AOC’s power comes from her outsider status. Can that endure? | Moira Donegan

Her career has been defined by her status as an insurgent critic. But she and the Democratic establishment need each other

She spoke loudly and with confidence, gesticulated broadly, and returned, several times over the course of her seven-minute remarks, to the struggles of working families. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman from New York and standard-bearer for the post-Bernie Sanders US left, may have been an unlikely choice for a lengthy primetime speech at the Democratic national convention's opening night. The last time she spoke at the Democratic convention, in 2020, she was given just a minute and a half, in which she indicted the party establishment from the left and endorsed Sanders' campaign for the nomination, which by then had failed.

But this time, the party showcased Ocasio-Cortez as one of its prime talents, and her rhetoric was starkly different. Though she focused her remarks on her trademark politics of class, emphasizing the struggles of whose who worry about rent checks and groceries", she spoke, this time, in the Democrats' most comfortable terms. Ocasio-Cortez used to speak of the working class". On Monday night, she praised Kamala Harris as for the middle class because she is from the middle class".

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist