Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a theory about why Republicans love, love, love to hate her

The night she defeated 10-term Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) became an instant celebrity. "At first, it was really, really, really hard," she told Vanity Fair. "I felt like I was being physically ripped apart in those first two to three months." She started out as a star among young progressives, "but now, she's one of the most visible Democrats in the country, along with Nancy Pelosi," Vanity Fair's Abigail Tracy writes, "and she's eclipsing Pelosi, and even Hillary Clinton, as a Republican target."

Ocasio-Cortez considers the right's obsession with her a sign of her strength, she told Tracy in her unassuming Bronx apartment, and she doesn't expect it to abate anytime soon. "The whole goal is to dehumanize," Ocasio-Cortez said. Still, "it can be very empowering to say, 'Make fun of me. Do it. Draw the little insults on my face .... Do what you're gonna do. Act more and more childish. Just do it, because you're not gonna stop, you're just not gonna stop this movement.'"

And it's not just her ideology and star power conservatives are fixated on, Ocasio-Cortez suggested. "I think they saw a woman of color — Latina, no less — that came from a working-class and poor background, that ascended to federal office, and they said: 'We cannot allow this to have credibility, because if people saw that she did it, then maybe others will come — and we cannot let other people like her run for office. We need to make an example out of her.'"

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Ocasio-Cortez said she feels the weight of Republicans waiting eagerly for her to slip up, but she also faces a larger, bipartisan problem. "It's really hard to communicate that I'm just a normal person doing her best," she told Tracy. "I'm not a superhero. I'm not a villain. I'm just a person that's trying." Read the entire interview at Vanity Fair.