AOC Must Run For President

History is calling. Sorry!

(Photo: Getty)

Horse race coverage is the dominant mode of political coverage in America. It sucks. It treats politics like sports, parties like favored teams, candidates like celebrities, and elections like personality contests. It focuses on who is up and who is down rather than on substantive issues. It discourages meaningful activism within parties for moral reasons. It is one cause of the widespread public cynicism towards our electoral system.

An advantage of holding genuine political beliefs and being a part of political movements is that you gain the ability to look at elections not as simple red-vs-blue personality contests, but as strategic steps on the long road towards our chosen ideals. Movements have goals that transcend individual candidates and individual election cycles. To embrace movement politics is to be able to look at any given campaign season and ask: What is the best, most meaningful way for us to use this election to build the movement, in order to make the world better in the long run?

For the American left, in the 2028 presidential election, there is a straightforward answer to that question: AOC must run for president. If she doesn’t, she is leaving significant gains on the table. Not gains for her; gains for the movement, for the working class, for progress, and for the world.

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I do my best not to engage in “here’s what I think” crystal ball-style speculation about upcoming elections. (American journalism produces tons of this and it is all worthless.) So I’m not going to try to forecast polls a year from now. I’m just going to try to lay out the basic things that are true, today, that lead me to this conclusion.

First, this is going to be a backlash election. “The pendulum swings” is the most basic dynamic of national politics, and the pendulum is set to swing in the Democrats’ direction. Trump is historically unpopular. Not only that, but the entire Republican Party, having been purged of dissent, is inexorably aligned with his stink. Anything can happen, but the Democrats have a real inherent advantage going into 2028. Though centrists will, as they do in every election cycle, argue that we must nominate a centrist so as not to blow this chance, common sense tells you that if Democrats have natural advantages over any Republican candidate going into an election, we should rationally nominate the most progressive candidate that we can, because they have a better-than-usual chance to win, and they will accomplish the most good when they get in office.

So let’s talk about the Democratic primary. We all know that the left is surging electorally in a way that it has not in decades. Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor followed by wins by a host of socialist candidates in both local and Congressional primaries and elections across the country speaks for itself. “Strike while the iron is hot” is another piece of political wisdom that we ignore at our peril. It is generally a mistake, in American politics, to say “let’s wait four years and build.” It is wiser to seize every momentary advantage and push it as hard and as far as you can. Momentum is real. A billion different unpredictable things will happen between now and the next election cycle. You know you have a chance now, and you do not know if that will be true next time around.

Note that this is a different thing from saying “I am playing pundit, and I am going to forecast my imaginary polling averages for primary states to decide which candidates would be wisest to run.” No. We are a movement, remember? We believe in things. We ask instead, “Who is the candidate to carry our momentum into this election and do the most good?”

In this moment of momentum, with big structural changes necessary to defend American democracy itself, going into an election tilted towards Democrats, the left needs to run a candidate. That much, I think, is obvious. Having a presidential candidate to rally around boosts turnout, draws an enormous amount of attention to the movement, and helps lower-ballot candidates as well. There must be a real left candidate in the Democratic primaries. If we (and I realize that speaking of the political left as “we” implies a level of coordination that does not exist, but you get my drift) do not field a candidate we can unite behind in these primaries, we are fools, and we are throwing a lot of potential political capital in the trash.

(If we run more than one candidate who splits the left vote, we are also fools.)

(Photo: Getty)

So who will the left candidate be? As of today, there are only a couple of apparent options. AOC is widely reported to be considering a run, and, from what I hear, the uncertainty is genuine—though she has a large national profile, she’s young, she could just run for Senate instead and keep building herself up to a presidential run in the future. If AOC decides not to run, Ro Khanna is chomping at the bit to run as the most left candidate in the primaries.

Ro Khanna has good politics. But there are two significant drawbacks to a situation in which he ends up as the default left candidate. One, though he has more or less left political positions, he is not of the left. He did not come out of a movement. He is a rich guy with surprisingly good politics. I’m glad he has good politics. The problem is that since he is not really a person who rose up from within the ranks of the left itself, he does not have as strong a connection to the grassroots, to the base, to the most passionate left voters who make up the army that wins elections, as AOC does. There is a difference between an energized left united behind a popular candidate who rose out of NYC DSA, and a less energized left who defaults to supporting Ro Khanna because he is the only left option. In a competitive primary—which this is sure to be—that lack of genuine enthusiasm, that sense of “well, this is the best we can get,” is costly. It leaves you with less momentum and less support on the margins and less drive from your strongest base supporters.

