‘Floored’ union leader called AOC new Springsteen after shock primary win, book says

Donald Trump memorably compared the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Eva Perón, the Argentinian first lady known as Evita. But a new book reveals that when the young Latino leftwinger burst on to the US political scene in 2018, one US labour leader made perhaps a more telling comparison – to Bruce Springsteen.

“I was floored,” Michael Podhorzer, then political director of the AFL-CIO, told the author Joshua Green. “The best comparison I can make is to the famous Jon Landau line: ‘I’ve seen rock’n’roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’”

Landau is a journalist who became Springsteen’s manager and producer. He passed his famous judgment in May 1974, after seeing Springsteen play at the Harvard Square Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then 25, Springsteen went on to sell records by the million and win Grammys by the sackful, becoming widely known as the Boss but maintaining his image as a blue-collar hero, true to his New Jersey roots.

In Democratic politics, Ocasio-Cortez – widely known as AOC – has built her own star power while maintaining working-class credentials.

In 2018, she was a 28-year-old bartender when she scored a historic upset primary win over Joe Crowley, then 56 and a member of Democratic US House leadership, in a New York City district covering parts of Queens and the Bronx.

In a campaign ad, Ocasio-Cortez depicted herself as an ordinary New Yorker, hustling to work on the subway.

She described Crowley, in contrast, as “a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air”.

Green, previously the author of Devil’s Bargain, on Trump’s rise to power, reports