WASHINGTON TRIBUNE
POLITICS
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: From an Insurgent to the Establishment
The famous Congresswoman is leaving the House, but she is not defeated.
DAVID GOLDSTEIN
FEB 7th, 2077
Yesterday, after experiencing a non-fatal stroke, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced that she would be resigning, effective March 1st, to “spend more time with her family”. This marks an end to the longest and the most distinguished congressional career in American political history.
In the past sixty years, the United States has changed dramatically, so it should be no surprise that Ocasio-Cortez’s early career took place in odd circumstances. She first won election in 2018, defeating incumbent nine-term Democratic representative Joe Crowley in the primary. Ocasio-Cortez ran a proudly socialist campaign, fighting for a Green New Deal (odd as that may sound now), for Medicare for All, and other then left-wing planks. Her platform and an energetic insurgent campaign allowed her to triumph in the primary, and she was shortly thereafter elected to the House of Representatives from what was then New York’s 14th Congressional District. When she was elected to Congress in 2018, she was the youngest female representative ever, one of the very few Hispanic representatives (her district, then and now, was majority Hispanic-ethnics), and one of the most consistently liberal Democrats in the House.
New York's 14th District during the 2010s.
During her early years in Congress, she continued to act as a left-wing insurgent, frequently fighting with Democratic and Republican leaders alike during the Trump and Pence administrations. She built a powerful brand with young and liberal Democrats during the 2020s, and when President Klobuchar was inaugurated, she became the Vice Chair of the Subcommittee on Health, and rose to the Chair after Representative Mike Thompson retired in 2026. In this role, she proved instrumental in shepherding through Klobuchar’s changes to the healthcare system, many of which remain to this day.
She also maintained a notably positive relationship with President O’Rourke during his tenure during the 2030s, and when he retired in 2040, Ocasio-Cortez, by then an established member of an increasingly left-wing party, was repeatedly mentioned as a prospective Presidential candidate. She deferred in 2040, not wishing to enter a contentious and large primary field, but when Corrin Dawson of Minnesota triumphed and brought the GOP back into the White House, she says she was inspired to run for President. As Ranking Member of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, she fought much of Dawson’s conservative agenda during the 127th Congress, his first. When Democrats won back 47 House seats and 3 Senate seats in 2042, seizing back majorities in both houses, she claimed a mandate from the American people, and attempting to stalemate Dawson. Dawson, however, proved more politically adept. He quickly tacked to the center in the second half of the term, seeking bipartisan consensus when he could. His efforts to support the growing economic boom in space proving broadly popular, and Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime advocate of human expansion into space, was forced into a working relationship with the President.
Still, her experience, charisma, and broadly left-wing attitude led her to a easy victory over the Democratic presidential field in 2044. By March of 2044, pundits had declared her the presumptive nominee, and she quickly took to the rule of attacking President Dawson. Dawson largely refrained from personal attacks, and ran a seemingly positive campaign, all while raising concerns about her “dangerously radical ideology”. Ocasio-Cortez had moved somewhat to the center relative to the Democratic mainstream since 2018, but she still ran the most left-wing campaign ever, and Dawson’s attacks hit hard. Further expansion of the healthcare system seemed unnecessary at the moment, the current immigration system was working fine for the American public, and automation had not hit hard enough for a Job Guarantee to be considered workable, especially given what had happened in 2029 when Klobuchar attempted a similar policy. Dawson, meanwhile, was then personally scandal-free, and was riding a booming economy to a 61% approval rating.
Many political scientists consider her famous response to a debate question posed about Dawson’s investment in asteroid mining, where she said that she “[would] not politicize the future of humanity”, to be the death knell of her campaign, but this is likely incorrect. Although her response probably did not do her any favors, Dawson’s policy in this area was then very popular, and attacking him over that would have exposed her to charges of hypocrisy and would have been a bad idea in any case. Even if this incident did harm her campaign, it was not decisive. Corrin Dawson defeated her in 2044 by a fairly substantial margin, with Ocasio-Cortez only winning 16 states out of the 52 at the time, and it is unlikely that any one event would have led to her victory.
2044 Presidential Election Results
Owing to New York election laws, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was able to run for re-election to her house seat while she ran for the presidency, and while she didn’t defeat Dawson, she did win re-election to her 14th term in the House.
As a prominent Representative, she maintained an important role in investigating the Dawson administration, and considered a second run at the White House in 2048. Ultimately, she made the decision not to run, not wishing to suffer two consecutive defeats. She was a prominent surrogate for President Robinson in 2048 and 2052, however, and as the Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means controlled much of their domestic agenda. Robinson shifted significantly left during her time as President, and Ocasio-Cortez was able to see much of her 2044 Platform passed during this time period.
By the 2056 election she was one of the most powerful and experienced figures in the House of Representatives, and she campaigned for Senator Joe Gonzalez, a former protege, during the primaries. His defeat by Senator Nicole Thompson was interpreted by many as a rejection of her influence over the party, and Speaker Max Gerben forced her out from the Committee on Ways and Means, moving her to the less powerful Committee on Space, Science, and Technology. In 2058, she predicted electoral doom for Democrats if they kept Gerben as their leader, saying that his famously populist agenda was reactionary and counterproductive. Democrats picked up 27 house seats, and Gerben famously remarked that “If Democrats experience electoral doom like that again, we’ll only have a perpetual majority”. This midterm result was perceived as a vindication for Gerben’s style, and even though he lost the majority in 2060, he maintained the position of House Minority Leader, defeating Ocasio-Cortez in an ugly fight.
