AOC’s status as overnight sensation unsettled some in Washington. Yoho’s outburst on the Capitol steps was a painful illustration of how some in the entrenched ruling class greeted their arrival-a finger in the face of change. Then it was Hillary, and now it’s me.”įrom her swearing-in in January 2019, Ocasio-Cortez became the de facto spokeswoman for the historically diverse 2018 midterm class, including a record 36 women and 24 people of color as freshmen in the House. “It’s not an accident that, every cycle, the boogeyman of the Democrats is a woman,” says Ocasio-Cortez. “It’s very dehumanizing in both ways, strangely, both the negative and the positive,” the congresswoman tells me one afternoon from behind the desk of her Bronx campaign office. ![]() One especially disturbing spot shows a photo of her face on fire before cutting to a pile of skulls. Her beatific face is commodified on twee Etsy greeting cards (“I AOC It’s Your Birthday”) and stamped alongside those of RBG and Frida Kahlo on “feminist prayer candles” and “Latina icon stickers.” Conservative attack ads depict her as socialist villainess. A few, like Representative Ayanna Pressley, go with “Alex.” But becoming AOC-and simultaneously vaulted her into a pantheon of triple-initialed legends and, alternately, given a handy tagline to the right’s worst nightmare. M ost of Ocasio-Cortez’s family and close friends call her Sandy. “I think a lot of people, including my Democratic colleagues, believe the Fox News version of me.” Not that I’m not allowed to, but it’s a little more dicey,” says Ocasio-Cortez. ![]() ![]() “Two powerful women coming from different perspectives,” she shrugs, “and there has to be a catfight.” Still, “House leadership is, sometimes, a little wary of me speaking on the floor. Ocasio-Cortez does not name Speaker Nancy Pelosi and, in a separate conversation, rejects reports of a clash, calling it media-manufactured misogyny. “It’s not an accident that the boogeyman of the Democrats is a woman.”
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