to access captions simply click on the live transcript option which is also along the bottom of your screen. andnow on to our event . the candidate was young. 28 years old. a child of puerto rico, bronx and yorktown heights. she was working as a waitress and bartender. she was completely unknown r. and taking on a 10 term incumbent in the city famous forprotecting its political institutions . women like me aren't supposed to win, alexandria ocasio-cortez said in a video launching her campaign. the camera following her along as she hastily pulledup her hair into a bun. but she did . and then in perhaps the most stunning upset in recent memory she won. at 29 she was sworn in as the youngest member of the 116th congress and became the youngest woman to serve as united ntative in the states history. this evening we have three panelists to talk about take t up space , the unprecedented aoc. they are lisa miller, a staff writer new york magazine. she is a former religion columnist for the washington post, former senior editor of newsweek magazine and author of heaven, and enduring fascination with the afterlife. andrea gonzalez ramirez is a senior writer for the press, new york magazine's lifestyle culture and fashion brand. at the cut sheet reports on subjects surrounding communities of color focusing on racism classism, sexism and other systems of power. spade is a former features pu editor for the new republic. currently deputy editor for intelligencer fnew york magazine's news and politics site. and she helps oversee the sites ordirection and day-to-day coverage and edits features for the web and the magazine.so without further do i will turn the screen over to you three.our panel and i'll be back at the end to ask you the questions that the audience has put in the q&a. take it away, thescreen is yours . >> thank you and welcome to our panel. we're here to talk about take up space. and this is, this book is kind of a hybrid. part of it is a biography of alexandria ocasio-cortez written by lisa miller and a series of essays that are appended to it including one by andrea that tackle different aspects of aoc and her reputation or her budding legacy. we kind of look at it as a panoramic look at those phenomenal politicians.so i guess my first question for lisa is is what is so significant about ocasio-cortez and what made her the right subject forthis kind of book ? >> we've been asked this question before, why did you write a question about alexandria ocasio-cortez. it seems so completely obvious to me that we we should be as subject book. she's the youngest woman ever to be elected for congress. she is a woman of color, a working-class woman. when she says women like me are not supposed to run for congress she is completely telling the truth. she was unprecedented. and her trajectory from bartender to political supernova has been so fast and her influence has been so great both in terms of people who love her and also people who hate her. she hasbecome so divisive . she has become, she has been so magnetic from the beginning. that it seems like she is as i was talking to a friend on the phone about this project we were working on and she said she's a once in a generation talent. when a once in a generation talent comes along she is a completely appropriate legitimate fascinating subject for a biography and for this kind of panoramic look. >> and the first time you saw ocasio-cortez did you feel the same way, a once in a generation phenomenon? >> not at all. i was working as a politics reporter at one of the outlets and we were covering 2018 and i remember going to my editors and saying that i was interested in covering a woman of color running for office because i felt that they face different challenges running as the one of color you are adding extra elementsto that equation . i spoke with her, i spoke with her shortly before her primary win and i remember saying to my editor she's very interesting. i think her platform is interesting, her story is compelling. i'm puerto rican, i've not seen a puerto rican woman run for office. i didn't think she had a chance at winning, i didn't thinkanyone did . she was running against dave king of queens. the four most powerful democratin the house . a man, she's a once in a generation politician. she's kind of like a female one-of-a-kind in the amsame way that obama or something. i'm not hundred percent sure that's going to be the case. i think that as lisa said, her legacy already is so compelling and she forged a path for so many people it made her pretty much the perfect person to write an autobiographical object around. >> to underline what you said there's a section in the book where the essay, new york city the essay is debating whether to endorse her and there's a chapter who's like yes, definitely. she's amazing. she's so incredible. she inspeaks so well. she's so smart. she's so winning, she's so good with people. she's so fluent in being able to articulate like the moral imperatives of what she's after and then there was a group of members in the bronx were like basically she's okay. and it is really useful l to have to remember that. that there was a time when before she was aoc aoc where she didn't have that. where people were debating whether she could do it. whether she had the stuff whether she could make it .. what her weaknesses were. what her strengths were. whether she could play the game. whether she was to green, whether she knew enough. they were having all these conversations about her and i just think it's super important to remember that. she's just a person. >> take us back a little bit to that time. it was more than just her individual talents or skills. there was something