A former Senator is cautioning voters against voting for socialist candidate for U.S. Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Ocasio-Cortez’s victory ‘seems likely to hurt Congress, America and the Democratic Party,” wrote Joe Lieberman, former Independent Senator from Connecticut in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

He urged Democrats to vote for incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley, whose name will still appear on the voting ballot in November though he lost the primary election.

“Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America, whose platform, like hers, is more Socialist than Democratic,” Lieberman wrote. “Her dreams of new federal spending would bankrupt the country or require very large tax increases, including on the working class.”

Lieberman cited Ocasio-Cortez’s “reflexive criticism of one of America’s great democratic allies (Israel),” as another reason to dump the 28-year-old candidate.

Ocasio-Cortez made a major gaff in an interview with PBS over the weekend.

Big League Politics reported:

“I also think that what people are starting to see in the occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “And that, to me, is just where I tend to come from on this issue.”

Kudos to the interviewer, who continued to push regarding Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the term “occupation of Palestine,” one rarely used outside of small circles of white liberals on college campuses.

“Oh, um… I think what I meant is, like, the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas, in places where, um, Palestinians are experiencing, um, difficulty and access to their housing and homes,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

BLP Passage Ends.

“If Democrats are to regain a majority, it will be by winning swing districts with sensible, mainstream candidates,” Lieberman wrote.

The political left seems to be over the honeymoon phase of Ocasio-Cortez’s meteoric rise, perhaps realizing that moving towards the center instead of the fringes is the better strategy. Even House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) distanced the party from Ocasio-Cortez.

“They made a choice in one district,” she said. “So let’s not get yourself carried away as an expert on demographics and the rest of that within the caucus or outside the caucus. We have an array of genders, generations, geography, and opinion in our caucus and we are very proud of that. The fact that in a very progressive district in New York it went more progressive—Joe Crowley is a progressive, but more to the left than Joe Crowley, is about that district. It is not to be viewed as something that stands for everything else.”

The Hill reported that several current Democrats in Congress are unhappy with Ocasio-Cortez for bashing Crowley on Twitter after he committed to endorsing her.

“She’s carrying on and she ain’t gonna make friends that way,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ). “Joe conceded, wished her well, said he would support her … so she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.” “She’s not asking my advice, [but] I would do it differently, rather than make enemies of people.”