After blue wave, socialists look ahead to AOC 2028

Tuesday night’s blue tsunami has many members of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America more convinced than ever that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs to run for president in 2028.

Ocasio-Cortez has not yet said whether she will run for president, but that hasn’t stopped DSA chapters across the country from trying to draft her. DSA members in Los Angeles (which just elected its own democratic socialist mayor), Atlanta and Chicago, to name just a few, have already passed “Run AOC Run” resolutions encouraging Ocasio-Cortez to launch a presidential campaign.

NYC-DSA is poised to join them next Saturday when it holds its biennial citywide convention – a point that co-chair Gustavo Gordillo emphasized while speaking at an NYC-DSA election watch party in Astoria on Tuesday night. 

“On Nov. 14, at our citywide convention, we’re going to be voting whether to encourage our congresswoman who represents this very district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to run for president,” he said, as the crowd broke out into chants of “A-O-C!”

Gordillo said that the recent electoral success of socialists and other progressives show that the conventional wisdom that left-wing candidates are unelectable is false.

“For so long, we have been told that democratic socialists would be a liability,” he said. “We've been told for so long that if we elect democratic socialists throughout the country that we won't be able to win races in Texas, in Florida. Tonight, we actually elected a democratic socialist in Tampa in a Republican MAGA-held seat.”

For many DSA members at the party, the key race to watch was the U.S. Senate election in Michigan. Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed was not endorsed by DSA or even a socialist, but he campaigned on Medicare for All and ending U.S. aid to Israel – two key policies that would be at the center of any future DSA presidential campaign – and Ocasio-Cortez herself barnstormed Michigan to try to get him elected. His victory was taken as proof that a candidate like Ocasio-Cortez could win outside deep-blue New York City.

“I think after tonight, we're going to prove, without a doubt, that in this country, we can run an agenda of Medicare for All, of taxing the rich, of taking money out of politics, and we can build a majority nationwide for this agenda,” Gordillo said.

State Sen.-elect Aber Kawas, who on Tuesday became the first Palestinian American elected to the state Legislature, echoed Gordillo but also emphasized that democratic socialist elected officials need to adopt an internationalist focus and not just settle for changing domestic policy.

“We do not want universal healthcare or universal child care or free education at the expense of destroying the lives of others,” she said. “We have never believed that, and we come from a political system that destroys people's lives to extract resources, but we know that we don't need to live in scarcity, and when we build the world together, it will be a fully capable, resourced world that we will make happen.”

Kawas told City & State that a presidential candidate like Ocasio-Cortez could help deliver on DSA’s ambitions for demilitarization and a fairer world order.

“What we want to see is someone who's running for president who is de-investing from militarism, and I think that is something that can be really achievable. … If the global community is seeing the United States come to the table not as a bully, but as somebody who is coming to cooperate to build a world that everyone can live in, I think that is really important,” she said.

Asked directly whether she believed Ocasio-Cortez should run for president, Kawas said she would make a strong candidate – though she added that the movement will not live or die on her decision.

“She has to make her own choice, but I think that if she does run for president, it would present a real opportunity for the voice of democratic socialists to expand and for the movement to expand on a national level,” Kawas said. “But I also truly believe that even if she doesn't, that this is not a movement that is just built by one politician.”