The Path of AOC

They were chanting a name in Chicago.

Not Kamala’s. Not Barack’s. They certainly weren’t chanting Hillary’s (although she was, surprisingly, cheered). No chant rang out for Buttigieg, or Biden, or Michelle either.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had barely begun speaking before she was forced to stop. They were chanting her name: “AOC!” rang out the call. If there was a seismic moment at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, this was it.

“Six years ago I was taking omelet orders as a waitress in New York City,” AOC cried above a sea of multiracial, multicultural Democrats. “I didn’t have health insurance. My family was fighting off foreclosure, and we were struggling with bills after my dad passed away unexpectedly from cancer.”

The great thunderclap that rose and rose from the bowels of the United Center on the first night of the DNC was not for the party standard-bearers but for a woman who took an outsider’s path to power. In brilliant, bright red lipstick that softened her navy power blazer, “Alex from the Bronx” never looked more radiant.  

She fiercely defended herself from Republican critics who have mocked her previous professional experience as a bartender.

“There is nothing wrong with working for a living,” roared AOC, who used her seven-minute speech to highlight the concerns of the working class. “To love this country, is to fight for its people. All people. Working people. Everyday Americans like bartenders and factory workers and fast food cashiers who punch a clock and are on their feet all day in some of the toughest jobs out there.”

This was Ocasio-Cortez like never before, on the nation’s biggest political stage, sharing the personal struggles that shaped her ideology and pushed her to seek congressional office. “Like millions of Americans, we were just looking for an honest shake and we were tired of a cynical politics that seemed blind to the realities of working people.”

AOC hammered away at Trump: “Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and those of his Wall Street friends. I, for one, am tired of hearing how a two-bit union-buster thinks of himself as more of a patriot than the woman who fights every single day to lift working people out from under the boots of greed”

My phone was lighting up—“Inspired” read one text from a staunchly independent former colleague. “Hit all of my concerns,” summarized a working-class friend. “Ignore her at your own peril,” read another. The next night, Hillary Clinton screamed “something was in the air” above a joyous crowd. But whether she knew it or not, she wasn’t talking about Kamala. 

AOC cleverly avoided the Israel dilemma on the big stage, only offering a passing comment about how Harris “is working tirelessly to get a ceasefire in Gaza.”

As Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) joined uncommitted delegates in the streets of Chicago to protest the official positions of the Democratic Party on Israel, AOC discussed the Middle Eastern conflict in private and with the sort of learned cadence you’d expect from the establishment class. It was the sort of centrist turn that dominated her measured and mainstreamed appearance in Chicago last Monday. If she is to run for the highest of American offices, the leveling of the far-left outcroppings that first won her power must begin now. 

And when AOC inevitably goes for it, who exactly is stopping her? 

Kathy Hochul is the primary target. The New York governor was mocked as a “black hole of charisma” following her miserable DNC speech that provided, in its awkwardness, a dramatic contrast to the organically animated congresswoman from New York City.

Worse for Hochul, her tenure as New York’s hand-selected governor has been derided by Republicans and Democrats alike. She struggled in her 2022 “reelection” bid to defeat Representative Lee Zeldin in a solidly-blue state and her prospects for 2026 are mid at best. Her saturnine performance at the DNC has done nothing to ease her critics. 

Hochul is a robotic, uncelebrated, unenergetic machine creature who has struggled to steward governorship of one of America’s wealthiest and most powerful states. AOC is a vivacious self-starter strutting the sort of meme energy not often associated with the political class. The plaudits Hochul has won via appointment, AOC has won organically from the people.

“She’s in way better shape to run for statewide office than I ever was, because she can appeal in a Democratic primary a lot better than I can,” Representative Tom Suozzi, another hand-selected Democrat machinist, said in response to AOC’s big moment at the convention. 

It wouldn’t be a race so much as a sweeping referendum, potentially reorganizing the power structure of the Democratic Party for years to come. In a nod to that shifting landscape, it was DNC organizers who reached out to AOC regarding Monday’s primetime speaking slot, not the other way around. Hochul meanwhile was buried and forgotten on Wednesday, the weakest day of the four.

Any statewide aspirations that New York City Mayor Eric Adams might have cast for himself appear to have long come and gone. The embattled mayor, who has spent wildly on efforts to reinvent the trash can, made a quiet and unceremonious visit to the DNC and did not receive a speaking slot as he continues to fight a federal investigation into his 2021 campaign finances.

