What Should AOC Do?
The 2026 midterms were a historic blue wave, and right now, one week later, the progressive left is mostly united with the broader Democratic Party coalition. Everyone is riding the high of the rebuke to Trump’s MAGA movement. But now that this year’s elections are over, attention will soon shift to the 2028 election cycle, and the intra-party fights within the anti-Trump coalition. And before that can really begin, there is one huge question looming over the electoral left: What should Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez do?
Now, on a personal level, I think AOC should do whatever she wants. Running for any high-profile public office seems like a miserable experience to me, and so I would never try to talk anyone into it. In the specific case of AOC, there is obviously intense speculation about her personal life, and how that might affect her decision — and obviously that’s between her and her loved ones.
But this question has become something much bigger than Ocasio-Cortez herself. It relates to larger issues about how socialists and the progressive left should be thinking about the 2028 campaign. And from a purely strategic point of view, I think the question is a fascinating one. Not only that, but I think this is a rare case in politics where there is a clear Right Answer.
There are three obvious possible paths for AOC: 1) she could run for the US Senate; 2) she could run for president; 3) she could stand pat and simply run for her current House seat again, biding her time for the future. There does not seem to be a clear consensus among the left over these options, and even AOC herself seemed to be agonizing over the choice, recently saying that she wanted to see the results of the midterms to make any firm commitments.
Of course, she might have just been saying that to deflect questions about her future onto more pressing political concerns. But there seems to be genuine ambivalence, not just with her but with prominent voices throughout the left, over how AOC can best advance her political project in 2028. There are people who genuinely believe in all three options.
Nevertheless, the ambivalence is profoundly misplaced, and reflects a deep misunderstanding of how political power works in this country at this moment. The best thing Ocasio-Cortez can do for the left is clearly Option #2: to run for president.
To illustrate why, let’s play out each of the three hypothetical scenarios, and tease out what the risks and rewards of each decision would be.
1) What if AOC Runs for Senate?
The case for AOC running for Senate is as follows: Chuck Schumer is up for re-election in 2028. As the leader of Senate Democrats for more than a decade now, Schumer has gotten less and less popular. There is already opposition within the party to making him Senate Majority Leader next year. He will also be running for his sixth six-year term and turning 78-years-old at a time when voters are increasingly wary of the establishment gerontocracy.
This makes Schumer vulnerable to a primary challenge, and AOC is well-positioned to take that on. She’s young and popular in New York state: Early head-to-head polls already have her ahead of Schumer in a potential primary. She’s also a proven fundraiser who can compete with Schumer’s deep war chest. And if AOC defeats Schumer, it will be a major victory for her. Not only will she have claimed the scalp of one of the powerful Democrats in DC, but she will have proven that she has appeal beyond her deeply blue Congressional seat in New York City.
Right now, AOC skeptics point out that her appeal is limited to partisan Democrats, and that she’s never had to win over Republicans or independent voters, as she would if she ran for the White House. But if she runs a statewide race, that will prove her electoral bona fides as an important stepping-stone to a future presidential run.
And not only would such a run be good for AOC personally, but it would benefit the left. Schumer is an obstacle to most progressive goals, most obviously on Israel/Palestine and opposition to the war in Iran, but also even domestic issues like Medicare for All.
By removing him from leadership — and even from the Senate entirely — AOC would do more to advance progressive goals than she would accomplish with some unlikely attempt to win the presidency.
But this case is deeply flawed.
For one, it dramatically underestimates how taxing it would be to defeat Chuck Schumer, and how much it would strain New York progressives. Consider how such a campaign would play out, if we assume Schumer opts to mount a strong defense: If AOC decides to primary Schumer, then right away she has to raise a ton of money. This is usually dismissed as no problem for AOC, who has proved to be one of the best fundraisers in DC. She raised over $38 million over the course of this two-year election cycle, and has over $17.5 million in cash right now.
If she were to run against Schumer, though, she will likely need much, much more than that. Schumer raised over $37 million in his last election, in 2022 — and that was when he faced no primary challenger and faced only token Republican opposition in the general election. As Senate Majority Leader, Schumer will likely be able to raise vast sums from corporate donors if he felt he needed to defend his seat; when Mitch McConnell faced a sturdy challenger in 2020, he spent over $70 million to defend his seat. And he wasn’t buying TV ads in the most expensive media market in the country…
So this race would probably become the most expensive Senate campaign in history, and AOC would have to raise more money than she’s ever raised, even in her impressive fundraising history. She could probably do it! She has an expansive base of donors who love her and would be keen to defeat Schumer. But this would mean she couldn’t use her fundraising to support other leftist allies, as she’s done so far in her career. Instead of sending money to progressives around the country, as she did this cycle, the bulk of small-dollar donations in the 2028 primary cycle would go towards this one race. It would deplete leftist funds, and who knows how many races around the country would get neglected as a result.
