Independent Senator Bernie Sanders floated Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a potential presidential candidate in the 2028 elections, saying that even though it’s “her decision to make,” she is a “very, very good politician.”
Speaking to Axios, Sanders said that he has been “out on the streets with her” and noticed how she responds when people come up to her. “It’s so incredibly genuine and open.”
Ocasio-Cortez is seemingly positioning herself to run for higher office, whether it is challenging Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for his seat or to make a run for president.
One of the few sitting Dems I’d vote for.
I think that plenty of people who voted for Trump would be fine voting for a woman president as long as she’s strongly advocating change
These people just know that things aren’t great, they don’t know whose fault it was or what policies caused it. So they vote for the person who says they’ll change the most.
The largest deciding factor stated by people after voting was the economy. People remembered that there was a lot of inflation under Biden, and didn’t want to keep similar policies. Of course, we know that Trump’s first term had a pretty large influence on the state of the economy under Biden, and Biden’s policies probably didn’t hurt the economy. But the average voter is not that informed.
I hate that my thoughts on this need to waffle between:
(A) who do I think would be the best president, and
(B) who do I think has the most strategic chance of beating the GOP puppet candidate.
Yeah she should run
I like AOC and agree with her on a lot. And I really would like to see how she would handle it. But as a straight white guy in his 40’s that honestly wants to see things get better for everyone I also dread the tidal wave of dog whistle reasons the GOP will bring out for why she is unfit.
I know that is the point, but the constant avalanche of ignorant talking points that hearken back to “the good ole days” when men were men, women were arm candy, and brown people shared a corner on the floor with the family dog in these peoples minds that they disguise as honest engagement with a legitimate issue in the country is starting to burn me out.
I vote yes.
I really don’t understand the comments on these types of posts. Everyone is like “she should do the Senate I’m not sure she’s right/ready for president”. Why? Our current president is an 80 year old pedophile, our previous president was an 80 year old likeable moron…
You guys don’t want change you want you return to the status quo.
They’re saying this because they are bots
she should do the Senate
Trump has shown this step isnt strictly necessary.
I want her to run for senate mainly because shes the best chance we have to unseat schumer, and that is important too. Id be happy either way honestly, but thats my preference.
I’m sure just one more centrist moderate trying to appeal to Republicans will definitely work this time…
In all seriousness, we (as Americans & people world-wide) desperately need genuine Progressives like AOC & Bernie. They are the only ones that consistently hard work hard to advance big, bold action that would actually help improve working people’s lives!
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Under the Constitution of the United States, a person must be aged 35 or over to serve as president. To be a senator, a person must be aged 30 or over. To be a Representative, a person must be aged 25 or older. This is specified in the U.S. Constitution.
The US Constitution does not specify an age requirements for one to serve on the Supreme Court.
There are no specified age requirements to serve in a presidential cabinet —Wikipedia
That’s so weird, I don’t know why I thought someone had to be 43 years old…
Trump has proven the constitution doesn’t matter any more.
We want this madness to end and to do that we need to appeal to the same sort of folks who buy Chevy Equinoxes.
Fuck em and fuck that weak shit.
The neoliberals fucked up and can get out of the way forever or we might as well ride this bitch of a species screaming into the abyss.
I totally agree but every damn car looks like an Equinox so I don’t think we can win a popularity contest.
The comments are a classic example of what is actually meant by “You are not immune to propaganda”
It makes me so mad because AOC is exactly the kind of candidate that Kamala tried to cosplay as for her campaign.
It’s so frustrating to see people drool over the fake as fuck version of AOC yet say AOC isn’t presidential material.
I don’t think it’s a matter of her being ready, I think it’s that she has a real chance of beating schumer, whereas with the presidency, I’m not even sure she could even manage to win the primary. If an old white dude like Bernie couldn’t beat Hilary and Biden, what chance does a Latina woman in her 30s have?
Honestly, I think she has a great chance. People didn’t not vote for Hillary because she was a woman. It’s because she represented the establishment and inspired nobody. People didn’t not vote for Harris because she was a woman. It’s because she represented the establishment and inspired nobody.
AOC is a candidate who seems to actually represent change. She seems to listen to the desires of the people and follow that. She doesn’t just do what the donors demand. She has a chance because she does inspire people to see what could be, not just to repeat what is.
So then why did anyone vote for Biden, who represented the establishment and inspired nobody?
I’m not a political analyst, but my guess would be hope that he would be better. He proved that he wasn’t, which allowed Trump to come back because, despite everything, Trump did make promises to change things for regular people. Yes, they were lies, fear mongering, and about attacking a made up enemy, but he at least said something to make people think he would help them.
