The Women Shaking Up America

A record number of women have been elected to the US Congress, with Muslims and a Native American among them. Nick Bryant investigates the female-led revolution.

- Nick Bryant

She has arrived in Washington with the force of a tornado, a whirlwind presence who even before touching down on Capitol Hill had shaken up the political establishment. Less than two years ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was tending bar and serving tables in a Manhattan taco and tequila bar. Now this 29-year-old has become the youngest person ever to win election to the United States Congress.

America is used to seeing celebrities become politicians – Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and most recently, of course, Donald Trump. But Ocasio-Cortez has reversed that process. She’s a politician who has become a celebrity. In a measure of her star power, this daughter of The Bronx is now known simply by her initials, AOC.

In 20 years of covering US politics, I have never witnessed a new arrival in Congress make such an immediate splash. It has delighted her admirers on the left of the Democratic Party – AOC describes herself, unapologetically, as a “democratic socialist” – and seemingly inflamed her conservative Republican detractors. On the eve of her swearing in as a congresswoman, apparently in an attempt to smear and shame her, opponents leaked a video showing her dancing playfully on a rooftop during her student days in Boston. “Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is …” read the tweet from an anonymous account that introduced the film clip. But this attempt at sabotage boomeranged. Her dancing, re-enacting moves from the movie The Breakfast Club, quickly became a viral sensation.