The key political partnership of the Millennial left was born over noodles. Saikat Chakrabarti met Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at Potjanee, a Thai restaurant near his apartment in the West Village, in March 2017. She was looking to get into politics; he was helping fund people getting into politics through the Justice Democrats, the progressive political action committee he鈥檇 co-founded that year.
The result has been a viral sensation: a House freshman with more than 4.9 million Twitter followers; a call for a 鈥淕reen New Deal,鈥� which has become a rallying point for young activists; and鈥攆rom the cages on the border to the committees on the Hill鈥攁 serious powering-up of congressional oversight. This has made Ocasio-Cortez the leader of a movement, not just a congresswoman. Chakrabarti, for his part, has been much more than Ocasio-Cortez鈥檚 chief of staff鈥攈e鈥檚 become the chief strategist of a generational insurgency. But the political establishment has now trained its fire on their collaboration.
In June, the speaker and her best-known freshman clashed when Nancy Pelosi caved to Republicans and moderate Democrats and agreed to pass an emergency-aid package, skewed heavily right, for the southern border.
The move horrified members of the progressive left鈥攊t was bad politics, they thought, typical of their elders鈥� timidity, and worse still, little in it would help the child migrants in what Ocasio-Cortez had called 鈥渃oncentration camps鈥� on the border. Their pushback against it, which included tweets by Chakrabarti, outraged the party leadership.
This has made Ocasio-Cortez鈥檚 chief of staff, until now little known, a political target...
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