https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/09/ocasio-cortezs-win-has-right-wing-raising-a-new-red-scare/
For decades the Right has lazily tossed off pro-forma denunciations of socialism as inimical to our wonderful capitalist system. But after years of declining wage growth and benefits, things are changing: Polls show many people, especially younger ones, think capitalism isn’t working so well for them. And the June 26 victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the charismatic young democratic socialist who beat incumbent Joe Crowley to take the Democratic nomination for a congressional seat covering parts of Queens and the Bronx, makes socialism look like more of a winner.
Conservatives now find themselves having to make more of an effort to explain what’s so bad about bread and roses, and their rustiness is embarrassingly evident.
In last year’s state and local elections, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs, saw fifteen of its members elected to local office. But Ocasio-Cortez is making a bigger splash than they did because she won a primary for a U.S. congressional seat in the nation’s biggest media market, and happens to be young, attractive, Latina, and eloquent.
This last impression conservatives labored mightily to dispute, with articles like “Socialist Ocasio-Cortez Can’t Differentiate Between Socialism, Democratic Socialism” at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire — not only an inaccurate portrayal, but one based on the assumption that anyone not bred like an orc in a right-wing think tank would give a shit about such a difference.
