evidence: When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) stepped onto the Democratic National Convention stage in Chicago on Monday night, the crowd erupted in chants of "A-O-C." The 34-year-old’s speech electrified the room of Democrats, representing a dramatic shift from when the congresswoman from Queens first entered the scene in 2018 as an outsider and challenger to the party establishment—a democratic socialist who unseated 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, protested Democratic leadership in the House, and quickly became the poster child for the Democratic Party’s outlier left wing. [...] For her part, Ocasio-Cortez has maintained that she doesn’t have her sights set on higher office than the House. In her DNC speech, she instead doubled down on her commitment to bringing a working-class perspective to politics, recalling her past experience as a waitress without health insurance, struggling to pay bills after her father died from cancer. She reiterated how more people who have experienced similar struggles—such as Harris, she said—need to be in government and in the White House.