In a no-holds barred, post-election interview with the New York Times, leftwing New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticised the Democratic party for "incompetence" and has warned that if the Biden administration does not put progressives in top positions, the party would lose big in the 2022 midterm elections.

The interview is an indication that the internal moratorium in place while the Democrats worked to defeat Donald Trump is over, according to a report published by The Guardian. 

Ocasio-Cortez sharply rejected the notion pushed by some Democrats that progressive messaging around the Movement for Black Lives and the Green New Deal led to the party's loss of congressional seats in last week's election.

"There's a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee," she told New York Times, reports The Guardian.

"And there's a reason that when he didn't activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party – in and of itself – does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that," she said.

Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a longtime Democratic politician in 2018 and who won re-election in her Bronx district by more than 50 points, endorsed the Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders, over Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential primary.

Since then, Ocasio-Cortez and her closest allies in Congress – a four-woman group known as "the squad" who all won reelection last week – toed the party line while calling on grassroots activists to boost Biden and Democrats down-ticket.