Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the Democratic Party’s gift to the GOP. It seems that each time she issues a statement, she is ensuring that the Democrats in 2020 will lose many of the seats they gained in the recent midterm election. Donald Trump certainly thinks so and has encouraged her and other progressives to keep it up.

As Thomas Edsall points out, it was moderate Democrats, not leftists, who played the crucial role in the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018. None of the seats previously held by Republicans were won by left-wing (i.e., “progressive”) Democrats, whereas 33 of the House candidates endorsed by the moderate New Democrat PAC did win in those districts. In the Washington Post, political analyst Elaine Kamarck notes that “In 2016, moderates constituted 52 percent of Democratic voters; historically when Democratic presidential candidates win, they have done so by winning closer to 60 percent of moderate voters.” Democrats, she concludes, “can’t win without moderates.”