David Faris argues that the New York representative is the new national leader the Democrats need, but Daraka Larimore-Hall claims she can get more done in Congress.
Whither AOC?(Sean Gallup / Getty)
New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is, by a considerable margin, the most talented, charismatic, and visionary young politician in a party that desperately needs a transformative new national leader.
No one represents the emerging ideology of the Democratic Party better than AOC, and no one is better at articulating that vision in public, on social media, and in Congress. If we hope to build a successful movement for social democracy, at some point the Democrats must give their presidential nomination to someone who both believes in it and can sell it to the broader electorate.
As a former bartender and someone who graduated from college tens of thousands of dollars in debt, AOC better represents ordinary Americans and the future demographics of the party than whatever soulless, consultant-backed concoction the Democrats’ elderly leadership will surely try to foist on us in 2028. Unlike most members of Congress, AOC isn’t a lawyer, an independently wealthy tech baron, or someone who spent years climbing the rungs of her party’s hierarchy. She isn’t a product of the well-worn Ivy League–to-district-attorney-to-senator pipeline. Her life experience as a normal human being is a central feature of her national appeal.
She also fixes the chief weakness of the progressive movement’s outgoing leader, Senator Bernie Sanders, who often surrounded himself with people who publicly despised the Democratic Party and unwittingly alienated older primary voters who uncritically love it. While she’s no “vote blue no matter who” automaton, AOC recognizes that constantly slagging the Democratic Party while trying to appeal to its most dedicated voters is a losing strategy. In Congress, AOC has proved to be a pragmatist who can navigate the byzantine internal politics of the House without sacrificing the core of her ideology or her viral appeal.
Of course, electability fetishists are already fine-tuning their playbook against AOC, and they will surely tell us that the “safe” choice is a moderate white guy eager to bash trans folks and tack right on immigration. Critics will focus on AOC’s perceived disadvantages, including her status as a far-right hobbyhorse and her relatively high unfavorability ratings. But her meteoric rise as a political star merely accelerated an inevitable process of demonization at the hands of the right-wing propaganda apparatus. Pete Buttigieg, of all people, showed he understood this best when he said during a 2019 Democratic presidential debate in Detroit, “If we embrace a far-left agenda, they’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to say we’re a bunch of crazy socialists. So let’s just stand up for the right policy, go out there, and defend it.”
AOC is the Democrats’ best opportunity to escape a self-destructive cycle of worrying so much about what swing voters or wavering Republicans will think that they end up picking candidates whose overmanaged, carefully orchestrated campaign strategies fail to win the very voters that their theory says they should.
A plausible case could be made for AOC to challenge flailing Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer for his seat in 2028 instead of trying to win the presidency as an incumbent member of the House, a maneuver that has not been pulled off successfully since James Garfield did it in 1880. But there’s no guarantee that she could take out Schumer or that there will ever be another opportunity like 2028.
If a Democrat wins the 2028 election, his or her vice president will likely have the inside track on the nomination in 2032 or 2036. By 2040, AOC will be in her 50s, presumably with a long track record in the Senate for critics to pick over. And who knows where the zeitgeist will be in 14 years.
With the GOP nominee in 2028 most likely to be the slick fortysomething vice president, JD Vance, whose main role in the Trump administration appears to be “social media influencer,” Democrats must counter with a youthful, agile, media-savvy politician, someone who can turn out the young and irregular voters that the party would need to win a resounding victory and finally give it the mandate to pursue real progressive change. The stakes of this election, which will include the GOP’s chance to consolidate the dysfunctional, autocratic gangster state that it has been building since January 2025, are simply too high for Democrats to run another cautious, focus-group-driven figure who can’t turn out the party’s base.
Voters elect a person, not a policy platform, and Democrats should at long last offer them someone whose virtues as a human being and a communicator make her palatable to swing voters who prize Sanders-esque authenticity, who is capable of winning a bruising general-election campaign, and who will be up to the herculean task of transforming the United States into the world’s first truly multiracial social democracy.
That someone is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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David Faris No!