going on in 2018 that helps give her a rise. >> so in congress which became worked into and adjacent to democrats was a group of people who were in the bernie sanders campaign and when he stepped out of the presidential election in 2016, decided to that they were going to launch this enormous project and sort of overturn congress with you know, working-class people had sort of birdie principles. working-class community leaders who were invested in the kind of economic analysis of american problems but who weren't tied to big business. who weren't tied wto political legacies. who didn't know anybody any favors. they were looking for teachers and coaches and librarians and normal people who could, they were talking about repealing and replacing congress. so ocasio-cortez had campus for the bernie sanders campaign in 2016. and her brother nominated her when congress was looking for community leaders. to run for congress and she was like the quote is whatever she said. this. haagain, not an auspicious moment. not a moment that resonated with future potential. it was just her brother called her up on the phone and said you want to run for congress and she said okay and he nominated her so there was this i mean in retrospect it wasn't really a machine. it was a bunch of people who work for bernie who believes in ernie's principles wanted to use it basically like you would scale tech product so they were looking for a bunch of people who they could back and help with the sort of backend is campaigning and put into congress in the 2018 . >> andrea, i know you covered some of that face and we talked a bit about life a woman of color. when you read this book it is striking how rare it is and you know, the unique challenges of a candidate and a lawmaker like aoc has. in your reporting when you were covering the race what challenges for what unique difficulties did you think she had? >> of course she was not a household name she was a regular person. but just starting even with the support of congress it was challenging. like raising money was challenging . we , she literally walked somewhat across new york's 14th district tthat she was, she trashed it completely. i think there was that elements of her being stacked scrappy ppwith organizers in the bronx and queens and trying to get her message out there. but also imagine that a really young woman knocks on your door and says i'm going to go to congress and change stuff. most people are not going to take that seriously. we take men seriously when they say that. one of the challenges that we hear from groups that their recruiting are like or another marginalized gender on that amount will look at himself in the mirror and say i canbe a senator . women can be quoted over and over again for them to say yes. unless their stellar and their super qualified and baser in different roles. she was a bartender. she was just like a fellow millennial who did not find the path she thought she was going to find abafter college which made her relatable to a lot of people but also because she was so young. because her resume was b different. because she did not have experience i think people did not take her seriously and joe certainly did not. he had a shift of millions of dollars to her but he did not show up to debate her. and the first time that they basically work in a televised debate instead of a community one he was very businesslike. he did not think she could do it. no one really thought she could do it and yet here we are now talking about her life icand the really impressive legacy that she's leaving behindalready . >> and then there's another story in the book where one of the early medications people are taking her around to try to show her to some of the establishment in the city . and she is very winning. she's very likable. people like to see her in their living room so there are all these little living room get-togethers when she was launching her campaign and so people would be really interested in her. and then at the end this marketing person said at the e end they say we appreciate your spirit but we're going to go vote for joe crowley it's just like yes, you're good but your little. you're lucky not. you can't pronounce your name. like, you're nobody from nowhere. crowley has such an in office lock on his district and has lo had for so long and he wasn't, she wasn't terrible.e. so she really had a high bar. she had to pinch herself at the alternative to this person who was doing okay. he had a lot of will or whatever. he was intentionally going to take nancy pelosi's seat. he was very powerful and there was this sense that he could actually like rollover for the district and who was she? she was nobodyfrom nowhere . even if people had their complaints how was she going to the lever for the district? so she had to position herself. that's like exactly right. scrappy. she had the position to position herself as all of these things about her work advantages. she was young, a little bit older. she was in a district money majority minority. that was not uyou know, she was millennial in a young district. he had moved his family down to washington after a while and basically lived there and he gave us amos line in that speech that you mentioned which was like, or districts water and he doesn't read our error. she just mop the floor with him. but hethe way that she position all of her weaknesses and strengths so that she could vanquish this politician who really was the embodiment of democratic son of centerleft establishment power. was like you can say a lot about justice and say what you want about congress but that was her understanding where her strengths were. >> i remember late in the campaign when