Ocasio-Cortez dishes out a reality check to the elites

Let Republicans, and her critics closer to home within the Democratic Party, snark about the Senate rejecting the freshman legislator's Green New Deal legislation. That's the sort of thing Washington cares about, and virtually no one else does. Besides, most first-year lawmakers are too busy trying to find the washroom to even think about proposing such bold legislation.

What the rest of America should think about is that, in Ocasio-Cortez, common people, everyday folks, blue-collar workers, and the millions of Americans who -- as a local Democratic Party official in Ohio told Vanity Fair in January 2017 -- "shower after work, not before" finally have a champion.

You slap Ocasio-Cortez with a glove, she comes back at you with a sledgehammer. You attempt to insult her -- like many Republicans try to do -- by bringing up the fact that, before she got elected to Congress, she worked as a bartender and waitress, and she'll make you look like the south end of a horse headed north.

In a country where, according to the National Restaurant Association, half of Americans say they worked in a restaurant at some point in life, those in the service industry deserve more respect.

When she is asked about how she filleted former Trump lawyer Michael

Cohen last month during his congressional testimony, Ocasio-Cortez credits her many years of working in the service industry. That experience, she says, made her good at reading people, improved her listening, honed her social skills and gave her a well-tuned "BS detector."

That last item must really come in handy in Congress, where most lawmakers aren't very good at detecting what they're so busy producing.

So let's not sell Ocasio-Cortez short. She serves up a lot in her current role, and it's just what the country ordered.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.