AOC, if you haven't heard, is a 29-year-old democratic socialist. Earlier this month, she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

And that concerns me. I say this because her platform is every socialist's dream. She wants Medicare to be free. She wants college education to be free. She wants to cancel student debt. She wants to hike the minimum wage to $15. And she wants to replace oil and gas with green energy by 2030.

Now, I realize these ideas might sound good to some people. But none of this would come free. It would require massive tax hikes and a lot more national debt. In short, she's advocating for policies that often destroy entire economies.

Yet, she's one of today's most popular political figures.

I wanted to see what Casey Research founder Doug Casey thinks of AOC and her policies. So I got him on the phone to discuss his thoughts for this week's Conversations With Casey…

Justin: Doug, AOC has been getting a lot of press lately. What are your thoughts on her? Specifically, what do you think of her platform and her idea for a Green New Deal?

Doug: Most likely she's the future of the Democratic Party – and of the U.S. Why? She's cute, vivacious, charming, different, outspoken, and has a plan to Make America Great Again. And she's shrewd. She realized she could win by ringing doorbells in her district, where voter turnout was very low, and about 70% are non-white. There was zero motivation for residents to turn out for the tired, corrupt, old hack of a white man she ran against.

She's certainly politically astute – but doesn't seem very intelligent. In fact, she's probably quite stupid. But let's define the word stupid, otherwise, it's just a meaningless pejorative – name-calling.

But in fact it doesn't seem like she has a very high IQ. I suspect that if she took a standardized IQ test, she'd be someplace in the low end of the normal range. But that's just conjecture on my part, entirely apart from the fact a high IQ doesn't necessarily correlate with success. Besides, there are many kinds of intelligence – athletic, aesthetic, emotional, situational…

A high IQ can actually be a disadvantage in getting elected. Remember it's a bell-shaped curve; the "average" person isn't terribly smart, compounded by the fact half the population has an IQ of less than 100. And they're suspicious of anyone who's more than, say, 15 points smarter than they are.