Which is related to the second drawback: Ro Khanna would not win the Democratic primary. Though he has good politics, and he could surely raise some money, he is not exceptionally charismatic. And he will be running against candidates who can raise money and who are charismatic: Mayor Pete, Gavin Newsom, maybe Jon Ossoff, maybe Andy Beshear. You may like these guys or hate them but they are all more naturally charismatic than Ro Khanna. That matters in a competitive primary where many voters are deciding based on charisma. And it matters more when, as we just mentioned, the organized base of hardcore left voters who could potentially help you overcome that lack of charisma are not themselves naturally fired up about you in particular.

AOC is the opposite of Ro Khanna by these two measures. She inspires genuine enthusiasm in the base, in part because she came up through the movement and is seen as of the movement, rather than just as a politician aligned on the issues. And she does have charisma. Tons of it. I am doing my best not to drift into vague, vibes-based arguments here. I think these two points are inarguable. If AOC runs, the entire organized left will instantly spring into action, and its ongoing political momentum will instantly be thrown into her national campaign. If she does not run, and Ro Khanna does, this same mechanism will not happen. The left will perhaps drift behind him by default, but he will not at all inspire the same sort of instantaneous rallying around him that AOC would. Then he would have to somehow defeat more charismatic and more mainstream and at least equally well funded candidates on the trail. It’s not a good bet.

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Is there another viable left candidate who could run? One who has the same level of support among the left base as AOC, and who has comparable fundraising potential, and who has comparable charisma? I do not see one out there. Certainly, there are a lot of people that I personally like who could run for president, and who knows, maybe one of them would catch fire. But the unknowns and unpredictability involved in those campaigns prevent me from saying anything substantive here that would be worth saying, apart from “I like their politics.” We can all think of people we like who we think would be cool presidents and who we can fantasize about shooting to the top of the polls just because they are so great. But, in the summer of 2026, as we move closer to the time when presidential primary campaigns have to start organizing themselves in earnest, can we think of any other candidates who could credibly carry the flag of the left, and who could raise the funds necessary to run a credible national primary campaign, and who have the charisma and national profile to compete in a battle of other charismatic and media-savvy challengers, and who could quickly unite the bulk of the organized left around their campaign without either long and dreary internecine fights or a draining lack of enthusiasm?

I don’t think so. I think that this is pretty much where we are. All factors point to the conclusion that in 2028, it is AOC for president or bust. She is the one, the obvious one. It’s easy to see why she might choose not to run: She would have to forsake her seat in Congress, she would have to sacrifice any remaining normality in her lifestyle, and she is, surely, pretty young to be doing this. In terms of lifestyle, United States President is the worst job on earth, and asking a non-sociopath to seek the job because it is good for the movement is close to asking them to sacrifice their life for the cause. Still, the situation is what it is. Never in my lifetime has the left had this energy, credibility, and opportunity. And crucially, even if AOC runs and loses, it will be worth it. Fuck her seat in Congress. She could work for Zohran or do anything else she wants for a year or two and get reelected to Congress easily. We can all see, now, the benefits that Bernie’s two presidential campaigns produced. They in many ways planted the seeds that grew into the harvest the left is now reaping. Bernie himself understand that he is old and needs some sort of successor. AOC is the one he’s picked. She carries his blessing, his endorsement, his national profile on her shoulders. No one else does. She can produce a campaign that could inspire a new round of young people to fight for a better world and to engage in the political system.

This is not about saying she is a perfect candidate, or even about pretending to be able to make the impossible prediction that she would surely win. It is simply about asking ourselves, “In the context of the 2028 presidential elections, what is the best way for us to actually move toward the substantive political and social and economic changes that are necessary in the United States?” An AOC presidential candidacy is the answer to that question. No election is the beginning or ending of an entire movement. But it is a big opportunity to expand the movement, to push our momentum forward, and to force the Democratic Party to move left in accountable, meaningful ways that will change real people’s lives down the road.

So, AOC, while I completely understand why you might not want to run for president, I think you gotta. Sometimes history calls your name and you have to answer the call. If you don’t, you will regret it forever, and so will we.

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Also

• Related reading: Eugene Debs and All of Us; New York Socialist City; Horse race coverage is bad.

• The Trump administration has terminated TPS protections and is planning to deport thousands of Haitians from America. Here you will find a verified link to donate to support and protect Haitian families in Springfield, Ohio. (I wrote about Springfield’s Haitian community here.)

• I’m going to cover the 2028 presidential campaign. It costs money to do that. I do not have an expense account, because this is real live independent media. You can help make this sort of independent media coverage possible by clicking the link below and becoming a paid subscriber to How Things Work. It doesn’t cost much and it is the only way I continue to exist. Alternately, Bari Weiss will be making most of the news coverage decisions for the election. Thank you all for reading, always.