AOC for President — or the Senate?

Speculation that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will run for president has been growing louder. Much of the buzz has been effusive, as in The Guardian’s assessment that “it is hard to imagine anyone who better personifies a rebuke of the octogenarian Trump and his nativist ‘Make America great again’ (Maga) movement” than the 36-year-old congresswoman from New York. In The New York Times, Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom writes that “Ocasio-Cortez is made for this moment.” Even writers at Bari Weiss’ center-right Free Press sound a little bubbly when addressing a possible AOC run, noting that she possesses “dazzling charisma and [a] national following.”

When asked about the prospect, the congresswoman has been coy, but is clearly entertaining the idea, if not laying the early political groundwork for her first national campaign. On social media, Ocasio-Cortez has been unusually active, notably chronicling her experience with freezing her eggs — a move that all but announces she’s gearing up for something big. As Cottom put it, “Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to talk publicly about freezing her eggs is the kind of leadership women are hungry for.”

Those who support AOC and her politics, but think a run is premature, generally focus on her shortcomings as a candidate. Green on foreign policy, they note, and still learning the ropes. While valid, there is another, and arguably stronger, case for AOC focusing on defeating Chuck Schumer in November of 2028. Doing so, John Ganz argues in a recent Substack essay, would better “serve her party and faction” in what is sure to be a long generational fight to transform U.S. politics. 

A Senate seat, writes Ganz,

combines a long six-year term, enormous individual prerogatives, statewide legitimacy, relatively weak party discipline, and—especially historically—the possibility of building an independent political organization around an individual senator. Traditionally, this has been used to defend a sectional interest that is combined with the ideological tendency and political economy native to that region. 

The Senatorial redoubt also allows for an intraparty faction to have its own stronghold. For example, look how Senator Robert Taft kept the Old Right alive in the Senate during a period of progressive Democratic hegemony and then was instrumental in rolling back the New Deal. For an example of rising rather than fading tendency, Jesse Helms turned his North Carolina seat into a springboard for the New Right that came to power in the 1980s. Today, Rand Paul serves this function for libertarianism and Bernie Sanders for social democracy or democratic socialism. But Bernie is old and the Senate will need a new representative of his tradition. A.O.C. is the most obvious choice.

Ganz concedes that this “may sound like a little bit of a defensive strategy,” but argues that the left must “plan for adversity.” Democratic socialism is still 

and, may yet be for a while, a minority political tendency in this country: it is one faction of one party. To use Gramsci, a Senate seat is an important part of a “war of position:” a faction that has lost the presidency, the national party apparatus, or even much of its mass constituency may nevertheless retain an institutional strongpoint from which it can defend its gains and hone counteroffensives. And perhaps more importantly to do the actual work of legislating, investigating, and “advising and consenting” to the executive. I really do not like the left-wing cant phrase “building power,” but A.O.C. in the Senate, which seems a safer bet, is a better way to build power than going for broke with a presidential run. I think as an organization D.S.A. should consider if it is developed enough nationally to support and sustain a presidential run. What it has clearly done is built a lot of infrastructure in New York that could propel a Senate candidate into office. QED: AOC.

Read the full essay at Ganz’ essential Substack, Unpopular Front.