Congressional clapback queen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has struck again. This time, she’s hitting back at a former member of her own party with a message for anyone who worries she might be the Democrats’ future: “New party, who dis?”

That’s what she wrote in a tweet responding to the news that former senator Joe Lieberman said in an interview that he’s hopeful she’s not representative of what his former party is becoming.

“With all respect,” Lieberman said Thursday, January 10, on Fox Business, “I certainly hope she’s not the future and I don’t believe she is.

“She’s gotten a lot of attention because she’s different. She’s controversial,” Lieberman explained. “But if you look at the majority of new Democrats in the House, they tend to be, I say, center-left, if they are not left-left. And that is because they had to be center-left to win some of those competitive swing districts that they took from Republicans.” Lieberman went on to caution against Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed 70% tax on income over $10 million.

That AOC hit back so succinctly may be a testament to her view of Lieberman's role in determining what the future of the Democratic party should be. To answer her question, who exactly is Joe Lieberman? The answer, to put it simply, is that he’s a former Democrat who has seemingly burned nearly every bridge he had to the party.

Even many establishment Dems have long had issues with Lieberman, as CNN pointed out last year, after he endorsed Republican candidate John McCain over eventual-president Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign. Lieberman is also widely viewed as being responsible for killing the possibility for single-payer (i.e., government-funded) healthcare while the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) was making its way through Congress, as Slate documented at the time. AOC’s support for Medicare for All, another name for a single-payer option, puts her at odds with Lieberman on that issue.

Lieberman has extolled the virtues of centrism, and his comments on AOC appear to indicate he views her as too radically leftist to be the future of his former party. But the youngest-ever woman in Congress has been widely hailed as one embodiment of the new wave of progressive politics that helped Democrats reclaim the House in the 2018 midterms.

Democrats have reportedly been trying to figure out how to check AOC’s public power, according to Politico. As the political superstar’s power consolidates on social media and in the public eye, questions about whether or not she’ll play the party’s game continue to surround her future in the House, where pragmatism is often praised over idealism.

Lieberman may well be expressing the concerns of establishment Democrats in this case. The voters may ultimately decide the future of the Democratic Party, though, and time will tell if they’re more aligned with a former senator who was too conservative to stay a Democrat than a House representative some worry is too progressive to be one.

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Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Here’s Why Members of Congress Including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar Give Me Hope