Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is part of a new wave of grassroot Democrats – and no one saw them coming

It’s telling that when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took down veteran New York congressman Joe Crowley – he is the number four in the Democratic Party’s hierarchy and he had been tipped as a likely candidate to replace Nancy Pelosi at number one – MSNBC went to, erm, Utah for comment from its Capitol Hill correspondent.

A reporter had travelled out West to cover the result of another primary, one that saw former presidential candidate Mitt Romney securing the Republican nomination for one of that state’s two spots in the US Senate. A big story, to be sure, given his, shall we say, complicated relationship with the Republican Party’s incumbent president Donald Trump.

But it was nothing compared to the victory of Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina who styles herself as a democratic socialist, which is enough to get you labelled as coming from the “hard left” stateside.

Perhaps that is what fuelled the “she can’t win” narrative that meant MSNBC had to go cross-country for reaction to a story breaking on its doorstep. Perhaps it’s the fact that she hadn’t previously run for office of any kind. Like a certain Donald J Trump, come to think of it.

Perhaps it’s her age. The Associated Press called her the “young contender” after she won, which was patronising and silly. If you can unseat an established incumbent with two decades of experience then you are a contender full stop, one deserving of being taken seriously.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the US media had failed to pick up on the changes taking place in what is set to become her district, a safe Democratic one covering parts of the Bronx and Queens that are now 75 per cent non-white. That diversity fuelled her success, as it has fuelled America’s success. The pity is America can’t see it.

Regardless, the media missed a trick, just as it did with Trump, a blowhard reality TV host to whom no one gave a chance when he launched what amounted to a hostile takeover of the Republican Party.

Ocasio-Cortez’s victory is a reaction to that. And it was a thumping victory. She scored just under 58 per cent of the vote.

When Trump’s inevitable tweet came in its wake he claimed it was because Crowley had been mean to him.

“Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!”

So it isn’t only the media that missed the point. Badly.

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t the only contender from the party’s fired up progressive wing to win big.

Ben Jealous, a former head of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and a Bernie Sanders supporter, won 40 per cent of the vote in the Democratic primary to select its candidate for the governorship of Maryland – ten higher than his nearest rival

He’ll face a tougher task in getting elected than Ocasio-Cortez, because he will have to unseat a popular Republican incumbent.

But he too is a legitimate contender.

The media surely now needs to do some soul searching. Its traditional narratives are collapsing around it.

All of us who are part of it have been guilty of missing what’s been happening under our noses, and I include myself in that as an observer of the political scenes on both sides of the pond.

At least some of us are realising it. Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, admitted at the beginning of the documentary Reporting Trump’s First Year: The Fourth Estate, that what is often considered to be America’s paper of record “didn’t have our finger on the pulse of the country” in the run up to the last presidential election.

The same newspaper chided Crowley for sending a stand in to a recent debate, opining that “if you want to be speaker of the house don’t take the voters for granted”.

As false narratives proliferate, fuelled by the web, those of us who seek to counter them, who would say we are in the business of purveying truth, also need to heed that advice when it comes to our readerships, viewers and listeners.

If we don’t then we’ve lost.