ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ stands five feet and four—almost five—inches tall. In meetings, she takes notes in a large, canary-yellow Mole­skine notebook. She is a lefty, by which I mean a left-handed person, but since she’s running as a Democratic Socialist in New York’s Fourteenth District, the other meaning is also correct. On her wrist she wears a thin hair band, using it to pull her hair back the way another politician might roll up shirtsleeves (after TV appearances, on long car rides, talking to constituents). Her round glasses and elevated, slightly hunched shoulders give her the look of someone vying to win not a congressional seat, having already defeated a 20-year incumbent, but a school science fair—which, by the way, she also won back in high school.

I first meet Ocasio-Cortez at The Daily Show, on Eleventh Avenue, at that cross-section of New York where horses-and-buggies coexist with luxury-car dealerships. When Trevor Noah drops by Ocasio-Cortez’s greenroom, he seems like the starstruck one, trying on various forms of praise. “Congratulations on your journey!” he says, shaking her hand. “Congratulations on being the most hated person on the right!”

A month earlier, the 28-year-old former Bernie Sanders organizer delivered the biggest upset of the 2018 midterms when she unseated Democrat Joe Crowley, rattling the political order with a progressive platform that calls for a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, and the abolishment of ICE. Meghan McCain suffered a meltdown on The View, warning against Ocasio-Cortez’s “dangerous” policies. Ron DeSantis, a Florida Republican, described her as “this girl . . . whatever she is.” Ocasio­-Cortez has gotten so used to the attacks that she’s developed a bit imitating her critics. “We’re not scared of you,” she likes to say in a nasal, Steve Urkel voice. “We’re laughing at you!”

Noah jokes that the anchors over at Fox News have formed a crush on her. “Jesse Watters was like, ‘She’s a star, and she’s attractive, and she’s tall, and she’s good-looking, and she’s a Socialist, and she’s beautiful. . . .’ I was like, ‘Are you still talking about policy?’ ”

Backstage Ocasio-Cortez reviews notes in her yellow Moleskine and sips from a can of lemon LaCroix. As Noah introduces her, she performs her signature audience greeting—both arms out, with a little jazz-hands wave. Come November, she’s almost certain to become the youngest woman in Congress. By now, Noah has refined his welcome. “Congratulations on being both the dream of half the country and a nightmare of another half!”