In 2018 I lived in northwestern Oregon. In November of 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to represent her District in New York State.

She was an instant attraction to the media. Our local news – in Oregon – literally ran about 3 stories about her every single day for 6-8 weeks, gradually decreasing to one story per day. Her every utterance and Tweet had some how become news worthy in Oregon.  By comparison, I saw reference to my own elected representatives as little as once per month – literally, our local news might mention area Congressional members once per month. But AOC? Every day she was in our news. You’d be surprised to learn that 435 Representatives were elected in November of 2018 – because the news media saturated their attention on perhaps half a dozen of them.

Saturation coverage of AOC continued through 2019 but with less frequency.

Fast forward to 2020 – this is an election year – and AOC has vanished from our Oregon news.

My guess is that the news viewed her as click bait – 29 years old, female, attractive – sex appeal – and the highly sexist world of journalism combined to turn her into a national icon. Am guessing the Democratic party was also engaged in propaganda messaging, using her youth to engage more young people with the Democratic Party. That is logically sensible for them to do that.

AOC did have a habit of saying some ridiculous things[1], especially on Twitter (politicians really should not use Twitter) – and by 2020, perhaps the Party viewed her as a liability rather than an asset.

Regardless, what ever happened to AOC? Why was she so heavily promoted in 2018-2019 only to nearly vanish in 2020?

My best guess, as outlined above, was she was used as a propaganda tool – primarily to engage with young voters.

 

[1] I am not a member of a political party. In my view 100% of politicians, from Trump to Biden to pick your politician, largely lie, 100% of the time – it is not a party issue. It’s the nature of politicians – they will do anything to get ahead and promote themselves.