Bhaskar Sunkara writes:

After Donald Trump’s victory in 2024, AOC went to dozens of her constituents who had voted for both her and Trump and asked them why. She wanted to understand them rather than lecture them. Their answers – that she and Trump both read as outsiders, that both sounded like they were on the side of working people – informed her politics in the months to come. Some of the people who once formed the base of the left had split their tickets or stayed home, and she was one of the Democrats willing to walk toward them instead of writing them off.

In going to them, she was approaching one of the central questions of our era. In 1992, nearly two-thirds of working-class voters backed Bill Clinton for president. By 2024, the Democratic share of working-class voters was 45%, while among middle- and upper-class voters it had climbed to 68%. The lines crossed. The party of Roosevelt has become the party of the diploma, and its strategists have made peace with it, betting on affluent suburbanites and young professionals to sustain the party’s future.

The math might work for those looking to win elections with 51% of the vote, but not for those looking to create a majority for sweeping change. In his long career and in his first run for president, Sanders offered a glimpse of how such a majority might be built. He held Vermont’s rather conservative Northeast Kingdom for decades and ran well ahead of his party among independents nationally in 2016, and a good deal of that rested on the sharp line he drew between himself and the Democratic establishment. Ocasio-Cortez will have to draw that same line despite being far more of a Democrat than Sanders ever was, more embedded in its caucus, and more implicated in its choices.

The evolution of her rhetoric shows that she might be up for the challenge. On the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour with Sanders through 2025, she was talking to parts of the country the Democratic party had long since abandoned. More than 12,500 people turned out for a rally in Nampa, Idaho, a bigger crowd than the number of registered Democrats in the entire county. Twenty thousand came out in deep-red Utah. Whatever the tours’ ultimate efficacy, the US’s two most prominent leftists were showing their 50-state ambitions.

Crowds are not a party, but Ocasio-Cortez has both. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, part of its socialists-in-office bloc, and that affiliation ties her to a concrete worldview, to an ideology and a history, even if she has at times seemed a less-than-enthusiastic member of an unruly organization. But DSA has plenty going for it, including thousands of talented organizers and a roster of hundreds of elected officials that includes the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani. [Continue reading…]

Dace Potas writes:

In 2018, Democrats were reeling from Trump’s first win but still had some faith in their party’s ability to fight back. Now, after losing to him twice and watching the opposition accomplish little, they’ve had enough. Prediction markets already list AOC among the top three Democratic contenders, and the climate keeps improving as democratic socialists rack up wins nationwide.

The climate isn’t just ripe for a candidate like AOC; she’s formidable enough to meet the moment. Her biggest asset is authenticity, the ability to make working-class voters feel she is one of them.

Her 2018 campaign was built on that strategy, with ads leaning on her working-class roots and community ties, and it’s kept her in the House for nearly a decade. She also pioneered much of the digital strategy that today’s “working class” candidates emulate.

She also has the tangible traits a presidential run demands: strong name recognition and the fundraising infrastructure to back a national campaign. And democratic socialists have no other star of her stature, leaving her heir to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ base. [Continue reading…]