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Posted on 08/17/2026 9:09:17 AM PDT by Red Badger
Speculation about a presidential run by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in 2028 is rising to its highest pitch yet — and some people are putting their money on it.
AOC, as she is commonly known, now leads the field for the Democratic presidential nomination on the two best-known betting markets, Kalshi and Polymarket.
Even if opinion polls tell a different story — most of them placing her third behind former Vice President Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — the idea of a presidential bid by the 36-year-old New Yorker is no longer confined to the realm of leftist wish-casting.
Asked about the possibility during an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” last Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez left the door wide open.
“I haven’t ruled out the possibility. And I’m very humbled by the tremendous amount of support out there,” she said.
There is no doubt that Ocasio-Cortez would be a serious contender if she entered the race.
One of just a handful of true political celebrities, she has especially strong backing among younger progressives. The intensity of her support means she would have no problem raising money. And, when it comes to communication, her ease with social media is unparalleled among major 2028 prospects.
All of this has been true of Ocasio-Cortez for several years, however.
What’s new is that leftist victories in a series of prominent primaries — including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota within the past two weeks — have created the sense of a progressive wave. It’s plausible that Ocasio-Cortez could ride that wave into a national election.
Even some voices on the right are — without sarcasm — acknowledging that she has a decent chance right now of at least winning the Democratic nomination.
Jim Geraghty, writing in the conservative National Review on Friday, argued that, looking ahead to 2028, Ocasio-Cortez has “about as good a shot as any Democrat has. If she waits another four years … who knows what the national political dynamics will be like?”
Two days previously, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Henry Olsen headlined “AOC may never get a better shot at being president than this.”
But there is another side of the argument too. For every conservative or independent who fancies her chances, there is a Democrat disconcerted by the prospect of an Ocasio-Cortez run — or who simply doesn’t believe it will happen.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville insisted last month during an appearance on Newsmax: “She’s not going to run for president because she’s not going to have any chance.” Carville acknowledged Ocasio-Cortez’s political skills but suggested she would not even get the nomination because, he said, Democrats “never nominate the most liberal candidate.”
Some Democrats have a different worry: that Ocasio-Cortez would stand a decent chance of becoming the nominee but would flounder in blue-collar battleground states like Pennsylvania and Michigan in a general election.
The skeptics point out that the AOC-for-president thesis rests on the assumption that a young, leftist Latina from New York City could win over heartland voters that proved beyond the reach of Harris in 2024 and Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist based in New York, emphasized he was not opposed to Ocasio-Cortez running. But he said there were enormous questions around the likelihood of success — notably the fact that the left’s primary wins in state and district-level races don’t say very much at all about a national general election.
“It’s a tough race for her,” Sheinkopf said. “The question is, first of all are there enough voters who want AOC to be president of the United States, and then in particular are there enough people in the heartland?”
Ocasio-Cortez has recently seemed to be making some preemptive moves to shore up potential vulnerabilities, however.
One of the more obvious came during her “This Week” interview when she approvingly quoted a New York City Council member who had said “Woke 1.0 was crazy.”
The remark was almost universally seen as a way for Ocasio-Cortez to create some leeway between her own political identity and the more fringe ideas that some candidates on the left have advocated.
The most infamous recent example was Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, who like Ocasio-Cortez, is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Hong lost her primary to a more moderate candidate, David Crowley, despite being up in the polls. The blame almost certainly lay with controversial past statements from Hong, such as a desire to “Cancel Thanksgiving.”
Ocasio-Cortez is a very different and unusual political figure, however — and a magnetic one to her supporters.
This has been shown once again with the social media frenzy kicked off by her announcement that she is beginning the process of freezing her eggs.
The move has provoked numerous think pieces and cable news discussions. It has been big news at a traditionally quiet time of year for politics. Ocasio-Cortez has also cast her decision as exercising a bodily autonomy that she argues conservatives would deny to many women.
Beyond the specifics of all that, some on the left have complicated feelings about the prospect of her running for president.
Jonathan Tasini, a longtime progressive strategist, said that she would make “a fantastic president.”
But he argued that the more astute choice right now would be for her to take a pass for 2028 and channel leftist energy into trying to get lots of other candidates elected to Congress and at the state level — further building a movement that could sustain her if she ran at some point in the future.
Others wonder if a primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is up for reelection in 2028, might be a better next step.
Ocasio-Cortez may not want to wait, however.
If she ran, Tasini said, she would have a pretty good shot at least at becoming the Democratic nominee.
“She has emotional intelligence and she resonates with people,” he said.
“She’d be very competitive.”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
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They’ll run the show while she’ll be just for show
The Democrat Party is a monster. Massive in size and influential over events both domestic and foreign.
And a barmaid who steals from the tip jar is the best they can do?
Run Her!!!! Dare them!!
A-bsolute
O-bnoxious
C-hihuahua
Guess folks really are that stoopid to not realize there is zero depth of comprehension skills there. NO depth. And they think she could run the country? Sadly, the entities she would surround herself with are NOT the ones to run the country either.
15% of folks might have a clue what’s going on. The rest? Cute kitty tiktoks............
Presidential elections are two years away. This is just a wishful popularity poll ignoring reality.
They’ll have to do some utterly fantastic ballot fraud to get her into the White House. Can they pull it off? I highly doubt it.
After 2020 I felt the dims could install anyone. Maybe with the corrections so far it will become tougher for them. Who knows for sure. When it comes to running moronic women the dims are 0 for 2. We have no control over their lunacy so as always time will tell.
If it’s her it should be Vance on our side. Young folk will have to decide between the intellect and the airhead.
If it’s Newsom we should go with DeSantis, 2 heavyweight governors going head to head with track records.
Never underestimate the depths to which they will go to cheat....................
“Run Her!!!! Dare them!!”
That’s exactly what I thought about Obama in 2008.
The great debate-AOC vs. Kamala with Tulsi Gabbard as moderator.
Well I for one am pulling for her!
We had that election until McCain went stupid and held Sarah Palin back because she was so welcomed.
...and then her family issues came right at the end-—which she knew about and everything fell apart giving it to Obama.
Vance, DeSantis, Rubio, etc. are not stupid and Vance/Rubio understand their Christian guidance...jmo!
Did Kamala give her the kneepads?
Heh, “trepidation”! Are they even capable of “trepidation” after putting up someone like Kamala Harris? Or supporting Joe Biden?
I would dismiss that dingbat, had Heels-Up Harris not recieved so many votes.
SHE DOES NOT HAVE A “ HUMBLE” CELL IN HER WHOLE BODY
WHAT THE HELL IS “EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE”????
SHE STOLE THE TIPS FROM HER FELLOW EMPLOYEES-——
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