Last Monday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had no Wikipedia page. Last Tuesday, this 28-year-old candidate for New York’s 14th congressional district took the primary against a 56-year-old Democratic Party incumbent. Last Wednesday, it was only natural that traditional news media begin to “analyse” a victory they had not seen coming as one that “no one” had seen coming at all. Who could have possibly known that Joe Crowley, a DC creature of very finite charm, would be unseated by the first person who bothered to challenge his market-friendly rule in 20 years?

Well there was Glenn Greenwald over at The Intercept, Jeremy Scahill over at The Intercept, then Aída Chávez and Ryan Grim, also over at, ahem, The Intercept. The Young Turks, a youth-focused and crowd-funded YouTube news channel, was another “no one” to have seen the victory coming. Former TV star and current New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon had also seen it coming.

Aside from the Sex and the City lawyer, just a few small, stubborn and independent US outlets were able to publicly predict the very good chance Ocasio-Cortez had. It shouldn’t take a Miranda to see that the voters of a white minority low-income district could be moved to the polls by a Latina candidate able to explain her commitment to low-income voters very well in two languages. But, it did.

While it is true that this week, liberal outlets across the West are taking adorable steps toward understanding the win, it is also true that liberal outlets across the West together form a single and enormous dribbling toddler. They are unable to see beyond the parental authority of the Democratic establishment, which had offered full support to the unremarkable Crowley, or beyond the wisdom of Wikipedia, a project whose entries require “multiple, reliable secondary sources”. Multiple, reliable secondary sources had not bothered to assess an impressive young woman, ergo, they couldn’t even look her up to assess her victory.

Ocasio-Cortez ran a campaign focused on policy: abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); a $15 minimum wage; free tuition; universal healthcare. But, multiple, reliable secondary sources aren’t much up for discussion of policy, and would much rather speak of the candidate in the terms she herself has been at pains to quash. Identity politics was helpful but not central to a campaign helmed by a person whose latest political assignment was with Bernie Sanders in 2016. Sanders was clear that one’s cultural identity was no guarantee of a policy geared to the many. Ocasio-Cortez was equally clear.

Still. Get this: apparently, to understand Ocasio-Cortez is to look beyond policy, and toward its representation. Which is to say, voters are unable to use their sober senses to detect the crappiness of their conditions, note the candidates who appear to address them and reject those establishment candidates who do not. No. Apparently, we who do not write for the mainstream press are so thick and so unaware of our own encroaching material poverty, we need a sassy lady to “represent”. FFS.

This is not a “shocking upset” as CNN has it, nor simply “shocking” as The New York Times prefers. It is not, per Mother Jones, the “biggest Democratic primary upset in years”. Surely, those 2016 primary wins over establishment candidate Hillary Clinton by Bernie Sanders count for something. Surely those victories, in New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Vermont, Kansas, Nebraska, Maine, Michigan, Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii, etc, that Ocasio-Cortez herself worked toward, count as an upset.

Surely, it is no longer a surprise when a politician committed to a program of late-Keynesian reform has electoral success. Surely, it is not a jolt to see a young, highly educated woman from a good home progress in less than a decade from an internship with the late Senator Ted Kennedy to on-the-job training with Sanders to a primary win in a stubbornly Democratic party district.

As for all the counterfeit wonder that Ocasio-Cortez could have beaten a lethargic old chap who had outspent her many times. Well, really. You can’t have your raw prawn and eat it, too. Mainstream media continues to hold that The Russians tipped the US presidential election in favour of Donald Trump with just a $100,000 spend on Facebook ads. Mainstream media has also reported that the states Sanders did win were claimed due to the power of misogyny, which was, apparently, more powerful than even Clinton’s substantial campaign wealth.

Ocasio-Cortez is a strategic, learned, charming late-Keynesian who can front up to the telly and call herself a committed Democrat in love with the founding fathers etc having just received the very useful backing of the entryist organisation, the Democratic Socialists of America.

This win was not surprising. What would be surprising is a corporate press able to admit that its head has been buried up the fundament of post-material power for so long, it can no longer be trusted to explain politics, let alone complete a Wikipedia entry.

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