Two realities: Claire McCaskill and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

“She's now talked about a lot. I’m not sure what she's done yet to generate that kind of enthusiasm, but I wish her well."

                                          Claire McCaskill, on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Claire McCaskill doesn't quite get Ocasio-Cortez.  And vice-versa.

It should not be a big surprise. McCaskill is 65 years old, a lawyer, has three children, and has been elected several times statewide in Missouri. She just lost her re-election to the US Senate getting 1,101,000 votes in a 45-55% loss. Trump had won the state by 18.5%

Alexandria Osecia-Cortez is 29, and she is the newly elected Member of Congress for the New York 14th Congressional District, representing part of the Bronx and Queens in New York City. Her big upset win was the Democratic primary, when she won with 15,900 votes over the incumbent Democrat.

Ocasio-Cortez

Ocasio-Cortez is young, photogenic, media savvy, and she makes news. She was talked about because she cannot afford an apartment in DC until her Congressional salary starts. It's a good story: millennial woman cannot afford the rent. 

She said the media follows everything she does, so her media criticism became a story. She led a protest at Nancy Pelosi's office, which became a story. She proposed organizing a primary to oppose a black Democratic congressman who wasn't progressive enough. Another story. 

She proposed a Climate Change Committee, which would have moved jurisdiction of some matters from existing committees to the new one. She said she could not support Members who got campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies. She said climate change was so obvious there was simply nothing to discuss. She is on fire, a media star to rival Trump, only female and single and new.

Meanwhile, Fox News is keeping her in the news, doing a "gotcha" today. She had said Jesus was a "refugee" in the nativity. Fox observed that, yes, Mary and Joseph were traveling and were strangers in Bethlehem, but it was for a census, so birth Jesus was not technically a refugee. That wasn't until shortly later when they went to Egypt to escape Herod's command that Jewish infants be killed.  See how clueless she is? Look at the Democrat! Focus on that!

McCaskill

McCaskill was making her own news, in a CNN exit interview. She was reflective. "I'm a little confused why she's the thing. But it's a good example of what I'm talking about, a bright shiny new object, came out of nowhere and surprised people when she beat a very experienced congressman. . . . I hope she also realizes that the part of the country that are rejecting the Democratic Party, like a whole lot of white working class voters, need to hear about how their work is going to be respected, and the dignity of their jobs, and how we can really stick to issues that we can actually accomplish something on. Rhetoric is cheap. Getting results is a lot harder."

The weary and experienced woman observes the wildly successful ingenue. We have seen the movie a hundred times. Sometimes the ingenue crashes and burns. Sometimes she triumphs.

There is a generation gap being exposed here, a gap between two media eras, a policy gap, and a cultural gap between two very different parts of the world.

Ocasio-Cortez joyfully uses the word "socialist." For people McCaskill's age, "socialist" is associated with Soviet Union brutality, conformity, and failure. It doesn't conjure up social justice and middle class empowerment; it brings up the Cold War and long lines in front of grocery stores. 

NY District 14

Ocasio-Cortez is pushing the edge of what is politically possible, saying that of course there is "no debate" that fossil fuel production should stop, that we should accept nothing less than single payer health care, that there should be free college tuition, that we should abolish ICE. She represents a thoroughly reliably Democratic urban district, and her voice of impatient leadership on those issues worked for her.

Those policies are inconceivable in statewide Missouri. McCaskill's reality is that voters understand those policy ideas and reject them as expensive, dangerous, and impossible. Her association with them doomed her re-election. Ocasio-Cortez saw and experienced a different reality. The ideas motivated young, impatient, activist Democrats. See what is possible, she said. The media watched and activists cheered and agreed we should accept nothing less.

Each woman has her own experience and her own reality. Missouri is not the Bronx but Democrats cannot win the White House or legislative majorities in Congress without them both.

The concern of this blog, voiced yesterday, is that the two reality bubbles may have no area of intersect.