Next, AOC would have to get endorsements. Some will be easy: Zohran Mamdani would surely endorse her, as would Bernie Sanders and the Squad and Jamaal Bowman. Those people love AOC and dislike Schumer. Then there are the establishment-friendly moderates who would quickly defend Schumer, like Senator Gillibrand or Governor Hochul or House Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
But there are a lot of people in the middle. New York has a lot of progressives who like AOC, but will be wary of alienating the Democratic leader in the Senate — people like Tish James or Brad Lander or Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Then there are people who are not exactly ideologically aligned with AOC, but have good working relationships with her: Pat Ryan, Carl Heastie, Ritchie Torres, etc. There are also a ton of unions and organizations that routinely work with both Schumer and AOC, and would be put in the awkward position of having to alienate one of them. AOC could likely count on the support of the more progressive orgs, like NYSNA or WFP, but a lot of these groups are very transactional, and are not going to want to risk pissing off the Senate Majority Leader. Whatever these politicians and groups end up doing, it will be a strain on the relationships Ocasio-Cortez has developed with them.
Next, she will have to deal with the inevitable attacks that come from the Schumer campaign. We can probably guess what these will look like: Team Schumer is likely going to spend tens of millions of dollars on ads in the New York suburbs accusing her of anti-semitism and wanting to defund the police. These attacks probably won’t be decisive, but they will damage her standing with the broader electorate. And when AOC inevitably tries to defend herself from these attacks, groups on the left will denounce her for insufficient support of Palestine and police reform. In other words, a Senate primary is likely to be an ugly, expensive fight that divides AOC’s supporters, not one that increases her appeal.
And if Team Ocasio-Cortez successfully navigated all these hurdles — if she raised all the money she needed and pocketed key endorsements and responded to all the negative ads — and was still polling competitively with Schumer… then Schumer would probably just quit. He knows how to read polling, and if things look bad for him in, say January of 2028, he could just save face by announcing his retirement instead of ending his career with an embarrassing primary loss.
At which point any potential victory for AOC becomes a lot less impressive. No longer would she be defeating a stalwart of New York politics. Now she would likely face a fractured primary against any number of young New York politicians claiming to be fresh, bold progressives. People like Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres and Tish James and Adrienne Adams would consider running for the seat. Maybe Andrew Cuomo decides to humiliate himself again. AOC would probably still be the favorite in such a race, given her high name-recognition and popularity with New Yorkers. But it wouldn’t be proof of her electability; it would just look like the most famous candidate winning a fractured primary.
To be clear, I think she WOULD probably win a Senate primary. And she could probably easily win a general election in New York. But even assuming she DID win, what would her reward be? Now she’s in the Senate… big whoop. It’s not like heavyweight fighting — defeating the Senate Democratic Leader would not automatically make her Senate Leader. Most likely, the Senate Dems would elevate some other moderate who’s already in Senate leadership: Mark Warner or Patty Murray or Cory Booker would become Majority Leader. Would this be a meaningful victory for the left? Not at all.
If it IS true that Chuck Schumer is some major personal obstacle for the left, then there are many other ways to defeat him. For one, progressives in the Senate could try to mount a challenge to him becoming Senate Majority Leader (something that is already kind of underway). But there are also lots of ambitious politicians in New York who could mount credible primary bids against Schumer. It would be difficult for them, for the same reasons it would be difficult for AOC, but they could all mount similar It’s-Time-for-a-Change campaigns against an aging incumbent increasingly out of touch with his base. In other words, if the goal is simply to defeat Schumer, then you don’t actually NEED someone as prominent as Ocasio-Cortez to do that.
Would elevating AOC to the Senate, as opposed to staying in the House, offer any meaningful advantages to the left at all? Not really. She would once again be a lonely leftist is a sea of milquetoast moderates, unable to meaningfully impact legislation. If anything, her power would be diminished as she loses whatever seniority she has accrued over a decade in the House. Also, because the Senate is inherently more conservative than the House, AOC would have less ability to tinker around the edges. When Bernie Sanders went from the House to the Senate, his “productivity” — at least measured in legislative terms — went way down. He went from the “amendment king” to “only passed three bills.” His increased political influence only really came from the expanded reach he attained during his presidential runs.