it started to go a little bit south for crowley they tried to make a big deal of the fact that she grew up partly in westchester as if to imply she was secretly wealthy or something. a lot of the buyer fees about her early years and some of the most progressive stuff was westchester for alexandria ocasio-cortez. >> you want to take this? >> you go. >> wonderful section about her. she went back to puerto rico a lot when she was a kid. and her mom was born there and her whole family lives there and many of her dad's relatives were also there. she wanted to spend summers in puerto rico. they didn't shave any childcare so the reality is that the family moved up there when alexandria was called sandy as a little kid became school age and they wanted to find a public school for their kids. they the schools there just what's good enough and her parents were ambitious for her and wanted her to have a good education and so they moved. they got some money, they pulled all their money from family members and obama's house in the corner of yorktown heights is a very working-class corner. it's a solver that has very high highs and low lows there's some really fancy parts of yorktown and the high school she went to a lot of really rich white kids who play lacrosse. it was a sport and vice lucy went to she was a working-class kid. her mom clean houses for a living and her dad was an architect and had a little business where he picks up apartments in the housing developmentthat they had lived in . so they had you know, a st pretty modest, four minus household. her grandmother lived with her for a time. and so she grew up with a strong class awareness. of being as a kid who you know, wasn't like the other kids in yorktown heights. and yet you know, she's likable. she's a good student. she belongs to clubs. she's not you know, she's not putting space-time, she's okay. she goes to church. and so chyou can see from the people that we talk to the way that that class consciousness kind of satwith her . it's sort of ingrained itself into her who she was and she became sort of good at code switching. at being what people expected her to be when and reading what that was. she's an incredible communicator we see that now but she was an incredible communicator then and people noted that are about her but she was able to communicate to people in the language they needed's r.. >> .. congressional testimony and she knows how to speak all these differentt languages in order to speakd all our constituents. that's something she learned as a child living between westchester and the bronx and puerto rico. >> i would ask you guys growing up she had a really strong relationship with her dad, and even though show that class awareness, he was very much a puerto rican dadou and he says e was like you can do whatever you can. whatever you such a mind to do you can do it. t she grew up with that type of aspiration and that type of driving drive in many ways because for better t or worse that's what hr dad taught her since she was little. i think that w we see now anyway she's a politician, she's learning how too adapt the learning how to grow in the way that she came out and the congress like very much insurgent left, primers of people and then she got rid of some of heraf staff and then replace them with people who are more working relationships with people like congress. because i think in many ways her dad was the h biggest influencen her life and she still takes two heart the fact he told her anything you can do, you can do it. going back to the relationship to puerto rico i think that influenced her. poor people who -- puerto ricans who were born here, like you go back to the island and you have a strongt like accent when you'e speaking spanish so people don't see you as -- of stateside in people, your full name hyphenated like mine and they see the color of your skin and they don't see as others. also the class awareness she also had thatf sense of like not fully belonging anywhere, which is why she was so highly adaptable and like i okay, if ts president is i could read me as someone who belong to an ago to speak the language to ensure they know yes, i do belong in this club or to belong in like boston when he i went to colr i do belong in running for congress. that sense of being sot of yorktown heights, but not part of your accounts and being part of puerto rico, but not, you know puerto rican in in some ways, you know, is that advantages like is that like, you know, or is it also something that um one invites all kinds of attacks and makes her like alien to certain people and you know that this is the first time i've ever had this thought this exact way, but it's like the opposite of privilege right when you have a lot of privilege you can just walk into the room and you can say this is who i am. these are my credentials and and this is my resume and you have to accept me on my own terms. whereas a person like alexandria ocasio cortez has to do keep putting on different mmm using different language for different constituencies for different people so that they will accept her. she said once about crowley, you know, he's not somebody who's ever. cried in the walk-in refrigerator because somebody asked for still instead of sparkling like that experience is so integral to who she is right and and yet like you know, we're talking a lot about her flexibility and her adaptability in her sort of fluency, but i but also think that as andrea says like sergio's faith in her which was a faith that she had and herself keeps her still from becoming a chameleon right? she's the opposite of a chameleon too. she's very strong. she's very like this is who i am and i'm not wavering from that