The more you know about New York politics the more surprising Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory over Joe Crowley is. Crowley wasn’t merely the fourth-ranked Democrat in the House; he was the dominant force in Queens politics for a decade, the king of the Queens machine. The extent to which Crowley and “county” exerted power over every race in Queens and over New York politics more broadly is hard to overstate; only six months ago, Crowley minted a new city council speaker  —  the second-most-powerful position in city government. The fact that he got taken down by an outsider is nothing short of breathtaking; the power centers of New York politics are reeling. If Crowley can be beaten, no one is safe.

I’m a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America and do electoral work in Brooklyn. I did very little work directly on the Ocasio-Cortez campaign but watched it closely.

You should respect my views on New York politics a little less from now on because never in a million years did I expect this to happen. I started out thinking, “This will be cool because she’s surprisingly good, she’ll get 30 percent which will dent Crowley’s aura and loosen the machine’s grip, and most importantly it will build capacity for DSA.” I had a post ready to go for when she lost about how it had built capacity for DSA (which it did, enormously, as electoral work so often does). It was only in the last couple of weeks that I started dreaming of 40 percent. When she won I was blown away.