Lots of people were shocked when 28-year-old first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated the No. 4 House Democrat, Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), in Tuesday's Democratic primary in New York's 14th congressional district — Crowley, House Democrats, pollsters, and, it appears, Ocasio-Cortez herself.
Crowley, who has held the safely Democratic seat representing the Bronx and Queens since 1999, had a war chest 10 times larger than Ocasio-Cortez's, and he took his loss with uncommonly good grace and fairly impressive Springsteen chops. Ocasio-Cortez, now the presumptive frontrunner for the general election, is about to become the subject of several dozen giant-slayer profiles — you can read Joel Dodge's at The Week — but she appears ready for her close-up. Peter Weber