Let me be clear: If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decides to run for president, I will campaign for her. She is an extraordinary talent—a politician who can be strategic, inspirational, and principled in equal measure. Most electeds, even those with ties to social movements and solid voting records, focus on legislation and their own reelection, leaving the bigger questions to party leadership. But AOC has always prioritized something else: building a path toward political transformation.
She works hard to get other socialists and progressives elected while articulating a new direction for the Democratic Party. Her vision of a green, social-democratic politics brings together anti-elite populism, structural reform, and a celebration of the diversity of the working class. Crucially, AOC also connects the inside baseball of Congress to the outside world. She mobilizes public opinion behind both short-term policy goals and her long-term agenda. And she has done all of this while avoiding self-marginalization and co-optation.
What the left needs now is a champion who will shift who and what the Democratic Party fights for. This is a multi-year, multi-election project, and it requires leaders who can keep the activist base energized, challenge and defeat deadweight incumbents, and mount an effective opposition to Republicans. No one fits the bill better than AOC.
We need AOC on both offense and defense, in times of advancement and of resistance. That is what congressional leaders can do and presidential candidates cannot. At 36, she could have a long tenure as a Democratic leader, becoming the Nancy Pelosi of the democratic-socialist left—a political powerhouse who can create and coordinate party narratives.
Right now, Congress is broken. Under GOP control, it refuses to defend democratic norms, and both parties have been unable to deliver legislation on the scale required to confront climate change and inequality. We cannot repeat the Obama-era mistake of believing that the White House alone can save us. AOC should stay in Congress, fascism-proofing our national legislature and working to revive the energies of the New Deal and the Great Society.
I understand the impulse on the other side. Presidential campaigns can draw in new activists, candidates, and small donors. The movements around Howard Dean, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders contained seeds of enormous change. Likewise, an “AOC for President” campaign would inspire and train future progressive leaders.
But Democratic energy has become too reliant on presidential elections. We need engagement when it is the hardest to mobilize: between presidential cycles, when Congress is in play, policy is made, and a president’s record is really established. AOC’s work in Congress also depends on seniority, clout, and deep relationships—so the longer she stays, the more her power and influence on Capitol Hill will grow.
My two strongest arguments for AOC staying in Congress are the ineffectual and feckless leadership of Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Chuck Schumer. Instead of running for president, AOC should run Schumer out of the Senate or build toward a bid for speaker of the House. She could reshape politics in either of those roles, and there are clearer paths for her to get there than to the White House.
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Imagine a Democratic Party with AOC at the helm of one of the congressional delegations. It would be animated by the Green New Deal and explicit challenges to oligarchy, rather than the minimalist pap the party offers today. Instead of stilted press conferences and stunts like taking a knee in kente-cloth stoles, there would be barnstorming tours, community meetings, grassroots organizing, and walking picket lines. As House speaker or a Senate leader, she could launch an ambitious legislative agenda and then rally people around it with her considerable charisma and communication skills.
There is a precedent for such a transformational congressional figure. I still shudder thinking about Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America. In 1994, Gingrich—then the House minority leader—shaped a powerful, unified political narrative; helped the GOP win 54 congressional seats; and pushed the party to the right. AOC is the only Democratic figure in Congress who seems capable of pulling off a similar realignment from the left.
Standing in the way of this future is a system built on incumbent protection and major-donor fundraising. AOC is committed to pulling down these barriers to a better Democratic Party, but it will require mass organizing. Those who dream of a democratic-socialist president should want Ocasio-Cortez to hold off on running and focus instead on leading that work. For any socialist to be an effective president, we’d need in place stronger movements, party organizations, unions—and a better Congress. Pouring our energy into a 2028 presidential campaign would be a shortsighted attempt at a shortcut to the harder work that must come first.
Daraka Larimore-Hall
David FarisDavid Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in Slate, The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Washington Monthly. You can find him on Bluesky at @davidfaris.bluesky.social.
Daraka Larimore-HallDaraka Larimore-Hall is a lecturer in labor studies at UC Santa Barbara and was a vice chair of the California Democratic Party.