The Left's AOC Question

It's the most open race in a generation. She's the second-biggest socialist politician in a century. Should the American left even want her to run at all?

Everyone on the left had a personal low moment after the 2024 election. For me, it was when I seriously convinced myself that Angelina Jolie 2028 was something worth looking into and posted about it publicly. For you, it might have just been a simple crisis of faith that (hopefully) didn’t lead you to spiral nearly as much as I did. Regardless, it wasn’t a good time. After watching every major left-wing leader in America put everything on the line for a historically unpopular administration, their entire project appeared finished, stuck at the bottom of the ocean with Bidenism forever. But through a combination of luck, savvy, and a few shameless pivots, the Bernie wing of the party managed to re-establish itself as the official anti-establishment opposition in the span of only a few weeks after the race and has seen unprecedented success in the year+ since.

For whatever it is worth and regardless of whether or not it is truly earned, the American left currently enjoys a certain je ne sais quoi: that same intangible combination of credibility, reformist appeal, and outsidery-ness that has been the secret sauce of every modern game-changing campaign from Reagan to Obama to Trump. They are fresh while everyone else is tired, standing alone as the last remaining major faction of the System of 2016 that hasn’t already had its moment in the sun and squandered it. And to top it all off, they have an ace up their sleeve: their prospective candidate for the 2028 election. In a race otherwise defined by unexciting mediocrities with uncertain profiles, she is a bona fide star who stands as the clear successor of Bernie Sanders himself. In a field where attention will be the most valuable commodity of them all, she has proven herself capable of nominating entire news cycles with as little as a word. She even stood out among her ideological compatriots as a relatively respectable electoral performer even before she went through her recent rebrand that has put her substantially closer to public opinion.

Her name is Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and there is no more divisive debate on the left than the question of if she should run for president at all.

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The defining quality of this debate—the thing that makes it so deeply contentious and keeps it from ever ending—is that it’s maddeningly easy for both sides of it to come to very confident and entirely definitive answers. One can easily use the facts listed above to say that her running is an absolute no-brainer, just as they can also put together a similarly towering list of facts that make the very idea of running her seem insane. She is both the politician of the future and the face of a dead political era. She is both an international celebrity and a regional figure who struggles to create positive press. Bernie Sanders himself has all but declared her to be his heir, but she has so far been incapable of replicating the most important parts of his appeal. Even the electoral breakthroughs by her allies that have made the left at large more credible than ever have only made her personal approach look more dubious. Every pro you can name has a closely related con that negates it, and vice versa. What we are left with is the political equivalent of a choose-your-own-adventure book, where any and all conclusions one might come to are available to you depending on what you want to see.

Yet there is one clear answer here. All we have to do is to find it. So, if you’ll join me, I’d like to invite you on a journey. With open minds, we will treat this question with the seriousness that it deserves, examining every aspect of both the cases for and against an AOC run. What do we make of her celebrity? Is her fame enough to preclude us from considering anyone else? How indecisive is she, actually, and what does this trait say about her as a potential candidate and president? And above all else, what is the actual state of the left heading into the next election? Is it weak enough to make an AOC run a luxury it cannot afford, or is it strong enough that it can seriously consider backing someone even more hardline than she is?

Question #1: Can She Win the Primary?

Before we get into the specifics about AOC and her qualities as a prospective candidate, we must first establish one thing: whether or not she is actually a viable contender for the 2028 nomination at all. This is something that I’ve seen nearly everyone engaged in this debate take for granted, regardless of what their actual side may be. Both her proponents and her opponents on the left assume that she will be a top-tier contender for the nomination capable of easily competing at a high level, only really disagreeing on whether or not her doing so would be a good or bad thing. Yet there is one major problem with this assumption: her actual strength in actual polling.

racetothewh.com’s 2028 Democratic Primary polling averages

To state the obvious: this isn’t good. While presidential history might be full of candidates who came from humble beginnings before storming to the White House, these cases aren’t exactly common, especially when the candidate in question was already well known heading into the race. As stated before, AOC is already one of the most famous people in the world; it’s utterly impossible for her issue to just be one of name recognition. It’s also not one of mistaken identity, either. Democratic voters absolutely adore AOC, giving her higher net favorability ratings than even Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom in some polls. They are just very reluctant to say that they think that she should be the party’s nominee. Such a poisonously mixed verdict, if truly cemented, could render her bid completely dead on arrival: a mile away from real viability but with no room to improve.

So, where do things truly stand for Representative Ocasio-Cortez? Is she stuck in a political no man’s land, popular enough to preclude any other left campaign from getting off the ground but not trusted enough to truly contend? It’s a tough question, but there is an answer—and it starts with a look at the career of LeBron James.