TEAM OF VIRALS
ON HER FIRST morning in Washington, DC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old democratic socialist from the Bronx, was doing a much needed load of whites. “The thing that most people don’t tell you about running for Congress,” she told me, looking mock-furtively over her shoulder to indicate the secretive, insider nature of what she was about to say, “is that your clothes are stinky all the time.”
With that, Ocasio-Cortez, who knocked off then-House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley in last June’s primary and was elected without much difficulty in November, shut the washing-machine door, pushed her quarters into the slot, and bid me farewell. In a few hours, she’d leave for her first day of orientation for members of the 116th Congress, a three week crash course in civics (and the usual HR paperwork) she called “Congress camp.”
I didn’t say goodbye, because I wasn’t there; I just