spot. it's just the way that she communicates this that's flexible. not her. identity in itself yeah, i would say like her moral compass if there's something that she's done is like her moral compass has not really shifted and like all this years despite the attacks despite like the backlashes. she's received many times because i don't know like she did not do us symbolic boat in the same what the way that like some parts of the left wanna hurt to do i think that her moral compass is really strong and i would say like i don't see this sense of not belongings like an advantage, but i think that she's like a very strong person who is capable of turning pain into purpose. i mean, you know i because sergio had like all this big dreams for her and like one of the last things that he told her was like go make me proud before he died. um, she did not feel for longest time like she was making him proud right like she was not working and the field that she graduated from she had student debt. she was a bartender in you know, like she was struggling like in many ways paying great like crazy health care insurance plan for crazy health or insurance plan paying her student debt, you know. being yelled out by customers who would want it like still water and she gave them sparkling. so for the longest time, i think that she did not feel worthy and it wasn't until like the bernie campaign that she really like was like, oh like actually i am worthy of like respect and i'm worthy of you know, having access to a lot of things that for the longest time. our system has told us like we don't deserve because we did not work hard enough and i think those experiences were like very much formative and why her moral compass is still very like strong despite all the push and pull that we see her deal with in congress. right because as you foreshadowed she does change in congress, right? she does adjust and do you think it was for either of you, you know, do you think she's lost any of that that moral sort of power that she had right at the beginning like when she was you know, really pure or or is it just being a smart politician? is that how you wield power and you know? i think she's strategic and i think it goes back to i mean like some of the closest people to her including her partner come from a very like tech worldview, right? so you're always iterating and you're always shifting and you're always growing from your experiences. so i think that once she came into congress to realize like well the way i'm doing stuff may get the message out and may help shift that overt on window. she talks about right like making things that seem very radical of you years ago feel more normalized now like something like the green new deal but it's not she's not getting any friends and to realize that if she wants to like do stuff and actually get stuff accomplished and have someone jevity. she's gonna have to adopt. um, and i i think that would everything would hurt is like it really depends from the lens that you're looking at her. some people are gonna see it like i say hypocrisy and her being just like yet another audition and there's some people that will see it like well, maybe it's the strategic and there's some people who are like, maybe it's a little bit of both. and you know, the other thing is it could just be seen as a maturing process right? she came to congress and she was really young and she had never she had never been in congress before and she was elected on this platform of being an outsider by outsiders who believed in being outsiders and so they came into the congress and sort of with a lot of outsider swagger and they were empowered by that. i mean, that was what got her elected and i think there was a a moment where she started to understand that you can't be an outsider forever. like you're just just by virtue of being a member of congress for two years. you're no longer an outsider. you're walking the halls you're eating lunch with people. you're on committees. like it's very hard to maintain that status and and so she had to figure out. um how to this kind of moral line because that is what is her sort of stock and trade right? that's that's her currency. while also being a colleague being a colleague being being a player. and i don't think that's easy for her. i think it's probably more comfortable for her to be an outsider. but you know, she's been reelected now. she has more money than almost any other member of congress. she has a lot of power not just in her. number the number of social media followers she has but in the number of amount of money she can raise overnight. so so she's a kind of in those ways. she's a more conventional politician than she was when she entered politics and she has to deal with all of that and i it can't be easy for her. she she has made some mistakes and she has also as andrea says made some choices that have really -- the left that the far left that elected her. i would say too that. because she has some more compass one thing that really struck me when she started campaigning for bernie again in 2020 was that they had a little bit of conflict because of course his messages like medicare for all right, like that's what we want and then she had like, i think it was an interview where she said, you know, would it be the worst thing in the world if we don't get medicare for all but like we still get a public option which 10 years ago like was completely dead on water and i think that is just like a really like high-wire act that i don't think anyone would want to be in her shoes. like i know personally like you cannot pay me enough money in the world to live as her for like one day because she's just dealing with so