Ocasio-Cortez compares her election victory to moon landing.

Narcissism, hubris, or just youth?

AOC deserves credit for her primary win. She did it the old-fashioned way, outworking an incumbent who got too self-satisfied and didn't take her challenge seriously. But winning the general election under party label X in an X stronghold is not as meaningful an achievement as getting the party X nomination.

And a handful of further-left Democrats winning does not necessarily portend a coming social-democratic wave. There's her youth: she lacks a long term perspective.

But understand this: if this is the start of a social-democratic wave, it will be motivated by the same populist forces that led to Trump winning the presidency. She is the obverse of the Trump coin, and one of my fears is that we soon are arguing not over populism vs. a voluntary society, but over competing and equally ugly forms of populism.