Imagine — a socialist, threatening to abuse the power of the state to punish her political enemies.

I’m as surprised as you are.

Aside from you-know-who, she’s the perfect Trump-era politician. Ignorant, vindictive, eager to brawl with the other side because her legions of admirers revel in the partisan bloodsport, willing to say outrageous stuff like this just for the sake of saying it and then never follow through.

I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up.

Please, keep it coming Jr – it’s definitely a “very, very large brain” idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.

Have fun! https://t.co/oQ6MsdJYCk

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 7, 2018

“You’ll be subpoenaed if you keep trolling me” must be part of that “relatable” everyman appeal I keep hearing about. Being a quintessential Trump-era politician, naturally she lied and whined that she was being misunderstood when she was called out for her tweet:

For the GOP crying that this is a “threat” – I don’t have power to subpoena anybody.

Congress as a body, GOP included, has the power. No indiv. member can issue a subpoena unless they are a Chair (which, as a freshman, I can assure you I will not be). Also must be under purview.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 7, 2018

She’s not threatening to subpoena him herself, she’s merely suggesting she might try to get her committee to do it. Think of how imperious she’ll be when she’s 70, in her 40th year in Congress, chairing any committee she wants. Unless, of course, her fans make her empress before then.

POTUS is going to end up flaming her over her tweet at some point today and the Twitter war to end all wars will be on. In the meantime, here’s Matthew Walther from a few days ago arguing that Ocasio-Cortez is the progressive Trump:

What she offers her sizable online base is something more important — the chance to watch a cool young superhero defeat an axis of Boomer male archvillains single-handedly. She speaks to an entire generation of young Americans whose legitimate political grievances — the sham post-2010 economic recovery, the college debt epidemic, the sneering cluelessness of those who squandered our patrimony — are as numerous as their personal shortcomings — laziness, inability to think critically, lack of empathy or curiosity about people who are less woke than them, a tendency to confuse performative outrage with moral clarity. Her conception of democratic socialism is more appealing to them than that of Bernie Sanders because it is not about making sure that the wealthy pay a bit more so that no one gets left behind, but a childish vision of easy, limitless prosperity. Bernie says we don’t need 23 different kinds of deodorant; AOC asks why all 23 kinds aren’t free.

Trump vs. AOC is the election America wants, and deserves. Alas, Article II’s age threshold and the 22nd Amendment means it’ll never happen. It’ll be have to held by proxy on Twitter instead, as so many moronic political disputes are nowadays.

A fun plot line of Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional tenure will be the anonymous backbiting in the media against her from members of her own caucus, and there will be plenty of it. For three reasons. One, to her credit she seems willing already to upset some apple carts. People who like and/or are funded by those apple carts won’t be sanguine about her earnestness. Two, her sporadic doltish mistakes, like thinking there was $21 trillion floating around in the Pentagon budget that could be used for single-payer, are an irresistible target for mockery by better-informed colleagues. There’ll be more errors like that and her House-mates will notice. And third, she already has a gigantic following on social media — larger than the followings of every other freshman member of her caucus put together, I remember reading somewhere. If she’s not already the second-most well-known Democrat in the House behind Pelosi, she must be top 10. The green-eyed monster will come for her. I’ll be curious to see if her colleagues have anything to say about today’s tweet to reporters — on background, of course.