Lurching Leftward

A major shift in the Democratic Party materialized Tuesday when the fourth-highest-ranking House Democrat, Joe Crowley, lost his NY-14 primary election to a self-described socialist.

In her victory, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became not only the Democratic nominee for New York’s Fourteenth District, but the de facto figurehead of the new Democratic Party.

This was bad news for national Democrats in multiple ways:

1. A top member of their leadership was knocked off by a first-time, 28 year-old insurgent, building evidence of unrest and divide within the party. Rifts among the party’s factions increasingly narrow Nancy Pelosi’s prospects of reclaiming the Speaker’s gavel.

1. The self-described socialist’s defeat of an establishment Democrat is the pinnacle of her party’s continuous leftward lurch. Fed-up Democratic voters have pushed the party further to the left throughout the cycle, generating a field of progressive nominees too extreme for the general election.

Democrats’ growing lineup of far-left nominees have adopted signature campaign issues such as single-payer health care and abolishing ICE, both of which prove unpopular with the general public. National Democrats will have an increasingly difficult time backing such radical candidates who heed the cries of the party’s leftward-lurching base, but are utterly unelectable in the general.