The governor’s mansion has long served a launching pad for American presidents. George Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter all made their way to Pennsylvania Avenue via their state’s top office during the modern era. If AOC wants the Oval Office, New York’s highest office is a logical place to start and the runway looks clear for takeoff. 

Defeating Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would be another battle altogether. 

Though Schumer is old, age shouldn’t be an issue—California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein died in office earlier this year at the age of 90. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is 84. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has repeatedly glitched in public, is 82. And Schumer, who won reelection to the Senate in 2022, will be “only” 78 years old when he’s up for reelection in 2028. 

More worrying for Schumer, however, are the tighter and tighter margins he has won with over the last two decades. Schumer defeated the Republican Joseph Pinion III by 800,000 votes in 2022, but the victory represented Schumer’s smallest margin in a Senate race since he dethroned three-time incumbent Al D’Amato in 1998.

Schumer’s position and power does not come from the people. Though he has taken the votes in a comfortably Democratic state, his power truly comes from those other (faceless) people, the bureaucrats and middle managers who couped President Joe Biden. The ones who really run Washington. Schumer’s lengthy tenure is not a testament to his magnanimous character but an ode to the weakness of the New York Republican party and the dogged, brutal machinery of the Democratic power structure (and Schumer’s willingness to climb). 

But would she dare? AOC turns 39 in the fall of 2028. That would rank her along with Sens. Josh Hawley and Jon Ossof among the youngest members of America’s highest legislative body. Judging by her attitude on the DNC stage—a stage that has green lit the careers of many other Democratic starlets such as Obama and Tulsi Gabbard—AOC is seeking upward mobility. 

The liberal pundit Mehdi Hasan couldn’t resist musing on AOC’s future in a post sharing her speech from the DNC: “If AOC ever runs for president—or a New York Senate seat!—you’ll see this clip a lot.”

Although Schumer’s position is stronger than junior Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, it is unlikely AOC would attempt to oust the popular 57-year-old in an election only two years from now. This gives AOC ample time to soften her message and make further appeals to center Left voters who dominate the American electorate. 

Freddie DeBoer sounded depressed—“AOC is just a regular old Democrat now,” read the headline of his dismissive 2023 article on the Queens upstart in New York Magazine. After years of performative stunts and stringently voicing for the concerns of America’s blighted underbelly, AOC had finally become the thing she once (allegedly) fought against—the establishment. 

It never fit her better. Radicals may still light the spark, but the center is where the path to power lies. Whatever she chooses, governor or senator, the presidency would not then be far beyond her grasp.

As it stands now in the summer of 2024, only two men seemed poised to repel what would be, by then, a sufficiently grassroots 2032 campaign with all the dressings of celebrity: California’s Governor Gavin Newsom and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis. These appear to be the likeliest of men that would stand in AOC’s path. 

DeSantis has reigned supreme over a new Florida that ranks among the happiest and most prosperous states in the Union. Memories of his pudding fingers and his socially awkward demeanor could potentially be mended by that point, especially if he’s willing to allow his rockstar, cancer-beating wife to take a larger role in the campaign.  

Newsom has already begun efforts to wipe the slate clean on his tenure as top man in the Golden State, issuing and then personally seeing through his controversial decision to clean out homeless encampments throughout the state. In a recent show of force, Newsom, often derided by conservative critics for “destroying California,” has threatened to withhold state funds from counties who do not adhere to his executive order.

Sporting aviator glasses, blue jeans, and work gloves, Newsom’s brawny show of force was a distinct detour from what has been characterized by his critics as a wasteful term that has seen Republicans in the state mount a recall effort in 2021. 

Newsom also bucked party establishment during the DNC, openly mocking the process through which Kamala Harris was deemed fit to take over the 2024 ticket. Newsom, and other top Democratic talent, opted to allow the coronation of Harris 2024 knowing full well that there will be ample opportunity to run a full-on presidential candidacy in 2028 and beyond.

As for other potential Republican challengers, Youngkin could be there. Perhaps Hawley too, although the picture may haunt his national ambitions for years to come. Gaetz seems like the type to make a run at the Oval Office, and the country probably deserves a Gaetz vs. AOC showdown for the memes if nothing else. Who knows, even Vance could be in contention, depending on how this whole 2024 thing plays out. 

One thing AOC has is time. 2032 is realistic but 2036 probably suits her best. Meanwhile, she will have plenty of opportunities to walk back her more extreme rhetoric while positioning herself as the guiding female force in the new Democratic party. It’s a long, winding road to Pennsylvania Avenue, but for AOC, it’s all air from here.