Because it was 2020 during the height of a botched Covid response and a few months after George Floyd. And Biden barely won. If you do the math, it was about 21,500 people across three states that determined the outcome, where them voting for Trump instead of Biden would have been an electoral tie that would have been decided by Pence. That’s a technical margin of 0.012% that Trump electorally lost by.
Because Biden was representing the establishment when they weren’t in power and the Republicans were actively blowing it. And he did a lot worse than he should have. That shouldn’t have been a squeaker election.
To be a latina woman in her 30s would be a definite pick for a presidency over a geriatric male (let’s be honest, I like Bernie Sanders but he is very old).
For such a job you’d want someone in their prime age with sharp attention span, with a forward-looking vision, not back. With multicultural experience to better communicate with the rest of the world.
I’m not an American so I can’t vote but I would definitely pick her out of those two.
If an old white dude like Bernie couldn’t beat Hilary and Biden, what chance does a Latina woman in her 30s have?
I mean, if you completely ignore the DNC doing everything legally in their power to get in the way of Bernie and force feed Hilary in the first place… because they can’t allow anyone vocal about actual progressive ideas in a position of party power… yeah that’s what it looks like. But that’s a pretty big thing to just ignore.
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Not legally. The head of the DNC had to resign, and their lawyers argued in court that because they were a private organization they didn’t have to follow their own rules.
No one was prosecuted so it was effectively deemed legal. That’s the end result.
I’m not ignoring that, that’s one of the massive hurdles she would have to overcome
AOC will need to clear the DNC hurdle whether she runs for House, Senate, or Admin. Look at Platner
If Mamdani is an indication of anything, people will vote for leftist economic populism despite there being racial divides.
In the past few weeks and months, we saw in New York City that the majority of Jewish people still support Israel over Palestine. Yet, Mamdani has consistently pulled a plurality of Jewish support with double digit leads over the other candidates.
What this means is that Jewish people are just like any other American, and they are feeling the effects of this shit economy caused by Trump. Mamdani represents a bandaid to that more than the other candidates, so they’re going with that and ignoring Mamdani’s anti-Zionist and anti-Israel policy.
I don’t think it matters what candidate you push a campaign for if they run on Left populism. As we’ve seen with Platner in Maine, though, being a white male veteran doesn’t hurt either.
Mamdani is running for mayor of NYC.
NYC has had a majority (not a plurality) of votes go to Democrats in the presidential election back to 1952 and the last time republicans had a plurality was 1924. NYC is, sadly, not representative of the US as a whole. Also, he was going up against a man who may have surpassed ted cruz in terms of “unlikeable mother fucker”-ness
As we’ve seen with Platner in Maine, though, being a white male veteran doesn’t hurt either.
Platner is… a giant fucking mess. He has more red flags than fucking fetterman did (fun fact: He was batshit insane as far back as when he met Anthony Bourdain…), one of which being the nazi skull tattoo he had on his chest for 20 years and only removed once he was forced to during his, what, 3 months of a political career? Not to mention him having willingly joined Blackwater and his VERY questionable statements on sexual assault and his use of homophobic slurs as recently as 2020.
But, he kissed Sanders’s ring so he has the “socialist” vote and establishment Democrats support him for whatever reason (which should raise a LOT more red flags but…). And while I am not invested enough to personally verify, a few colleagues I have out in Maine insist that Smith-Rodriguez was basically the same platform but with actual details and action plans but eventually pulled out to support the mayor (?) on the grounds of platner’s horrific stances on sexual assualt and her being a victim of assault in the military.
I don’t think it matters what candidate you push a campaign for if they run on
LeftpopulismEditorialized that a bit but… I think that is the real key. The vast majority of people don’t actually care about policy or even basic human rights. They just want populist candidates. And that is not just limited to the US.
Which REALLY fucking sucks because… I’ve been incredibly critical of AOC’s career and I think she was THIS close to wearing clown shoes with the rest of The Squad. But she has demonstrated that she has strong political acumen. And when she does do shitty stuff, she actually owns up to it on social media/direct to constituents videos.There is always the need for MASSIVE grains of salt with any politician but… AOC seems to kind of be exactly what we should want out of a democracy. Someone who cares and has grand ambitions but also understands they are a servant of the people and speaks to The People.
She just was born too late considering both sides are very much at “I can excuse being a Nazi but I draw the line at… I’ll get back to you on that”
You’re right about NYC. But wins add momentum, which builds and proves the DNC wrong.