And would being in the Senate expand AOC’s reach to voters? Of course not. AOC already has one of the largest followings of any elected official in the country, and it has nothing to do with the size of the district she represents. It comes from her charisma and media savvy and the fame she accrued by upsetting Joe Crowley in 2018. The fact that TV channels will now put “Sen.” instead of “Rep.” in front of her name will barely even register with most of her fans.
Finally, not a single AOC skeptic will be convinced of her electability bona fides if she runs for Senate. After all, New York’s Senate seats are ALSO safely blue — no Republican Senator has been elected from New York since Al D’Amato in 1992. Is any voter concerned about the electability of a socialist Latina from Queens really going to be mollified if she has to campaign in Syracuse a few times? Will her ability to connect with swing voters in Georgia be proved by having to talk to suburbanites in Nassau County?
In fact, she faces a huge risk by running for Senate in 2028: If she runs slightly behind the Democratic presidential nominee on the ballot that year — and there’s a good chance she would in the aftermath of an ugly primary — then she will labelled a dreaded “electoral underperformer,” scaring pundits and potential donors away from a future presidential run.
In other words, there is little or no upside in a potential Senate run for AOC, and there are TONS of potential risks. It will cost an insane amount of money and put a ton of strain on progressive coalitions in New York, without meaningfully advancing any progressive causes.
On the other hand…
2) What if AOC runs for President?
The irony — and the source of a lot of the confusion about this topic — is that running for president comes with almost none of the risks that a Senate campaign comes with. Intuitively, you would think it should be harder to run for President than to run for Senate. But you would be wrong.
For one, if AOC runs for president, she will not face any entrenched incumbent. In fact, she would be entering the most open presidential primary since at least 2008. Unlike most primary cycles, Democrats have no incumbent President or Vice President, and the most recent runner up, Bernie Sanders, will be 87 years old and will certainly not run again. (In fact, he would probably endorse AOC as soon as she launched her campaign.) Even the party’s most recent Vice President, Kamala Harris, has already run for president twice, and is seen by many in the party as a damaged, imperfect candidate.
This means Democrats enter 2028 with no obvious frontrunner. This is highly unusual — even in 2008, there was Hillary Clinton. But now there is such a vacuum in the Democratic party, that Ocasio-Cortez is already near the top of early presidential polls — a much better position than any fresh progressive candidate has faced in recent memory.
All this means that AOC would alienate very few people by running for president. Almost all the progressives who would support AOC in a Senate race would ALSO endorse her in a presidential run: Mayor Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, the Squad, Abdul El-Sayed, etc. But she could also probably count on a lot of the support of the New York left-liberal establishment, who wouldn’t have to risk alienating Schumer: People like Brad Lander and Tish James and Jumaane Williams. Plus, national progressive figures like Keith Ellison and Elizabeth Warren, plus progressive organizations and unions, could all endorse her without pissing off a powerful figure in the Democratic party.
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And she would actually enter a presidential race in a much better fundraising situation than she would have for a Senate run. There’s a good chance she would enter a presidential campaign as a fundraising leader: The amount AOC raised for the 2026 cycle — when she didn’t even face a competitive race — is nearly what Kamala Harris raised for her 2020 primary campaign. And running for president would activate a donor base she wouldn’t have in a Senate campaign. There are obviously a number of AOC fans who will donate to her regardless of what her next move is. But there are also a lot of progressives in, say, Ohio who aren’t going to put their money into a New York senate race because they have their own competitive local races. And there are many voters around the country who only pay attention to presidential politics, and would be much more likely to donate to a presidential campaign than a Senate primary.
But more importantly, fundraising would actually become less important in a national race because of her ability to count on earned media. If Ocasio-Cortez announces a run for president, she will immediately become one of the most coveted candidates for interviews on TV or prominent podcasts. And those will be valuable to her because she will be running a national race. Instead of having to target her message exclusively to New York Democrats, which mostly means airing TV ads in a super expensive media market, she can try to reach every voter, including voters who haven’t even registered yet. Her social media following would be exponentially more valuable in a presidential race for the same reason.