many like pressures at the same time and you know like she has a ton of self-awareness like of you know, the her limitations i think but at the same time she still believes in the same way that said he'll believe that she can do it. so there i think there's also a little bit of arrogance there that any politician should have if they wanted to what they do. so it's it's just like a very complicated life she lives and i don't think anyone would want to be in her shoes to be honest used to say she used to say early on after she'd been elected and and sort of in the months after she'd been elected. but before she was sworn in many like around the time of the sunrise protest she was saying over and over, you know, the maximum amount of power that a person can have to be able to say effort. and and i think that's what you're talking about andre. i think that this kind of like how do you imply how do you be a vested politician with a constituency in a lot of money in the bank and lots of people watching you and criticizing you and devoted to you and also retain the inner. knowledge that at any point you can say effort. you know, she always drops these. little hints that it's it's part of who she is. you know, she said a year or so ago like i'm gonna go and have a farm upstate and and what did she say like raised llamas or something? i don't think i'm not sure was right but like she does say over and over that there. is this part of her that could just walk away at any moment and i think that gives her a lot of power that gives her a lot of her power. it certainly different from like the kind of power that joe crowley had which was just to you know continually amass more power more influence all for some, you know. probably long term goal becoming like speaker one day right and like aoc doesn't use power that way in fact the way it seems like she can still be an outsider is to use her incredible fundraising and her incredible social media presence to basically make the democratic party more. more liberal more progressive right with these endorsements, you know pushing. pushing the party further left and you know, what do we think about those efforts or how successful they've been or a transformative? they've been i mean, i you know, i keep thinking about texas right? she's had her eye on texas since before she was elected. she keeps saying. we're going to turn texas blue. just watch just like watch it happen and and she said it again on the night that she was elected in the general election. she was giving her. she was giving her victory speech and that was the night that ted cruz. be better or work and and that those results were playing in the background as she was giving her acceptance speech and she stopped her speech. and she was like we're gonna we're gonna turn texas in a generation. in this generation and when you watch what she the way she handled ted cruz during the failure of the electric grid last winter. when texans were freezing to death and ted cruz was going to to mexico on vacation with his family you all remember this. she didn't say anything directly to cruise. she merely raised. i don't know two million dollars five million dollars. i can't remember the number exactly just like a gigantic amount of money overnight. for texans who were freezing because there was no electricity and then she flew down to texas in the middle of the pandemic and gave out sandwiches and stuff. and you just think like the the images and the power that she was able to exert on this particular issue was so focused. and so aware of all of the optics what it was going to look like crew. she didn't have to say anything to or about ted cruz she could just do this and have everybody watching and and i mean, i just thought it was an incredibly effective use of her. power um both in terms of raising money and in terms of motivating her social feeds to a cause. she can pick a politician and raise money for them. i mean it's an incredible. it's incredible toolkit. i would say too that. she's very conscious of the limitations of trying to change her colleagues like she has said before that if this was any other country in the world that did not have like a two-party system someone like joe biden and her would not be in the same party. um, so i think that she understands that like she can only push her colleagues so far what she can do however is start to move like again the overton window to make things more accepted like something like the grenadiel, um when by an organized all these committees right before the 2020 election to kind of like come up with plans for if it was elected. she was in the environmental committee with the climate change one with john kerry and the planet came out of it was basically a green new deal without the name gray new deal, right, so she's trying to make this idea more popular in order to then push like someone like joe biden to say like, okay maybe like the type of one that we want to include and like my presential platform, right, but it's it's like she cannot do it by herself like and i think a lot of people ascribe hurts so much like almost like messianic like power right? like she's the one that's gonna save us like oh i mean lisa has said that before but in one of her first majors interviews after she wanted her primary, i think it was in the view. she was asked when she was gonna run for president and she was not of age to room for president, right? she had not even been it in office yet and people were just like projecting all of this and her and i think that you know, she thought i mean she's very powerful, but she i don't she's that interested and trying to change her colleagues. she just wants her colleagues to adapt to the