The more and more I hear about Platner, the less I’m willing to defend him. He’ll capture liberals, sure, and I prefer to have grace for people if they’ve shown that they can fix their shit and atone for what they’ve done in their lives, but he sure ain’t the perfect candidate. You’re right that we don’t want Fetterman again, which is why we need to be critical of Platner here and now and not Vote “Who” No Matter Who like many liberals are doing now. If he keeps making bad decisions, like Kamala did as soon as her 2024 GE campaign made it to the DNConvention, then it’ll suck. Janet Mills is an option, but she’s not perfect either.
If Platner can have good messaging discipline, keep his campaign to Leftist economic popularism, come out with policies that support that agenda that he’d like to see implemented in Congress, and stay woke, I think I might throw him more support. But these things build. Trust needs to be built. And we all know that trust can be destroyed faster than it can be built.
Americans want populist candidates, and Leftist economics are popular.
AOC has a good track record. I want to see her because the leader of the party. I think the establishment Dems and DNC ignore the reality in front of them that their underlying base is changing views (against neoliberalism), and AOC should lead that fight. I think she’d be better for SML instead of President tho. Because of what we said about NYC and NYS, because of how it votes differently from the rest of the country, I think she has a safer bet to oust Schumer and gain even more national notoriety as a SML. She’ll be setting the stage for the Dems, and hell, has more of a backbone than Jeffries ever will.
Lots to be excited for
Yeah… I am pretty sure “willingly joined Blackwater” and “had a nazi tattoo on his chest for 20 years” automatically kicks him off to “broke” with a shade of “holy fucking shit”. And while I do think people can, and should. be allowed to change, all signs are he very much hasn’t. Still using homophobic slurs as recently as 2020 and his defense of the nazi skull boils down to “I am a military historian AND terminally online but I have never seen an SS outfit or the Mitchell and Webb meme”
At best he is a deeply stupid person who should not be allowed anywhere near office. More likely, he thinks voters are deeply stupid. Just a question of whether he is a fetterman/sinema in disguse.
(Also apparently he says his stance on Israel and genocide is basically Kamala’s? Which is even funnier that there aren’t the “I refuse to vote for genocide, period” crowd out attacking him…).
But, he is popular and that is all that matters.
A meathead veteran running on a left populist platform is how you can get some of the MAGA working class votes. Platner is the opposite of an elite well spoken academic, than can actually appeal to the proletariat and petit bourgeoisie.
So let her try to win the primary. If she doesn’t win, what difference would it make?
If she’s at that point, she probably didn’t run for senate
That and honestly I do like governors as canidates as they have more direct experience running a government. In the last election I was excited waltz was the vp. Granted the presidency is more about who you select to run the agencies which is one of the many reasons trump sucks so bad.
Bernie’s problem was that he wasn’t a democrat. I voted for him but I know a lot of people, like my parents, who are center-left who simply refused to vote for somebody who didn’t caucus with democrats. These are the same people who are already looking at people like Newsom.
Edit for clarification: I understand that the Bernie is considered to caucus with the democrats because he generally votes with them. However, those who used the term disparagingly as I referenced above don’t believe independents can caucus with any party and used that as an excuse to refer to him as a DINO and not caucusing or being required to caucus.
He always caucuses with Democrats. That’s how Dems held the Senate under Biden. Without Bernie they wouldn’t have had their 50. You don’t have to be in the party to be part of the caucus.
I get what you are saying but that’s not what the talking heads meant when they said that.
I take “Caususes with” to generally means “votes more or less in line with” (I know that’s not really everything about it). What definition are you using?
Those talking heads should probably learn what words mean before they used them then
Your parents aren’t “center-left” if they didn’t vote for Bernie.
It was the primary?
At the end of the day, the POTUS is not just a party leader, it is a national (formerly world) leader. That involves being able to at least get SOMETHING out of the other side… unless you are just going to be a fascist dictator apparently.
But you can be damned sure that the news media would immediately attack any Democrat who tried that and lead the lynch mob themselves. So we need someone who knows when to “reach across the aisle” and when to say “Fuck off” because they have enough votes.
Traditionally? The Senate is a great place to learn how to do that. Because there are only 100 (actually 101) people and almost everyone is an established politician, you have to do a LOT more negotiation to get anyone to vote against party lines (usually by benefiting their constituents). Whereas the House is, historically, where randos show up and we are just lucky if they don’t eat crayons on camera. So “protest votes”/“meme votes” are more common and they are a lot more likely to break party lines because they know they are going back home next year or trying to join a lobbyist firm.
ANY Democrat would be better than the rapist in chief… maybe even fucking fetterman. But a stronger AOC can do a LOT more good down the line… if there is a down the line.
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Being a woman wasn’t why Hillary and Kamala lost. Hell, Hillary had the popular vote, but Congress broke our electoral system in 1929, so that doesn’t matter anymore. So America did choose a woman.