And as a presidential candidate, AOC could actually run a far more substantive campaign than she can if she runs for Senate. Presidents actually set policy, so presidential campaigns are much more policy-driven than races down ballot. They are arguably too policy-driven (think of how much of the 2020 primary was spent debating Byzantine details of health care financing that immediately became irrelevant once Biden won); but for a progressive trying to make the case for progressive ideas, this is obviously an advantage. Ocasio-Cortez could actually talk in detail about her plans for a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and immigration reform, because as president she could do far more to advance these policies than she could as a Senator.
Think of what you want Ocasio-Cortez to be doing in January of 2028: Do you want her to be in Westchester, explaining to suburban Democrats why Liking a tweet from Hasan Piker isn’t actually antisemitic? Or do you want her to be talking to Black voters in South Carolina and Hispanic voters in Nevada, making a positive case for Medicare for All?
Finally, if we look beyond the primary, 2028 is likely to be a strong year for Democrats in the general election. This is obviously a hard thing to predict two years in advance but what we do know is not good for Republicans. Donald Trump’s approval rating is lower than it has ever been before, and lame-duck presidents generally do not suddenly get more popular. Trump himself will not be on the ballot in 2028, and the Republican Party has struggled to duplicate his performance with white voters when he’s not on the ballot. Nevertheless, the next GOP nominee will almost certainly be someone closely tied to his administration, whether that is JD Vance or Marco Rubio or Donald Trump Jr., which will make it hard to distance the party from Trump’s personal unpopularity.
The closest equivalent is the 2008 general election — when an unpopular lame-duck Republican who was first elected by losing the popular vote dragged his party down with a prolonged war in the Middle East against a trailblazing Democratic nominee who made some in the party nervous about vague “electability” concerns — and that year Barack Obama had the largest share of the popular vote of any presidential candidate since 1988. In other words, Democrats have good reason to be confident going into the 2028 general election, so whoever they nominate has a good chance of being president.
As someone who believes candidate quality hardly matters for presidential elections, it’s important for a leftist candidate to run when the fundamentals of the race are favorable, instead of trying to modestly boost your resume with a vanity Senate run first. But even if you DO worry about candidate quality in a general election, and believe that a progressive candidate would have a harder time defeating a Republican, then that is all the MORE reason to run in a favorable year, when a candidate who underperforms the fundamentals can still win. Indeed, a progressive may never have a better chance to win the general election than in 2028.
Of course, none of this guarantees that Ocasio-Cortez would win. Plenty of campaigns launched to great fanfare have fallen flat with the primary electorates. The general election circumstances may change, or AOC may face unforeseen obstacles. She will certainly face all kinds of hurdles related to her age, race, gender, and ideology. There are also serious questions about Ocasio-Cortez’s skill as a candidate; over the last few years, she has shied away from hostile media in a way that suggests a lack of confidence in her ability to win over the unconverted.
So there are plenty of reasons that AOC might lose. But that’s politics — sometimes you lose. There are no guarantees and it’s nearly impossible to predict. But Ocasio-Cortez would enter the 2028 presidential race in a stronger starting position than basically any progressive candidate in modern memory. And if Ocasio-Cortez DOES win then she actually gets to be president!
Unlike a Senate seat, winning the White House would actually increase AOC’s role in governance. There would certainly be limits — a hostile Supreme Court, an unfriendly Congress, all the baroque checks on Presidential authority that only seem to apply when Democrats are in control, etc. — but she could obviously accomplish a lot as President. Even unproductive presidencies are more consequential than most Senate careers. So while it might be harder for AOC to win the presidency than a Senate seat, the payoff is signifanctly higher.
The mistake that a lot of people seem to make is to assume that, because the reward is so high, the risks of a presidential run must be proportionally high. But they are not at all. The risks are actually much higher in a Senate run: If AOC runs for Senate and loses, that could be the end of her political career. Certainly it would prevent her from credibly running for higher office again for several years. Indeed, her electoral credibility could be hurt even if she WINS a Senate seat, if she somehow underperforms expectations.
On the other hand, there is almost no risk at all to running for president and losing. Running for president and losing is one of the best things that can happen to your political career!
- Before 2024, Vivek Ramaswamy was one of a thousand conservative talking heads on cable news. Then he ran for president and lost — and he got to run DOGE and became his party’s gubernatorial nominee in Ohio.
- Before 2020, Pete Buttigieg was the mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana. Then he ran for president and lost — and he got to become a Cabinet Secretary and is now a leading candidate for the 2028 presidential nomination.
