AOC is the new Trump

This is the real key to AOC’s massive profile, the reason why a book like this can exist at all: after being blindsided by the ascendancy of Trump, first to the presidential nomination and then to the White House, the Left needed its own enfant terrible to shift the paradigm. Someone who could elevate getting mad online into an art form. Someone who grasped the power of memes. Someone who understood that when they go low, the moral high ground is a sucker’s game. When they go low, you don’t go high; you drop to your knees and punch them right in the nuts, and then you laugh.

Of course, the power to trigger one’s political opponents often goes hand-in-hand with extreme sensitivity to slights. Much like the boorish Trump to whom she emerged as a foil, AOC can be remarkably thin-skinned. She has occasionally used her massive platform to attack not just other politicians but private citizens (including a group of underage boys who had posted pictures of themselves doing irreverent things to the Congresswoman’s cardboard likeness)…

It’s unlikely that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would have risen to the same iconic status if Trump hadn’t steamrolled his way through the landscape first. But he’s gone now, and the young politician stands at a crossroads: between influence and power, between celebrity and service, between the brief and blazing reign of the It girl and the more gruelling, less glamorous life of a career politician.

It’s a stark illustration of how she channels her energy that today, just over two years after being sworn into office, AOC has racked up thousands of tweets, millions of followers, half a dozen magazine covers, one command appearance at the Met Gala, and… zero bills signed into law. It’s almost as if one’s effectiveness as a public servant is dictated by something other than the popularity of one’s personal brand. And while Ocasio-Cortez was indeed unprecedented at the time of her election — if only because she is the youngest woman ever to serve in US Congress — that distinction will become less impressive as the years wear on. If she wants to take up space in our history books, she’ll have to do more than tweet.