You guys don’t want change you want you return to the status quo.
You have to win to change things bruh. If you can’t focus on that even a little and focus only on what you want in a perfect world , then it doesn’t matter you want because you’ll never win.
All else being equal a white man less than 65 who believe 95percent the same things as AOC will get at least 5 percent more votes just like that, which is the difference between winning and losing.
You don’t understand it? I’ll make it real simple for you: if we don’t win then it doesn’t matter how “not status quo” our candidate was. We need the candidate who will remove the 80 year old pedophile and his whole pedophile party.
Yeah, and it’s been shown that establishment democrats don’t really have the appeal they need to do so. No one gives a shit because they aren’t representing their desires. They’re representing, at best, status quo. If you haven’t noticed that’s not exactly popular at the moment.
that’s not exactly popular at the moment.
That’s exactly the question. I personally thought in 2024 that a paedophile, senile 80yo felon who already lost an election (even from the incumbent position) already wouldn’t be exactly popular either, but here we are.
US presidential elections are so unpredictable, because there’s only two actual candidates in the race, since there’s no run-off or anything like that. There’s no real way to know what’s exactly popular at the moment until it’s too late.
Did Harris lose because she’s a black woman? Did she lose due to unpolar positions? Did she lose because of poor campaign management? Did she lose because russian bots helped Trump? Did she lose because people “had enough of woke”? Did she lose because people just love dementia?
It’s really hard to know, and likely its all of the above to certain degree.
Has it? Biden thoroughly beat Trump. The Kamala was thoroughly beaten.
Biden is very much so establishment
And people realized how shit it was. It wasn’t working for them.
Biden barely won. I don’t know what alternate reality you’re remembering, but that was a squeaker of an election hinging on a margin of less than 50k votes. GA, AZ, and WI were all won by less than 1%, and flipping them would be a loss.
That was closer than Trump’s win over Clinton.
Yes some swing states were close, that’s basically every election.
Now if you look at the numbers Biden had 306 electoral votes while Trump had 232. GA has 16 electoral votes, AZ has 11, and WI has 10. If Biden lost all 3 of those states and Trump won them instead it would have resulted in a 269 to 269 vote tie in the electoral college. Meaning a vote in the House of Representatives would decide the election. Which was majority Democrat, meaning a win for Biden. So even in a made up scenario Biden still wins.
And we’re not even talking about the difference in popular vote which was significant. Sure it doesn’t always decide the election, but I believe it provides a good gauge on how the American people feel.
No, it really isn’t. 50k votes between win an loss is the closest election in decades. Closer than when Trump beat Clinton, and way closer than Trump beating Harris. Not since Bush v. Gore has the margin been closer.
The reason why a tie is a loss is that it’s not a vote of the representatives as a whole, it’s a vote of the states, as decided by the reps. Republicans had a majority of reps in 26 states.
Fair enough on the contingent election. Something only possible if you change 3 whole state votes. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
If we go down that train of thought the there’s no reason the states that barely went Trump could then go the other way.
Which is why the popular vote is the more important metric for determining how the American populace as a whole felt about the canidate. Especially considering that election had one of the largest voter turnouts in US history
But establishment democrats demonstrated they did have the appeal they need to do so, when Biden won, when Obama won, when Bill Clinton won. Even when the Democrats lost, it was to a plurality or to an EC victory.
When we ran Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, or Kamala Harris, the general election voters rejected them.
Hi! Welcome to the present! It’s 2025, did you just arrive?
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And you think she can’t win? Why?
A female president of a normal age would be an amazing change for the US. Why does it always have to be geriatric males?
Support for what ever she decides is next, although I feel like the senate would be a better step. However the democrats dont really have a face to back that isnt some centerist that thinks its ok to play with the bully after they have taken your lunch money or someone that is older than Wonder Bread ™.
They are going to basically offer her Chuck’s Senate seat, unopposed, as long as she doesn’t go after the nomination that they have already awarded to Newsom. He’s the Next One Up!
Nooooooo!
He literally pushed to make being unhoused a crime.
Newsom is fine. The right smears him and California almost as much as they did HRC. Don’t go along with their propaganda.
Newsom is not fine, fuck that guy
Unfortunately the way the system works, you basically have to vote for who you’d fuck less
There’s more than just the right’s propaganda here. He’s a better choice than any MAGA, surely, but not the “Dem” I’d want.
The DNC have had 48 senate seats or less for over a decade, only managing the occasional majority leader pick with indpendents like Angus King.
If you don’t want the DNC playing with the bullies; get the bullies voted out of power.
