AOC in 2028? Really?

A fter Abdul El-Sayed’s triumph in the Michigan Senate race Tuesday night, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must be congratulating herself for backing a winning horse.

With selective endorsements, AOC fancies herself as a Democratic oracle on the pulse of cutting-edge political talent. Speculation abounds that she is now among the best positioned for a Democratic presidential-nomination run in 2028. But the New York congresswoman faces significant headwinds.

In fact, many far-left candidates were elected on Tuesday, as part of the blue wave interpreted as a nationwide rebuke to President Trump. Perhaps counterintuitively, with the left’s growing numbers come growing complications for AOC.

Start with the speakership. With Democrats now in control of the House, Hakeem Jeffries is assumed to be the next speaker. Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had pledged fidelity to him in advance of the midterms, yet the newly empowered socialists are already angry at the prospect of a Speaker Jeffries, given his reluctance to loudly condemn Israel and his support from AIPAC and related groups over the years.

Briahna Joy Gray, former national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, wrote derisively on X: “AOC and Zohran Mamdani’s top pick! To be clear, a handful of left electeds could keep this Zionist corporatist from holding the gavel and setting the legislative agenda for the next two years, but they’ve already bent the knee to Mama bear. Sorry Palestine!”

By “Mama bear,” Gray meant Nancy Pelosi, who also preemptively celebrated Jeffries getting the gavel.

Jeffries has an approval rating of 18 percent, according to an NBC News poll from last week. If he wins the gavel and then resists the far left’s radical governing agenda, they won’t soon forget that Ocasio-Cortez backed him.

With the ranks of DSA members or those closely affiliated growing to eight in the House after this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez may also face some competition for the political limelight. She will likely struggle to assert herself as their sensible and experienced ringleader, given what we know about the ideological rigidity that the far left demands. Even Mamdani, who portrays Israel as an illegitimate, murderous nation-state, recently got shouted down by a left-wing mob at an October 7 ceremony that recognized both Israelis and Palestinians.

All that aside, there’s the not-so-trifling matter of Ocasio-Cortez’s unimpressive debating chops. She may be good on social media and in front of a friendly crowd, but she has mostly refused adversarial interviews in the press and stuck to like-minded networks. She couldn’t even survive a basic foreign policy test about the U.S. relationship to Taiwan at the Munich Security Conference. A presidential candidate has to be able to cut through, with clarity and conviction, in these settings. If your arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny — see Kamala Harris in 2024 — voters will notice.

These days, when voters hear about Ocasio-Cortez in the news, it’s often after she posts stream-of-consciousness Instagram reels with a glass of wine in hand or while in bed. A presidential campaign demands more, including a record. AOC has not independently authored or been the primary sponsor of a standalone major bill that was signed into law. A 2021 survey from the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking — a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia — found that Ocasio-Cortez was among the least effective members of the 116th Congress.

Finally, Ocasio-Cortez’s political fortunes hinge on how Democrats perform now that they have a congressional mandate to deliver their ultimate promise: affordability. Democrats will, of course, continue to use the Iran war to blame President Trump and Republicans for the high cost of living. But it’s unlikely that Democrats will make average Americans’ lives much better over the next two years. If anything, their anti-AI campaign could hold back economic growth as well as erode some of the stock market gains that at least gave many Americans confidence in their retirements. Plus, they are prone to fight any supply-side policies that actually would lead to economic progress and lower prices.

Despite the hype, Ocasio-Cortez is not ready for prime time, and she’s not yet ready for 2028.