Ocasio-Cortez’s ugly fights with the new Democratic leadership team contributed to an increased willingness to work with President Overton during his second term. This is the time when she became one of the quintessential Liberal Democrats, who are predominantly Northeastern or West Coast Democratic representatives, socially liberal and globalist and often Hispanic or Asian ethnics. In this new role, she proved a vital figure in his initiation of the Daedalus Project, and in his far-reaching expansion of immigration during his second term.
Daedalus, shortly after launch.
Her fights with the new Democratic establishment only increased during the Williams administration, with President Alex Williams calling her “barely a Democrat” in a public speech in an infamous incident. Representative Ocasio-Cortez returned the favor in 2067 and then some. As head of the Committee on Space, Science, and Technology, she repeatedly investigated the Daedalus project, and she uncovered the rampant corruption that Williams had fostered. His use of the government project as a personal piggy bank made Williams catastrophically unpopular, and she, along with Speaker Gabrielle Thomas, led the effort to force Williams out of the race for re-election.
Ocasio-Cortez was initially favorably disposed to Nayara Bustos, endorsing the political neophyte in the Democratic primary before Williams left the race. Her support quickly soured as it became clear that Bustos was ideologically disposed to a conservative populism and xenophobia that Ocasio-Cortez found repugnant, and she revoked her endorsement during the fall of 2068, becoming the leading prominent member of the NeverBustos movement. She did not grow more enamored of the inexperienced and broadly incompetent Bustos administration, and was one of the 18 House Democrats who opposed her infamous cancellation of the Daedalus Project. She lead the fight against this initiative in the House nearly more than Bennett, to such an extent that Thomas publicly stated Ocasio-Cortez “should just give up the bullsh**t and become a Republican already, if you hate the President so much.”
Ocasio-Cortez reportedly considered it during the Bustos years, when the Democratic party seemed to be moving away from her ideology by the second. In the end, she maintained her position in the party, fighting for a Democratic party that no longer existed, and that probably never will again.
She refused to endorse Bustos in her landslide 2072 defeat, and she proved plenty willing to work with President Castile, a personal friend. Cortez had known Castile’s father during his surprise win as the Governor of New York in 2034. She had maintained an acquaintance with the family after his tragic death, and when Castile was elected to the House from Westchester County, not even twelve miles from Ocasio-Cortez’s home, in 2060, she became friends with the Republican rising star. Castile served on the Space, Science, and Technology committee with Ocasio-Cortez, and helped work on the initiation bill for the Daedalus project. Ocasio-Cortez wouldn’t endorse the Democrat in the 2066 or 2070 New York gubernational elections, for the first time ever. Her experience, moderation, and bipartisanship respect was so pronounced that with Castile’s backing, she became the Chair of the Committee of Space, Science, and Technology again in the 143rd, despite Democrats remaining in the minority in Congress.
2072 also marked a milestone accomplishment, as Jason Smith, the Missouri representative who was the Dean of the House, retired, making Ocasio-Cortez the Congressional member with the longest tenure in the House.
Over the past five years of the Castile administration, she has seen the Democratic Party move farther and farther away from her. Old school Liberal Democrats have been primaried or defeated, to such an extent that states as ancestrally Democratic as Massachusetts, Minnesota, or Washington all have unanimously Republican delegations now. Through all this, she has remained, a throwback to a different era and yet still a futurist. In 2076, Barnes won her historically powerfully Democratic district by only 2.5%, and yet Ocasio-Cortez still won by a 34% margin. She wins by margins in her upscale and heavily white district that recall the days of her youth, when it was one of the most Democratic districts in the nation.
The old Democratic Party is dead now. If the news from Louisiana hadn’t made that clear, Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s resignation does. The last remaining Democrat from the time of the Trump Administration, the last Democrat who remembers the days when the Democratic party stood for the future instead of the past, the last Democrat who remembers when the Party turned outwards towards instead of in, is leaving Congress. This is, to be sure, partially caused by her fading health. But it cannot be disputed that she is a DINOsaur in a party that has changed irrevocably away from her, a young and broadly left-wing insurgent turned ancient representative of a no longer existent establishment, and of an America that placed Country over Party, that did not see partisanship as a blood sport.
She leaves behind her perhaps the most distinguished legacy of any Congressperson ever. She was the youngest woman ever elected to the House. She is the person who has the longest cumulative length of service in the House ever. She is one of the primary legislative architects of the modern healthcare system, of the American welfare state, of the Universal Basic Income, of the Daedalus project, and of the immigration reform of the Overton administration. She has cosponsored more legislation that anyone else in Congress. She has forced out two presidents, she has ran for President and won the most votes a woman ever won and she has been a delegate to every Democratic convention since 2016. There are some who can rival her in length of service, or in degree of accomplishment, but altogether she has arguably the most impressive career of anyone who has ever served in Congress.
We should not just remember her in her current political role, adrift from a party that has left her. We should remember that she was a rising star, a bold insurgent, the leader of the party and a powerful legislator who changed America for the better. She has left behind her a lifetime of accomplishment, and she can now resign from office, still unbeaten and still triumphant.