The electorate is still as old as hell and won’t like someone younger than them.
That’s why Barrack Obama lost.
I’m not sold on his face, but I do like the way Pritzker swings a bat. He’s a bit centrist, but at least he’s a fighter.
His problem is he’s a billionaire. But as a stop gap, I think he could work.
At this point, he is a billionaire by choice. He could donate to groups that work towards equitable living for the marginalized, but he doesn’t. He only has a couple billion, but that’s enough to make a very real impact for a lot of vulnerable people. This is very nearly the trolley problem. He can do nothing and let a lot of people die or he can intervene and save most but not all.
As Rush said (the band, not Limbaugh lol), If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
That is also the philisophical crux of The Witcher series (books and games, not the TV show now starring the least-hot hemsworth)
The show was such a disappointment. There was solid source material to work off of, and they just shit all over it. They did Henry Cavill dirty, and dragged the witcher IP through the mud so much so it will probably never be put on screen again to present the actual story.
You never know, Hellboy got 3 different incarnations within 20 years despite having been a relatively unknown property outside of diehard comic readers.
Sadly they got progressively worse.
Id argue that he made a choice to use that as a cushion to allow him to devote himself to public service. I dont k ow if that is true, but my u derstanding is that he inherited this money. Doesnt mean he hs the same mindset of the person who accumulated it in the firstplace. Sins of the father and all.
Agreed, but my point is that most of us don’t get to just choose to be a billionaire. He does. Because he could choose to fund different things or donate to groups and he chooses not to. I’m not indicting him on exploiting people to amass that wealth, but he has chosen to keep billions of dollars for himself when he could be putting a lot of his money towards fighting the very things he says we need to fight.
That doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person; he just could be a whole hell of a lot better. I could donate more and don’t because I’d like to one day maybe be able to work less than full time before I die. He could have decided to never work a day in his life and instead opted to work a public service job, so props to him for that, but there’s still more I think he ought to be doing in these dire times.
Imagine if AOC remained SML as long as Moscow Mitch.
AOC the SML of the USA
AOC SML or POTUS FTW
There’s no path where she becomes Senate Majority Leader. You don’t take the position off the corpse of your defeated opponent.
I appreciate Bernie for being an adult and helping to boost up the people that will be here after him.
Most every other politician, when they aren’t cramming their unqualified, entitled broodspawn where they don’t belong, is gnawing off limbs trying to make sure they’re entombed with their positions like the pharaohs.
Zionist endorses zionist.
An Aoc & Oliver ticket would go so hard but we know DNC would self sabotage that.
What do you people mean “if there’s an election”? You don’t understand what that means?
it means that we’re afraid that elections will be cancelled due to reasons.
I’d love it, but we need a sure win this time. Not getting a 50 year old white dude will make it harder. We’ve tried a shitty blonde, an old guy, and a black woman. We need someone who will take votes from the red.
I think running a candidate who actually offers real solutions to the problems people are facing is more important than fitting a particular demographic.
Each of the last three Dem noms were also centrist neolibs.
Yes but centrist neolib would be a massive improvement right now. You have idiotic fascist, the few smart ones sleep with Julius evola under their pillow. Somehow they also have “christians”.
They can unite all kinds of weirdos and the left is divided over too many things.
The point is that they’ll keep losing because you don’t excite people by saying “we’ll make sure things don’t get much worse.”
We tried a corrupt neoliberal, a feeble neoliberal, and a sleazy neoliberal. I suspect they all had something in common that was very offputting to the entire populace. If only we could figure out what that was and not repeat it.
Fuck off, racist.
The problem isn’t their skin. The problem is their policies and corruption
We need to return the what produced the greatest electoral win and won us the largest majority in recent times: a black man with a Muslim name.
It’s like people forget Obama even existed when running through this “must appease the bigots” formulation.
The US was less racist and divided in 2008.
Don’t!
I like her. It’s not time.
She has to run fir higher office now while sge is still young. Fresh blood will fill her seat. We have plenty of progressives in her district who can take up the cause.
Rotation is important to drown out the geritocracy
Naw, it’s always time. If she doesn’t win, that’s good practice and she can remind others what to learn from the other choice and run again.
“Always time”… Oh yeah? Who’s paying the bill, you? It’s a giant waste of $$ for that level of campaign when she can’t win.
If she doesn’t win we are all fucked (assuming we’re not already fucked and we even get to have another election).
I know this sounds retarded, but if Texas doesn’t turn blue we are all fucked. Why would I say that? Because they fucked up the gerrymander data and have razor thin districts now. If there isn’t a huge push against Republicans I am not sure if we will have another chance of fair elections.
