There is growing discussion in political circles that leftist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) should seriously consider running for president.
One reason is President Joe Biden’s yearlong dive in approval ratings and her surge as an alternative in 2024. In a McLaughlin & Associates survey of Biden alternatives, she sits in fourth, nearly tied with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and behind Vice President Kamala Harris and former first lady Michelle Obama, who has ruled out a run.
Dick Morris, who managed former President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign for a while and who also advised former President Donald Trump, said Ocasio-Cortez is the heir to the socialist wing of the party and could scoop up Hispanics and liberals upset with Biden’s lack of achievements and energy.
Morris, who just published a book declaring that Trump will run in 2024, said the Bronx congresswoman could easily win a string of Democratic primaries and position herself at the top of the ticket. And while young, she would be the constitutionally required 35 on Inauguration Day.
“AOC might win primary after primary, inflaming the leftist grass roots with her charisma and radical agenda,” Morris wrote in The Return: Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback.
But could she win nationally? Not a chance, Morris said. “She’d likely lose more than 40 states, and maybe all 50. It would be George McGovern, Walter Mondale, or Mike Dukakis all over again,” he said of Democratic presidential candidates who were crushed at the polls.
He concluded:
“But AOC’s goal is not necessarily the presidency. The doctrine of the communists and radical left is, oddly, to destroy the moderate liberal party so there are no alternatives for centrists to embrace other than their radical faction. Just like it was in pre-Nazi Germany, where the center-left Catholic Party was discredited, leaving voters to face a choice between Nazism and Communism. It may not happen. But it could.”