- Before 2016, Bernie Sanders had spent a quarter century as the lone socialist in Congress, often taking brave and important positions to little fanfare. Then he ran for president and lost — and inspired a groundswell of democratic socialism that vaunted his policies into the mainstream and got himself a leadership position in the Senate.
We could keep going. There is a long list of people whose careers were made by failed presidential campaigns. Of course, these were people who EXCEEDED expectations in their presidential runs. But what if AOC flops? What if she runs a terrible campaign that falls far short of expectations? Surely that would ruin her career, right?
Well, not really. Kamala Harris flopped in 2020… and she became Vice President, and then the 2024 Democratic nominee. Marco Rubio flopped in 2016… and he’s now Secretary of State and a leading GOP candidate for 2028. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both flopped in 2008, and they each got prominent roles in the Obama Administration and became future party nominees.
In other words, even a failed presidential campaign is good for your career. Cabinet positions and running mates and future nominees are all frequently pulled from the bin of failed presidential campaigns, regardless of how well the candidates did. All of these futures would be better for AOC and the left than a Senate seat. Indeed, if Ocasio-Cortez runs for president and loses, she could then run for Senate anyway if she really wanted to — either in 2028, if her primary campaign ends soon enough, or later if not. But she can’t do it in the other order.
This is the consideration that seems misunderstood: The lack of any real downside to an AOC presidential run — and the upside to even a FAILED run — is the key strategic consideration here. It is what points to Option 2 over Option 1 and exposes the downside of Option 3….
3) What if AOC just stays where she is?
Of course, for the many people with no strong feelings about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the default expectation is not that she will run for any higher office in 2028. After all, she’s quite young. She’ll be just 39 on Election Day 2028, which would make her the youngest person to be elected president by four years. So what’s the hurry? Why not wait until she has more experience?
Well, for one, experience is overrated: By 2028, AOC will have had more experience in elected office than Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan all had when they were elected president.* She has more time in Congress than Barack Obama had when he ran, or Kamala Harris when she ran. There’s no reason her level of experience should be any more disqualifying than it was for all those candidates. Going straight from the House of Representatives to the White House is unusual — the only person who has ever done it was James Garfield in 1880 — but that is because most House members are unknown outside of their own district; AOC is obviously already a household name, and will not become any more prominent by being in the Senate.
*Of course, Bush/Carter/Reagan all served as Governors, and AOC has no executive experience. It is a little odd that nobody ever seems to suggest that Ocasio-Cortez run for GOVERNOR as a stepping-stone to the presidency. There IS actually a plausible case for this, far more than the AOC-for-Senate case. Very few Senators have ever been elected president (just three, in fact), but many more Governors have. AOC could enact substantial progressive policies as Governor, and holding an executive office could mollify the concerns of some people who question her pragmatism or governing ability, and therefore boost her as a presidential candidate. But AOC has shown little interest in local politics and basically no interest at all in Albany, so it seems highly unlikely she would ever do this.
Secondly, and relatedly, there is nothing to be gained from patience. Some people suggest that Ocasio-Cortez can wield more influence by gradually accruing power and seniority in the House. This idea comes from an outdated picture of how government works, based on hagiographies of powerful committee leaders and apocryphal stories of horse-trading legislators. But that’s not how DC functions anymore.
In our age of extreme polarization and partisan gridlock, very little gets done through the traditional committee process. Instead, legislation is negotiated between the White House and Congressional leadership, and then passes mostly through party-line votes. Individual representatives can push for minor tweaks or changes, but the actual priorities and agenda are set by the presidential administration, and the tweaks and changes are subservient to the byzantine rules of the legislative process.
For example, in 2021 Rep. Tom Suozzi led a push to include a full repeal of the SALT deduction cap in Biden’s stimulus plan. He didn’t get it, but struck a deal to raise the cap substantially for ten years, then took a victory lap touting his deal as an example of legislative compromise… only for that deal to get stripped out of the Senate version and pass without addressing SALT at all. The idea that AOC can better push for the kind of legislation she wants through this kind of baroque legislative maneuvering as opposed to running a national campaign on those priorities, is absurd. If it didn’t work for repealing the SALT cap, it’s not going to get Medicare for All.
This will be true regardless of how long she stays in the House, so there is nothing to really be gained by waiting. She is already as famous as any House member is likely to be, and the experience she stands to gain by staying there is unlikely to advance her or her movement’s political power. Few people pay attention to the machinations of the House of Representatives, and even fewer really understand them, so it’s not like she is burnishing her reputation for voters. All she does by waiting is give Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media more time to define her as horribly outside the mainstream.
