. She’s been a House member for less than two months. She’s young—29—attractive and self-assured. The media treat her as a major figure, second in the House only to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A measure of her prominence is that she’s already known by her initials, AOC.

If anyone defines the new political era, it’s AOC. One of her charms is that she doesn’t talk like a hardened ideologue. She’s as enthusiastic as a college radical and sounds like one. She’s frank. Asked by NPR if the fight to combat global warming requires “massive government intervention,” AOC replied: “It does. It does, yeah. I have no problem saying that.”

Most Republicans don’t take the Green New Deal seriously. Yet Mr. McConnell has found a way to ridicule it. He said he’d bring it to a vote in the Senate. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the resolution’s chief sponsor in the upper chamber, was furious and accused the Republican leader of trying to kill the bill.

Nor are Republicans anxious about polls that show how popular Democratic tax plans are. Those polls are normal. Americans have long felt the rich pay “too little” in taxes, according to Gallup. A survey earlier this month by Morning Consult found that 61% of Americans either “strongly” or “somewhat” favor Ms. Warren’s plan, which calls for a 2% tax on the assets of those whose net worth is greater than $50 million and another 1% for billionaires.

There’s reason to be skeptical. Neither the Green New Deal nor the tax hikes have faced serious scrutiny. They will once they enter the gauntlet of Congress. A survey by the Yale Program on Climate Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication found that 92% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans back the Green New Deal. Will those numbers hold up? Take a guess.

Republicans don’t have to worry that these proposals will become law. There’s no chance of that with a GOP Senate and Donald Trump in the White House. But the GOP roadblocks may vanish in the 2020 election. Mr. Trump isn’t a shoo-in for re-election, and Republicans, who control the Senate 53-47, will be defending 22 seats in 2020 while Democrats defend 12. It’s possible for Democrats to hold the House and win the Senate and presidency. If that happens, the new era that worries Mitch McConnell will be in full swing.

Mr. Barnes was a founder and executive editor of the Weekly Standard.



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