Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused establishment Democrats of treating her “like shit” as progressive activists urged her to run for president in 2028.
In a 100-minute long video posted on Instagram, the 37-year-old congresswoman from New York said that the party had a “remarkable opportunity” to pass left-wing policies after the midterm elections. She also accused the party’s leadership of starving funds from left-wing candidates during the campaign.
“There’s this huge conversation about candidates that were under invested in,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She cited Angie Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who came within 240,000 votes of flipping Florida from red to blue, but ultimately lost to the Republican candidate Ashley Moody.
“If Angie Nixon had just had a little bit of that support, that outcome could have changed. But that money has to come from somewhere and it comes from these people,” Ocasio-Cortez said in reference to the party’s Senate leadership.
Reflecting on the period after she was first elected to Congress in 2018 at the age of 29, Ocasio-Cortez accused senior Democrats of being “horrifically cruel” to her. “I mean I was treated like shit,” she said. “Everybody took a swing at me.”
The Bronx congresswoman is seen as the likeliest progressive candidate to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028.
I have also thought about that. Jon Ossof seems like the most likely primaries and general election winner. But AOC is also polling strong, second place in democrat primaries. The democratic party is almost split 50/50 between moderate and progressive wing, so it would make sense to have some sort of compromise ballot, where better polling moderate is the president, second best polling AOC is the VP, so both wings of the dems get something out of it.