Even AOC’s harshest critics can’t deny her influence in national conversations about climate change and health care. The Green New Deal, her aspirational environmental policy platform, has emerged as a key 2020 issue. Criticism of her involvement notwithstanding, there are few politicians who have played as critical a role in injecting Medicare For All into the political mainstream. Trent also pointed to the Loan Shark Prevention Act, which Ocasio-Cortez introduced with Senator Bernie Sanders.

For now, these bold policy ideas are just that—ideas. But eventually the rubber will meet the road, and Ocasio-Cortez will have to show that her platform can change more than mere sentiment. “Thus far she’s sort of decided that the things that she wants to do are so big that it’s not worth trying to get a bill that can pass the House and Congress. And that’s fine,” the senior progressive staffer told me. “But at some point, if we have a governing moment as Democrats—hopefully we have one in 2020, right, where we get the House, the Senate—that’s where all of her ideas become real…Then, in that moment, you have to start thinking about, Okay. What can we get done that is big enough, bold enough, consistent with the vision that we’ve laid out but we gotta find the votes for it.”

The influence of any lawmaker is defined by the source of their power. For most, it is determined by their ability to build coalitions or climb leadership ranks. But in the case of AOC, there’s an argument to be made that her power derives not from what she does in Congress, but from her supporters outside. With nearly 10 million followers across her various social media accounts, Ocasio-Cortez has a platform most members of Congress could only dream of. “She came in with a power base that made it clear that she was incorruptible and also couldn’t be influenced by some of the carrots that are available to leadership and other people up here,” the senior progressive staffer told me. “She doesn’t need any money to help her get reelected. She doesn’t want a fancy position. She doesn’t need the D triple-C for anything.”

The growing disillusionment among some AOC supporters stems, in part, from how she has—and has not—used her massive platform since taking office. “There was not only an expectation but an understanding that when she came here she would do everything in her power to elect more politicians who shared her views…. And not letting the bare minimum of being on the blue team be enough to win her approval. And since she’s gotten here, it’s been a huge just night and day in terms of how she’s prioritized who to fight for,” the progressive aide said. “She could be out there going from district to district, meeting other people in the community, sharing her story of how she was identified as a candidate and ran, and doing more to promote the resources that enabled her to thrive. And you just don’t see her doing that…. That is a huge loss for the potential that she could really bring to the table to recruit better, more genuine antiestablishment candidates and shake up the broken status quo of Washington.”

With 2020 looming, Ocasio-Cortez fans view the upcoming election as an opportunity for the lawmaker to display her progressive bona fides. Of course now that AOC is in office, she faces a series of political costs that she didn’t when she was an insurgent taking on Crowley.

“There is a feature to Congress that escapes a lot of people on the outside, which is that there are institutional structures that are designed—particularly in the House of Representatives—to ensure that there are long-standing hierarchies and that those hierarchies be respected and pursued in order to be effective,” the source familiar with the thinking on Capitol Hill said. “That is going to run counter to an electoral strategy of primarying your Democratic colleagues whom you need to cosponsor your efforts and help champion your initiatives. A member of Congress is going to be confronted with picking one or the other. That is the reality that every member of Congress has to deal with. These are the kinds of structural questions that come into play for somebody like her. The progressive ecosystem should certainly maintain a primary-challenge strategy while recognizing the role of each player.”