times and the way to do that is to push out her message and like make a lot of like this very lefty ideas more popular with like a lot of other communities around the country not just new york 14. well, i mean, i think even her you know sort of. most vicious haters like have to recognize that you know, aoc is a force but what do we think like, you know? what are some misstep she's made, you know, she's you know, where she maybe. you know overstepped or or sounded a wrong note. what do you think lisa like? i mean, i think that there was definitely her first chapter in congress where she brought the justice democrats inside congress to run her staff. know that you would call that a misstep initially because you bring who you know with you. but but her director of communications and her chief of staff were both. basically the founders of brand of justice democrats and this real. sort of anti-establishment anti-institutional anti-traditional take on what politics should be like neither one of them had ever really worked on a political campaign before or staff to politician before and and she was using them as surrogates. so when she didn't want to go on tv, she would put one of them on tv. she was violating all kinds of protocols within. on the hill and that kind of upstartness. didn't go down well with her congressional colleagues. and she initially stood by them. these are the people who brought me to the dance. these are the people who got me elected. these are the people who know me best. these are the people i know how to work with. but there were a lot of people saying to her at that moment like this is not how you make friends here. this is not how you get stuff done. this is these people are not helping you. and and in the end there was a big conflagration with pelosi basically and and her side of the of the party the more centric side party and she had to let those guys go. and i think that that her letting them go wasn't acknowledgment that that kind of outsider brash. we're gonna do things the way we want. we're gonna we're gonna primary people we're gonna you know, it's one thing to primary people when you're a challenger. it's a completely different thing to primary people when you're sitting member of congress. i mean, it's just like the optics are different the dynamics are different the threats are different. you're gonna primary somebody that you're eating lunch with you're probably gonna primary somebody who you're sitting on a committee with you're gonna primary somebody who who could be an ally to you. i mean, that's that's a whole all those dynamics are really really different. and so i guess i think that i wouldn't say that her bringing those guys into congress or was a misstep, but i that she was right to let them go and that she needed to assert her independence from them and from her bernie roots and from an assert her her own identity political identity. at a certain point and and to cut cut her losses, so that would be that would be one missed missed that i would. that i would i also think that like in terms of her messaging i can think of something like the met gala and her showing up to it. it's like something that you know, it didn't like a miscalculation. i think that she thought it was gonna be much more well-received at it was because i mean again like it's about optics and and like, you know, yes, there's this sort of like fu element to where addresses this tax the rich to a super over rich like, you know, one of the most covered invitations you can get for certain industries, but at the same time, is it really that much of like a a few to them right if you're still like coddling with them and you're still like hanging out there like throughout the night. so i think that sometimes cheese pulled back a lot from her social media. i would say, um, i don't think that she's like clapping back as much as she was at the very beginning where they was like headline after headline after headline but like that to me feel kind of like i'm pre-2020 alc move instead of like the move of someone who had already kind of like god a sense of how to play the gaming congress in a way. yeah, i totally agree. i thought that was a sort of odd. moment for her and sort of uncharacteristic for eric is normally she can balance those things really well also had maybe you know, i thought aoc and the progressive talk is in general like handled. congressional negotiations over build back better and what i'm actually pretty well but in any, you know but then she did her and the squad didn't and end up voting against this big infrastructure package. any kind of protest move that i'm not sure really, you know did much for certainly didn't do much for a constituents but like i'm not sure it ended up actually having an effect politically that she wanted. i don't know. she's always weighing. i think she's always weighing. her moral legacy against her pragmatic like pragmatic efficacy, right and and you know she is. she she loves barbara lee when she tells the story about how when she was entering before she entered congress. she reached out to barbara lee for advice and she said you know, how was it? how did you handle the hate from your congressional? colleagues when you voted against the bill that would allow presidents to basically declare war without congressional approval after 9/11. and barbara lee said something like you put your stake in the ground and you stand by it and you wait till everybody else comes to you. and so i i see her. the vote against bill back back better. she knew was going to pass. so it was in a way it was. it was putting her stake in the ground. and asserting her position in order to make a point and we'll see, you