You may have noticed there is much hand-wringing among Democrats about the inability of the party to mount a credible opposition to Trump and the damage he is doing to the country and the world. Some are pointing to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Sen. Bernie Sanders and the big rallies they have been staging as a part of their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour as at least a part of the answer.
Of course Sen. Sanders is 83 and AOC is 35 so all eyes are on her to be the leader of a potential new movement, one typically characterized as left-wing populism.
A story in Axios points out that AOC and Sanders are drawing record crowds, even in some reliably red states, and that AOC is “breaking fundraising records, and surging in the early polling of potential 2028 presidential candidates.”
A YouGov poll released April 16 shows AOC with a +61 approval rating among Democrats, behind the usual crowd of Obama (+86), Harris (+84), Sanders (+75), Biden (+70), and Waltz (+61). AOC is followed by Clinton (+59), Warren (+58), Booker (+52), and Buttigieg (+51).
A recent survey by Yale University put OAC in second place (21.5) in a potential Democratic presidential primary to Kamala Harris (27.5).
These are early days; nothing is particularly significant at this point, but these sorts of numbers certainly put AOC in the mix.
As for AOC being the face of the opposition to Trump and even the face of the party, there are those who will say that it has been the Democratic Party’s move to the left that has created the electoral challenges it has more recently faced. As per the Axios piece, this cohort argues that “OAC may thrill many partisan Democrats – but the party needs to win back people in the middle.”
Many who have been toiling on the left for years will find some of these concerns compelling. The real left in America has been in the political wilderness for so long that any suggestion there is a way out seems almost absurd. But if Trump’s victories in 2016 and 2024 tell us anything, it is that old analyses may not apply.
I am not one of those who think there is no value to understanding politics in terms of the left and the right. Perhaps the better way to see how the electorate views politics, though, is as a contest between those who seem to understand the challenges countless American’s face verses those who seem to be clueless.
These days, no matter how progressive the policies of the Democrat Party are, so much of the way they are perceived smacks of bi-coastal cosmopolitanism. And while there is way too much racism, sexism and bigotry of other kinds in the rejection of the Democratic Party by so many, a great part of that rejection is in their belief that Democrats just don’t get them. It makes us crazy to think these same folks think Trump does get them, but that’s where we are.
I don’t know if AOC can break through, can convince those who are struggling that she can be their voice. I don’t know if someone who will be tarred as a “radical leftist” can be successful in American politics at a national level. What I do know is that Trump’s populist appeal took us by surprise and that many of the things we thought we knew about politics are not true.
I’m willing to be convinced.
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