On the other hand, a presidential campaign would allow her to define herself to voters. And even if she loses, it could do more to advance her career than patiently waiting in the House will.
Conclusion
To reiterate my initial point: While launching a presidential campaign is obviously of serious political importance, it’s also an intensely personal decision, and Ocasio-Cortez might have any number of personal reasons to run or not run for president in 2028. I am not trying to give anyone advice. But the biggest reason for AOC to run has nothing to do with her specifically. It’s about what is best for socialism as a whole, and I think those points are important to understand regardless of whatever she decides to do.
The last two decades have illustrated quite clearly that the way to accrue political power in this country is through national campaigns, and that means running for president. If the socialist left wants to achieve real power in this country, it has to run presidential campaigns, and continue running them every cycle, regardless of whether you have the perfect candidate or the right timing.
People don’t like this. They much prefer a world where political power is accrued slowly and deliberately. One where political movements have to be methodical and strategic about how they seek power, and where politicians are rewarded for patience and basic governing competency. And I admit that such a world sounds quite nice…
But the world we live in is nothing like that. And rather than pretending it is, we ought to be honest about how political power works. The honest truth is that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders massively changed US politics through presidential campaigns that, at the time they were launched, seemed ill-advised and unlikely to succeed. But they captured a genuine anger at the two-party establishment, and political leaders across the spectrum had to reorient themselves in response to that anger.
You could run a thousand races for local office — the way the Tea Party did or DSA is doing now — and not have that kind of impact. Of course, you can’t stop running those races. They are important for all sorts of reasons: developing a bench of candidates, giving people an outlet in non-presidential years, doing the actual work of governance, etc. But you also need to be constantly thinking about national politics and national campaigns.
Indeed, there is one tragic example of this lesson: It is clear, with hindsight, that the left made a huge mistake by not running a primary challenge against Joe Biden in 2024. By not challenging him, many on the left got dinged for continuing to support a centrist Administration when it was clear to much of the country he was no longer capable of governing. This led to a Worst of Both Worlds situation: The failures of the Biden Administration and the Harris campaign were blamed on them each being “too liberal,” since progressives were some of their most loyal defenders, but the left didn’t actually get any durable policy wins from the Administration.
Had there been a credible primary challenge from the left, it could have articulated a valuable progressive critique of Joe Biden’s term in office, and prevented the absurd retconning of Biden’s term as a far-left fantasy that many Establishment media figures have engaged in. Plus, the left would have been seen as more credible to moderate voters by calling out Biden for being too old before the rest of the party accepted it.
Of course, at the time, there were plenty of valid strategic reasons not to run such a campaign — reasons I myself was persuaded by. As I wrote back then, any primary campaign against a sitting president was unlikely to succeed, even despite Biden’s age. There was a chance that it would alienate the president, reducing the left’s overall influence, and even increase the odds of the Trump victory. There was also no obvious candidate to do it: AOC was likely too young, and Bernie was too old to bring up age against Biden. And doing it might have consumed limited electoral resources at a time when leftists like Jamaal Bowman and Ilhan Omar were already on the defensive. So there were clear risks, and the opportunities were hard to foresee.
But it’s precisely because it is so hard to predict the risks and opportunities of a presidential race that the left needs to always be running them. Campaigns for president are ~90% predictable and ~10% totally random. You just never know when an embarrassing debate performance, or a letter from the FBI director, or a global pandemic is going to throw the whole thing into a tailspin. Only a witch would pretend to know in advance how those things will play out or who will benefit… so the best way to take advantage is to just always be in the mix and hope one day the randomness bounces in your direction. Most of the time it won’t, and you will lose; but if you want to win, you have to at least run.
So whatever Ocasio-Cortez decides to do, the left needs to run someone for president this cycle. Personally, I think AOC in 2028 represents the best chance for the left in decades, and the culmination of the post-2015 rise in democratic socialism, so I hope she runs. But I might be wrong. The larger point, though, is that being overly precious about campaigns — about finding the Just Right candidate for the left or waiting for the Just Right time to run — is no way to win power. This isn’t Schoolhouse Rock or The West Wing. The left is not trying to complete the best dramatic arc with a presidential campaign. The point is to actually win, and the way to win is to run, and to keep running until you win.