know, we'll see. whether how that goes down over time. okay, we have i think something like 10 minutes. we have questions from the audience. i can read them. actually. that might be just very easiest. here's a good one. i have deep respect for aoc, but i live in a republican area. she's hated here. does she understand that our ultra progressive ideas are deeply unpopular and large areas of the country and help to turn people away from the democratic party. so i can speak to this a little bit. aoc has this vision which i respect but i'm not sure is achievable. and her vision is to assert an economic analysis of american class structure so well that gig workers in california and fruit pickers in the south and restaurant workers in new york and laid off factory and auto workers in the midwest. who tend to vote republican all understand? that they're being screwed by the same system and they conform. coalitions together and and the original aoc the aoc who entered congress? before the device of this of you know the last three years was an aoc who believed possibly naively that she could argue that all of these people have more in common. and they have difference and the race stuff has like just divided us in a way that is possibly it remediable. but but that is her night, true naive hope that she can argue to the laid off, you know auto workers and factory workers that they have more in common with a waitress in queens, and they think they do. and that they if they if they bind together they can make a movement, that's the idea. so i think she wants to talk to them. i think initially she she got into congress wanting to talk to them. i don't think that she i don't think she expected to become though like this symbol right? like we're like the republican party could just cease on anything that she said and they could just like throw whatever crazy thing and just say like this is what aoc and like the leftist. i'm just socialists are saying um, and that was perhaps like a little bit of naive, but i also like i i mean, how could she have expected to become someone? us hated us like someone like hillary clinton or nancy pelosi who have like a long history, right? like there have been in the public eye for so long that of course, they become like this like, i would say empirical we call it like a google like this monster under the bed in a way and i i think that's when she came with those ideas that we can form this type of coalitions and create the sort of like consciousness among like people from different backgrounds. she did not really expect that. she was gonna become like such a target in which you know the ideas about her already pretty cemented and like the minds of a lot of these people and that definitely puts like a hamper on her political project, right? okay, another question, what's she like in private? well, we didn't meet her for this book, but i watched hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of video of her did. did you meet her andrea? i better but it was so long ago and it was also very like in out half an hour interview, you know, very media train at that point. i i know you go ahead. um, i think that she's like a very warm person. one thing that struck me from that knocked down the house netflix documentary from a few years ago is the way that she interacts with children to me. that's a lot. she's a type of person who like sits down and i you know has heard niece's hair and like talks to them very kindly so to me she seems like a very warm family-oriented person many ways tea like i mean have a cussing whose name is alejandra, which is pretty cool. so alexander and when i look at her family out look at mine is like, you know, the type of person who i think could be in like my circles pretty easily like a cousin a sister or something like that. um, and the way that like she seems very warm very relatable. i think she's nerdy we see this in her playing like among us and you know how she talks about how she relaxed and everything and going again to like the point of like family oriented i her relationship with her mom and that i think or like the most important relationships in her life. other than her partner now so that i think also tells you a lot about how she would be in private. i would say there are two there are two stories from reporting the book that stick out one is that when she was running through congress? um before the primary she was going to these house parties and neighborhoods in new york 14. and she was at a house party in queens and she came early and she was hanging out and somebody spilled a glass of water in the rug and she could she like rushed to clean it up. and the people who were throwing the house party said like we knew then that she was really authentic like she was really real like this is a woman who grew up with her mom with her mom who was cleaning houses who worked in food service or most of her 20s for whom like a spilled glass of water is just something you clean up. it's just like she didn't even think about it. it wasn't a gesture of anything. it was just completely normal and a matter of fact and that was the thing that made the people who were hosting the party love her like she's really real. and then so that's so three things. another thing. is that she always she talks about how she's disarming in person. you know, she's become this avatar of ferocity and and you know, she's like a cartoon right? she's like a cartoon hero type person, but in in in person people say that she's disarming like bull charming personable personal there's a video on she was she was doing instagram lives as a way to communicate to her constituents or followers after she was elected to congress after