Seven years before Zohran Mamdani upset Andrew Cuomo on the strength of his relentless messaging about the obscene cost of living in the Big Apple, another New York Democrat shocked the world by centering the very same issue in her own campaign.
“We’re having an affordability crisis in New York City,” a young Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told NPR in June 2018 after being asked to what she attributed her stunning defeat of then-House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley. “I think I was able to allow our community to really feel seen, and heard, and visited, and advocated for.”
After coasting to a general election victory that fall, Ocasio-Cortez arrived in Washington a plucky rebel, more a thorn in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) side than an asset to her. Crowley had served as a top lieutenant on Pelosi’s leadership team and a reliable team player. His successor viewed herself as a disruptive force with a mandate to rattle the cage of not just the Trump administration, but the Democratic Party establishment.
By July of her first year in office, the freshman and San Francisco stalwart were trading blows in the press. Pelosi mocked Ocasio-Cortez and her “Squad” for reveling in “their Twitter world,” and needled them for their lack of any real-world power. They were not, as Pelosi put it, “operational.” It was a deficiency that engendered her contempt, not compassion.
“They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got,” mused the speaker after the quartet defied the whip on an immigration bill.
The Bronx brawler punched right back, charging Pelosi with “the persistent singling out” of “newly elected women of color.” Things got so bad that Ocasio-Cortez lamented that the two lacked so much as “a relationship.”
Eight years later, Pelosi can hardly shower her old foe with enough love.
At the Munich Security Conference in February, she described Ocasio-Cortez as “a star,” “eloquent,” and “forceful.” She piled the praise this August, marveling that “She [Ocasio-Cortez] has been so operational! And just wonderful. I know it’s been a joy to work with her, and I think most members think that.”
The 180-degree turn isn’t just proof that the two women have reached a personal understanding — it’s evidence of the dramatic shift in the power dynamic between them. Once, Ocasio-Cortez was alien to her party. Now, having retained the superb instincts and undeniable political talent that propelled her into the national spotlight and matured into an operator that even Pelosi feels compelled to tip her cap to, she’s become indispensable.
So indispensable, in fact, that she may soon emerge as its unquestioned leader. In just a few short months, the 2028 presidential election cycle will be underway. If Ocasio-Cortez runs, she ought to be considered the odds-on favorite to succeed Donald Trump and be sworn in as the 48th president of the United States.
Her triumph would mark a turning point in American politics from which there would be no coming back. Economic degrowth, anti-constitutionalism, historical revisionism, identity-based intersectionality, and a foreign policy of atonement would go from items on the far-left fringe’s wish list to the official policies of the powerful executive branch. A Democratic Party to which Ocasio-Cortez had just delivered the White House would adopt her agenda as its own, and the immediate consequences of her actions in office would eventually be dwarfed by her long-term impact on the Overton window. Her brand of aggressive, campus-bred leftism is not one that can be put back in the bottle or retreated from — it’s the kind that demands piety, and begets Jacobins to purge Girondists. One of the two major American political parties will have fallen to the intoxicating, destructive ideology that the country spent the 20th century fighting.
But not everyone will see it that way. Many Democrats and have come to resent their stale, stultifying establishment, and indeed, the case for her candidacy begins with the sorry state of her would-be competition. Most polls point to the existence of a “Big Four” who would begin the Democratic primary as favorites: former Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), Biden administration alum Pete Buttigieg, and Ocasio-Cortez. Theoretically, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), as proven winners in swing states, might also be viable. But it’s difficult to imagine, in the year of our Lord 2028, Democratic primary voters consolidating behind a Jew with a moderate effect.
None of the others inspires much more confidence. Harris is a perennial candidate and a living testament to her party’s greatest failure. A weathervane unburdened by charm, eloquence, accomplishments, or cohesive worldview, Harris’s only assets would be her name ID and solid base of support among African-Americans. Those are necessary, but insufficient elements of a winning formula — she of all people knows that.
Newsom is another paper tiger, albeit of different stripes. A smooth operator and easy liar with a winning smile, he looks, sounds, and thinks like the kind of guy you’d cast to play the president. The trouble is, the only thing authentic about him is his ambition. Take the multiple personality disorder he’s demonstrated through the first half of the second Trump administration. Take his risible, backhanded declaration that he would not run should his old frenemy Harris do so. Take the pride he expresses over his dreadful performance at the helm of the Golden State. It’s the era of the rough-around-the-edges outsider, and the only thing slicker than this career politician’s hair is his act.
Buttigieg is by far the most compelling of the trio. In 2020, he made the jump from mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to presidential candidate look easy, finishing in a close second behind only Bernie Sanders in both the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. Just as smooth as Newsom, but with an earnestness — or the appearance of it — that the Californian can’t replicate, Buttigieg excels at town hall events and on TV. Unfortunately, as well as his McKinsey-esque presentations might go over with miseducated whites in the Midwest and Northeast, they land with a devastating thud elsewhere. A June Emerson College poll registered his base of support among black voters at zero percent. It’s a nonstarter for a Democratic presidential hopeful.
Which leaves only the woman of the hour. With the possible exception of Mamdani (who was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible to run), Ocasio-Cortez is by far the most impressive and natural political talent with a D next to her name. The skeptic might point out that her primary showdown with Crowley was the only competitive race she’s ever had to run. The enlightened would note that the years since her original triumph have seen her party remade in her image.
Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal was the butt of every joke until Joe Biden, the “moderate” victor of the 2020 primary, championed something approximating it in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act. Her advocacy of a single-payer healthcare system made her a radical in 2018 — now it makes her the median Democrat. Her reflexive hostility to Israel made her an outlier in a party that had only recently made Chuck Schumer (D-NY) its leader in the Senate. Now, Schumer can only pray she opts for a try at the Oval Office instead of his. Otherwise, all indications are that he would meet the same fate that almost every pro-Israel liberal who’s had to face down a Free Palestine protester over the last three years.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) faced headwinds in the form of mass establishment mobilization against him in 2016 and then again in 2020 because he was seen as an old, slovenly gadfly wildly out of step with the electorate. Ocasio-Cortez is an uber-presentable 36-year-old who will have been a national figure for a decade AND grew up alongside much of the electorate. To the extent there still is a Democratic establishment, it looks a lot like her. According to a Yale University poll conducted last year, she boasts the highest net favorability rating among prospective 2028 candidates.
If the string of victories for the far-left in Democratic primaries this cycle, from Maine to Michigan and New York to Florida have taught us anything, it’s that this time, there will be no cavalry arriving to save the pseudo-socialists from a proud one — just ask Janet Mills, Haley Stevens, Dan Goldman, and Alexander Vindman how waiting for the fever to break worked out for them.
Ocasio-Cortez is also far savvier than her mentor from Vermont. The colors she flies on the campaign trail are just as bold as Sanders’s, but strategically retracted in disadvantageous moments.
Take the staggering rise and precipitous fall of Graham Platner, the bigoted, silver spoon-fed misogynist that Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and every other pick-me progressive across the country pushed their chips behind. It was a degrading rollercoaster that, despite the apparent compatibility of their worldviews, Ocasio-Cortez never jumped aboard, even after Platner coasted to an easy, now-defunct victory in June’s Maine Democratic Senate primary. It seemed strange at the time. Upon further review, it stands as still more evidence of her political wisdom.
She demonstrated similarly good judgment during a springtime appearance at the University of Chicago when she issued an impromptu rebuke of former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the wild-eyed bigot who’s been championed by a number of other Democrats for her open Jew-baiting.
“I personally do not trust someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a proven bigot and antisemite, on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis. I don’t!” declared the congresswoman. “I don’t think that it benefits our movement, in that instance, to align the Left with white nationalists. I don’t think it serves us.”
Take the moral high road, check. Heighten the contrasts between yourself and more desperate competitors, check. Don’t give an inch on the underlying issue, check. It was a master class and a demonstration of her growing self-confidence. When you’re the real thing, you don’t have to bend over backward trying to prove it.
Ocasio-Cortez’s strengths wouldn’t be confined to the primary, either. To be sure, many of her ideas remain out of step with the median voter. But that’ll hardly be an insurmountable hurdle come 2028 because, for one thing, the median voter isn’t especially ideological and sways with the wind. If the gathering midterm storm creeping over the horizon fulfills its promise, and Democrats sweep into office, it will be only a taste of things to come. Even popular two-term presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have helplessly watched as fatigue with their tenures torpedoed their preferred successors. Trump has never enjoyed an exceptionally broad base of support, and has never been more unpopular than he is now. Just how tired will his act be two years from now? And how great a price will the Republican nominee for president pay for Americans’ exhaustion with it?
The congresswoman is uniquely equipped to capitalize on this likely state of affairs. Her campaign and its radicalism may disqualify her with a certain kind of persuadable voter, but it will also draw more young people to the polls than ever before. The rock star-like national tour she took with Sanders last year was a well-attended spectacle. Her campaign will be an Elvis-like phenomenon that the media will amplify and fawn over, and her domination of social media will be complete. She keeps her name in the news and on TikTok feeds through a combination of commentary on pseudo-political issues and glimpses into her personal life, which have opened a new frontier for retail politicking in the digital age. Hers was the first and is to date the only answer to Trump’s news cycle supremacy that isn’t completely contrived.
And even though Ocasio-Cortez is an across-the-board Everything Leftist who would govern like a cross between Ms. Rachel and Rachel Dolezal, she’s smart and patient enough to read a room, then promise its inhabitants what they most desire. The deep and widespread dissatisfaction with today’s Trump administration is largely attributable to the same thing that first propelled her into office: a cost-of-living crisis. Her campaign for the Democratic nomination nationally will look much like her campaign for New York’s 14th Congressional District and put economic populism first.
Moreover, her neo-isolationist, almost explicitly anti-American foreign policy views will be couched in the language of restraint and good judgment in the wake of the unpopular Iran war. Already, her pivot to the center could be seen in her admission that “Woke 1 was crazy,” which redounds to her benefit because she already has sufficient progressive cred. Such condemnations will land quite a bit differently out of Rahm Emanuel’s mouth.
The stars have all aligned for Ocasio-Cortez, a fact she has noted herself.
CENTRIST DEMOCRATS SHUN AOC, PUTTING 2028 PRESIDENTIAL RUN IN DOUBT
“There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot,” she told the New York Times recently. “And you don’t — and just in life in general — life doesn’t wait for you to be ready for things. Sometimes life just makes things ready for you.”
Her instincts are sharper than ever. All that’s left to find out is whether she’ll act on them.
Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) is an editor at Mediaite.