Washington (CNN) There's no politician -- not one -- who has risen further faster than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Two years ago at this time, she was bartending and waitressing in New York. Now the New York congresswoman is the face of the liberal left in the Democratic Party nationally.

When a politician -- or, really, anyone -- becomes a star overnight, there's an inevitable backlash that grows in opposition to the rise. And less than three months into her first term in Congress, the AOC backlash has begun in earnest.

The spark came last week when, in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez warned colleagues that if they continued to vote with Republicans on procedural motions in the chamber they could wind up "on a list" of incumbents ripe for a liberal primary challenge. (Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has found herself on the other side of AOC a few times during the early months of this Congress, was making the same case to members.)

Members -- especially those holding swing districts that look nothing like AOC's solidly Democratic Bronx/Queens seat -- took umbrage.

"There is, without a doubt, a myth that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez somehow represents the narrative of Democratic primary voters in the country," Alabama-based Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who polled for Barack Obama's 2012 re-election race, told The Washington Post over the weekend . "Almost half of them identify themselves as moderates or conservative."

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