she was sworn in and in the spring of her freshman year. she was having extremely hard time. everybody was hating on her about everything and she was alone in her, washington department. eating fruit snacks and popcorn and putting together. an ikea table and and yeah and ikea table and she's just talking to the screen and if you can find if you can find that video it gives you such a wonderful sense of like what she's actually like because you feel like she's just alone. she's having a hard time. it's after work. she's living in an apartment with no furniture. she's putting her furniture together. she likes putting as andrea says she's nerdy. she likes putting together ikea furniture. she likes little map and the directions and she's like joking about how she likes the map in the directions. and and there's something so vulnerable about her and so like exposed about her she just could be anybody like she could be. anybody she could be somebody that you know, my daughter brings home from college. she could be a girlfriend of a relative like she could just be anybody in my life. so yeah. as we say just from reading the book. it seems like there's this very public facing side to her. and then also this very introspective very private side to her that i don't think like a lot of people see i think we probably have time for one more two minutes. i'll do a quick one. what's the most surprising thing you learned about her? i don't know. i'm gonna quote from andrea's piece. which is that she when she would go to puerto rico in the summers. she would ride her cousins horses without shoes. right the flops. i just i just love the picture of her like living a life so different from the one that she is in right now. so i would say something that. that did surprise me is the warmth and which like people the people used to talk about her right? like we're so used to see her like the strong person or it's just like creepy like person's gonna come to steal your country, you know, like all this very cartoonish versions of wheat, she is and they're not true. so when you see how people who work closely together with her people from her child remember like some of our best friends that way that they speak about her just like made her to me. more we owe that she's felt for like a really long time and to me like in the process of like reading lisa's wonderful biographical part of the book. it just felt very, you know, she could be anyone that you know, and i think that's that might be actually her superpower in a way. well, this has been a great conversation. i have one really quick rapid-fire question to end on where's aoc going to begin 10 years. where does she see yourself? you said that she thinks that you know anytime she's willing to and able to leave politics. what would it take for to do that and if she stayed in where would she be? what are her aspirations? well, i'm gonna quote from my colleague rebecca tracer with the introduction to this book who has has said, you know, actually it's pretty easy to see see where she'll be in 10 years. um, she'll be a senator or she'll run a media prior or she'll be president or she'll you know, she'll have some extremely powerful and lofty. political or political adjacent position. i think it's much harder actually to see where she's going to be in five years. if she wants to have children. if she wants to have children and stay in congress. if she like how she's gonna navigate. on moving from being a wonderkind to being an established politician whose also a latina. is a much harder? is going to be a much harder transition and those are the years that i think we should watch really really carefully. and i credit tracer with that not myself. if anything you want to add anybody else. um, i definitely agree. i also think that we don't know because we haven't seen it be done before right like she's very much the first like female politician that we are seeing. navigate very complicated questions about your life like the majority of women that coming to congress and the senate governors like their child reading years are behind there, right they if established themselves professionally like they've done so much more before they get to the house of power in a way and this is the first time that we are seeing her like the first person we're seeing navigate a lot of those complicated questions, and i think she has a lot of like that internal conflict in a way too like that desire just to run away and like use her power to say aphid. it's like i can't understand that and i'm here position. um, so yeah, i think it's gonna definitely interesting to to see where she goes from here. we'll just have to wait and see. well, i know go ahead please. oh, i'll be quick. i think she'll probably be senator. i think chuck schumer started death that he's gonna she's gonna like primary him or something, but i'd love to you know, i'd actually love to see her be like mary new york city. i think that would be a very different kind of job and i think you know she could do something here. wonderful, listen to fascinating conversation which we had more time. i haven't had a chance to read the book. i'm really looking forward to it in particular. i'm curious to thank you curious to know so many things about are like how how people how she views herself as being unmarried not just with children without children, but unmarried and you know, this the halls of congress, but i look forward to the book is a general reminder to our audience out there. i've placed the link to purchase i placed the link to purchase "take up space" in the chat. it will take you directly to the politics and prose website 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