What planet is AOC on?

Ocasio-Cortez, on some occasions, counts as one of the party’s freshest and most-appealing new voices. Her sour interview Saturday with the Times’ Astead W. Herndon was not one of these occasions. She said moderate lawmakers who blamed the left for losing their seats or having uncomfortably close calls have only themselves to blame for being “sitting ducks.” She plausibly asserted that she knows a lot more than most members about effective use of social media. She implausibly suggested that if more members had used Facebook effectively, and accepted her help when she was practically begging to give it, the Democrats could have avoided the losses which leave Pelosi clinging to a narrow majority. “Every single [member] that rejected my help is losing,” she complained, “and now they’re blaming us for the loss.” She gets so frustrated by the lack of support from fellow Democrats, she said, that she considered not running for reelection.

Self-referential commentary is hardly unusual for a politician of any stripe or any generation. More striking about AOC’s interview was that she sounded less like a political visionary and more like a campaign operative, boasting for reporters at some hotel bar as last call nears. This from the primary sponsor of the Green New Deal? This is the transformative future of the Democratic Party?…

It is folly for progressives to avoid the obvious: The reason they are far from achieving their policy aims goes beyond the notion that moderate Democrats are clods who can’t play the game. There are many places in the country where progressives need better arguments to reach people who don’t currently support their goals.