Taking up once again his post-relevance career as a blunt—not to mention wholly dull—instrument, Weepin’ Joe Lieberman is at it again. The rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has occasioned him to write a newspaper column about the threat posed by Ocasio-Cortez to the Democratic party, to the Congress, and even to America, as the subhed informs us. And, of course, Lieberman published this attack of the vapors in the one place he was sure it would draw the attention of young liberal voters who might fall for Ocasio-Cortez’s seductive politics without noticing the peril that lurks within: the half-mad opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal.

It’s behind a paywall, and nobody should spend a dime to read Weepin’ Joe’s latest attack of the vapors, but Mediaite has some of the highlights, and one paragraph in particular sends the tabby howling from the potato sack.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t speak much about foreign policy during the primary, but when she did, it was from the DSA policy book—meaning support for socialist governments, even if they are dictatorial and corrupt (Venezuela), opposition to American leadership in the world, even to alleviate humanitarian disasters (Syria), and reflexive criticism of one of America’s great democratic allies (Israel).

There’s nothing like being advised on foreign policy by a guy who was wrong about it for 20 years and, were I Weepin’ Joe, I’d stay away from calling anyone’s position on the Israeli government's current actions “reflexive.” Be that as it may, the notion that Ocasio-Cortez will have the kind of influence against which Lieberman is pounding the drum as a first-term congresscritter from a district in New York City is laughable.

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To be sure, Ocasio-Cortez has made some rookie mistakes, as all new politicians will. (By the end of the first two months of Senator Professor Warren’s first campaign, some very smart people in Massachusetts wondered if she had the chops to bring down the political titan that was Scott Brown.) An interview at William F. Buckley’s old public-television pop stand, Firing Line, is said not to have gone well according to the National Review, America’s longest-running journal of white supremacy, and a publication that owes its survival to those big, sweet government checks ol’ Bill used to cash from PBS. Again, Firing Line as interpreted by National Review is not likely to sway a single voter in the 14th Congressional District of New York.

More concerning to me was her ham-handed involvement in a tight Democratic congressional primary in Kansas’s Third Congressional District, a decently flippable seat held by a Republican incumbent. She went there as part of a traveling Bernie Sanders road show aimed at electing what she and Sanders define as progressive candidates all over the country. They threw their support behind Brent Welder, whose basic qualification for their support seems to be that he was a Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2016.

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That’s fine for Sanders himself. Loyalty is a good thing. But it lined Ocasio-Cortez up against Sharice Davids, who is bidding to be the first Native American woman to be elected to Congress. (Apparently, Davids’ mortal sin is that she took money from a PAC linked to Emily’s List. This is, of course, nuts.) It is a terrible look for Ocasio-Cortez, who herself was in a similar position to Sharice Davids three months ago, and, also, what in the hell is she doing endorsing candidates in Kansas before she’s actually won anything in New York? This is a fight she didn’t need to make.

That said, Ocasio-Cortez is one of the best natural politicians to come along in a very long time. There is no doubt in my mind that her ceiling is unlimited and, if she’s already got Weepin’ Joe Lieberman in what my mother used to call “high-sterics,” that’s as big an accomplishment as any real Democrat can boast. She’s off to a very good start at scaring all the right people.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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