While centrist Democrats fret that the Trump administration’s tariffs will plunge the U.S. and global economies into the abyss, Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem especially interested in protecting the cross-border supply chains of U.S. multinationals. Here I am reminded of the work of J.W. Mason, another leading light among left-wing economists, who argues that socialists have good reason to be wary of globalization, at least until the distant time when democratic decision-making is no longer bounded by the nation-state.

And if Ocasio-Cortez has expressed alarm over the extent to which the president and his allies are violating norms of civility, I have missed it. Like many on the left, she seems more drawn to the view that there is no place for civility when doing battle with fascists.

What does Ocasio-Cortez’s success imply about the future of the Democratic Party? For one, the party’s democratic socialists are now a force to be reckoned with, especially in densely populated urban constituencies like hers that are home to large numbers of working-class people of color and college-educated professionals. This is the “rainbow coalition” the left has envisioned since the Nixon era, and the victory of a 28-year-old professional leftist of Puerto Rican origin over a 56-year-old Irish-American Catholic, who had been racing leftward to erase the stain of his centrist past, certainly looks like its fruition.

However, the national Democratic Party’s embrace of what we might call rainbow socialism as its guiding ideology is far from assured. The political fortunes of Ocasio-Cortez and other socialist outsiders are closely tied to the omnipresence of Donald Trump and the galvanizing effect he has had on the left. When Washington is dominated by the right, the public shifts to the left. And when the left is in the driver’s seat, it tilts rightward. So goes the “thermostatic” model of public opinion devised by the political scientist Christopher Wlezien , which suggests that if and when Trump fades from the political scene, Democratic centrists will once again gain the upper hand. Moreover, as Matthew Bennet, senior vice president of Third Way, a center-left think tank, recently observed in an interview with Axios, “if Democrats do regain control of the House … it will be largely because of moderates winning in tough red and purple districts.” These moderates, some of whom are themselves people of color, will not cede the Democratic Party without a fight.