New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — 26%

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — 22% 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom — 21%

Former Vice President Kamala Harris — 13% 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — 4% 

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker — 4% 

Yes, you read that correctly: A self-declared socialist is now leading all comers to represent the party (likely) against Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2028. Regardless of who represents the GOP, this is about the best news anyone on the right could expect because Ocasio-Cortez will never win a general election. 

Here are three big reasons why:

She’s too emotional under pressure

Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t have the temperament to control her emotions outside of her safe spaces when challenged. And this has nothing to do with gender, as the same thing can be said about former vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. 

Exhibit A: her behavior after her disastrous appearance at a conference in Munich earlier this year, when she was asked how the United States should respond if China invaded Taiwan. 

“Um, you know, I think that I, uh, this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, um, this is of course, a, uh, very long-standing, um, policy of the United States,” she began, as if thinking about the topic for the first time.

“And I think what we are hoping for is that we make sure we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving all of our economic, research, and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation and for that question to even arise,’ she added nervously. 

At another point, she mocked Rubio about his (correct) assertion that horses originally used by ranchers and farmers came to America from Spain. 

“My favorite part was when [Rubio] said that American cowboys came from Spain … And I believe the Mexicans and descendants of African enslaved peoples would like to have a word on that,” she chuckled. 

In the end, as many historians pointed out at the time, Rubio was right and Ocasio-Cortez was wrong. She would go on to criticize President Donald Trump’s capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela by arguing that we had no business “kidnapping” a leader just because they’re below the equator (Venezuela is north of the equator). 

“It was a beauty pageant to show that she had some chops about international issues, and she showed a complete lack of chops about international issues,” noted Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “She’s not ready for prime time on the international stage. If she runs for president, she’s now given the opposition tons of ammunition to destroy her.”

Ocasio-Cortez isn’t used to criticism from her own party. And instead of letting it go or actually admitting she screwed up, perhaps by showing some self-deprecation, she ran to Instagram to post a video scolding anyone who questioned her international bona fides. 

“If you think I don’t understand foreign policy, because of out-of-hours discourse about international affairs, I pause to think about one of the most sensitive geopolitical issues that currently exist on Earth, I’m afraid the issue is not my understanding,” she said as her fiance, Riley Roberts, can be seen and heard snoring in the background. 

“Perhaps the problem is you’ve gotten adjusted to a president that never thinks before he speaks,” she piously concluded. 

She doesn’t talk to the press

Ocasio-Cortez never takes a tough question or does interviews with any journalist or host who disagrees with her. 

So far this year, she’s done a grand total of four interviews, if they can even be called that. 

Her first of two podcast Q&As was with disgraced former CNN anchor Don Lemon, which was a predictable Trump-bashing exercise that lasted less than 20 minutes and generated just 205,000 views on Lemon’s YouTube channel. For context, Trump’s three-hour interview with Joe Rogan before the 2024 election generated more than 62 million views on his YouTube channel.

Her other podcast interview occurred last week when she sat down with comedian Ilana Glazer. It was here that she argued that billionaires haven’t earned the right to be billionaires. So if you’re, say, Elon Musk, and you’ve created enormous wealth through successful companies from SpaceX to Tesla to Starlink, while also creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process, apparently, you haven’t earned being rich. 

Her only print interview was with the New York Times’s Kellen Browning, whom she called directly to clean up the mess from Munich. 

Browning didn’t disappoint. 

“The way her performance was microscopically dissected through the lens of what it meant for a hypothetical White House campaign frustrated AOC,” a sympathetic Browning wrote. “She said she worried that her message was being lost in all the commotion.” 

Her only TV news interview was with CNN’s Jake Tapper after Minneapolis citizen Alex Pretti was killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis after getting into a confrontation with them while carrying a firearm. The entire interview focused on Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

“She takes questions multiple times a day from the press. And anyone with a press credential is able to find her in the Capitol and ask her questions,” her chief of staff, Mike Casca, told Axios. But when Axios asked Casca for an interview with Ocasio-Cortez directly, they declined. 

This is what former President Joe Biden and Harris attempted to pull off in 2024 during their presidential runs: A risk-averse strategy to avoid making news for the wrong reasons. And when both did eventually face relatively challenging questions, they didn’t perform well. 

She won’t appeal to centrists

Unlike Harris, she will not pretend to pivot to the center in a general election campaign. She will continue to oppose fossil fuels, fracking, and coal, which takes winning the key swing state of Pennsylvania off the board. She will continue to push for electric vehicle mandates, which means losing the support of the United Auto Workers in Michigan. And as Pennsylvania and Michigan go, so goes Wisconsin. 

The same goes for service workers in Nevada, who have embraced Trump’s no-tax-on-tips policy, which Ocasio-Cortez has publicly opposed. And in Arizona, anyone who cares about border security cannot possibly back her, given her embrace of open borders. As for Georgia and North Carolina — the first two swing states called for Trump before midnight in 2024 — they are only getting redder as the exodus from blue states continues to southern states. 

Climate change and spending trillions to battle it in the Green New Deal are what put Ocasio-Cortez on the national map. Her declaration that the world would end by 2031 unless the Green New Deal became law is looking quite shaky right now. She also still wants to defund the police, abolish ICE, expand the Supreme Court, nuke the Electoral College, strip Israel of all funding, allow men to compete against women in sports, and convert healthcare to an entirely government-run entity. 

These are all losing issues. But you’ll still read from “experts” that her youth, energy, and social media prowess may be enough to make her the 48th president. 

“They assume that my ambition is positional; they assume that my ambition is a title or a seat,” Ocasio-Cortez said at an event Friday in Chicago when asked if she’ll run for president. “And my ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country.”

The polls say she can either win the nomination or be highly competitive. Given the other choices for Democrats, the bar hasn’t exactly been set high. 

MAGAZINE — THE RIGHT WAY FORWARD: IT’S TIME FOR CONSERVATIVES TO DISCUSS AND DEBATE THE FUTURE

Ocasio-Cortez wants to change the country fundamentally. The question is: Does she have the courage to leave her sanctuary and the maturity to endure the scrutiny any big presidential campaign brings?

The answer is no. Not even close.