Over the moon with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Morning Joe this morning. She was superb.

[karynnj]

61. No one is saying that a clone of her would win everywhere

In fact, her own ad explained her biography as someone who was of the community and had faced challenges like theirs. Her argument was that she could better represent what that district had become.

She clearly is unusually charismatic and worked very hard for this victory, but it is possible that she might not have won had Crowley taken the challenge more seriously. I have no idea if it had an effect, but the NYT oped criticizing him for not coming to a debate, but sending a surrogate could have been a major blow. I suspect that the district changing to majority minority population and the low approval rating of Congress as it is also hurt. Yet, if she won for being seen as one of "them" in Queens, she clearly would not be seen as someone like the people of West Virginia.

One issue that may resonate everywhere is that there is too much money that "buys" elections. While she criticized her opponent, the problem is the system which essentially forces Congresspeople to raise a lot of money to fund there campaigns. This has been an issue for decades. You can find comments from people like Feingold, Kerry and Wellstone when McCain/Feingold was passed (Kerry/Wellstone was a stronger bill) that spoke of the problem of big money buying access (if not control) to legislators. This was the topic that Kerry chose to spend the most time speaking on when he gave his last Senate speech when he was leaving to become SoS. This is NOT "just" a Bernie Sanders issue.

This issue and the growing economic inequality are both big issues. Again, this is not JUST a Sanders issue. Over the last decade or so, almost every mainstream Democrat has spoken against the various tax cuts for the wealthy.

We can not let the fact that Trump dishonestly used those issues - which should be Democratic issues, Republican issues - against Clinton. If we allow that history to distort the fact that it has been the Republicans, who cut taxes on the wealthy including the estate tax ... and allow the idea that the increasing income inequality to be labelled as a fringe, democratic socialist, Sanders idea, we lose what should be an issue that favors us. I don't know how we heal that wound, but it might be by Hillary Clinton speaking on both the campaign financing and the income inequality issue. This would be good to heal the rift in our party. Of course, this should be done saying only things Hillary Clinton believes.

I think we will hear elder statesmen like Obama, Kerry and Biden speak on these issues that have always been things they spoke about.