A resetting of the dial?

I noted this the other day here on our blog:

Lex Anteinternet: She's not the only one.: From "The Hill": Outgoing Democratic Sen.  Claire McCaskill  (Mo.) says that she is “a little confused” by the rapid rise of incoming Rep. Alexandria Oscasio-Cortez (D. N.Y.)

Following that, I commented on Oscasio-Cortez twice more, once citing her as an example of how the government was seemingly descending into uncontrolled Weimar style chaos, but then coming back and changing my view.

Since that time she's been in the news again.  She appeared as a topic of conversation on This Week and Meet the Press, and then apparently gave an interview to another Sunday news magazine.  Turning on the television news last night, her views were getting press.

Those views are really unyielding, and I certainly do not agree with all of them.  The surprising thing, however, is that they are getting that sort of press.  She's eclipsed in short order the sun shining on other Democrats including such recent notables as Beto O'Roarke. 

Normally a person with such radical views would simply be viewed as a gadfly, but she's not really getting that treatment and the Democratic establishment is struggling with how to treat her.  She clearly can't be dismissed and she can't be ignored.  Moreover, she's not falling in line.  Figures like Pelosi are basically trying to ignore and cajole her, which seems unlikely to work, and she could soon became a big problem for the aged Democratic establishment (indeed one commentor on This Week specifically noted how so many of the Democrats who are testing the 2020 waters are ancient and in the class of politicians who contributed to the problems they are complaining about).  She's become such a problem that now Democrats in the media class, such as those who are on The View, are lecturing her.  Whoopie Goldberg, for example, felt it necessary to lecture her as if she was a child on the air.

That's not what is going to work.

Again, I'm not a fan of 100% of her positions.  But she's made her positions actually clear.  They are far to the left, but I suspect that some of those views are very widely shared by the American public both nationally and regionally.  And even where those views are extreme, like them or not, they are thought out.  She proposed, for example, to pay for her universal education views by returning the top marginal tax rate to 70%, which she noted it had been in the 1960s.  That's correct, it was that high and that didn't collapse the economy.  That somebody 27 years old would be aware of that is worth noting.

And some of that is having an effect.  Following her comment on the top marginal tax rate, at least one other Democrat came out noting the same thing and that it had been even higher during the 1940s (of course during World War Two).

I note all of this as perhaps this past election will turn out to be more significant than we might have supposed, but for different reasons than are supposed.  It might be a resetting of the dial. That dial isn't going to go all the way from right to left, but it might actually end up moving.  Moreover, that dial might finally be moving from those in their 70s and 80s, down to a younger demographic, which would be a huge political development.  In a year in which Elizabeth Warren has been the first to declare her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic nomination, the fact that Oscasio-Cortez is getting more press and has more Facebook followers isn't to be ignored.