Is AOC ready to run for president?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. We keep talking about the Democrats and it's important that we do because they are having quite a battle at the moment, an internal battle from which they might end up much stronger or maybe not. They're having a battle to shape their future and also to an extent to shake off their recent past. One of America's most recognisable left-wing politicians, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has entered the fray, apparently disowning what she called the party's woke era in an interview this week. So in doing so, is she hitting back against some of the more extreme positions being taken by the party's left wing at the moment and potentially shaping her own bid for the White House?

0:43Could she, AOC, be the great unifier? And how seriously do the right see her as a threat, or is it just another example of the Democrats having another argument among themselves? Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump Arrangement Syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up!

1:24Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony here with Sarah in Washington, D.C. And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England, and it's just after three o 'clock in the afternoon British time on Thursday. And we have a question straight off from Ian on Discord. Is it really possible, Ian asks, that one day AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will be president? That is exactly the question we're going to answer today. The answer, of course, is maybe. But we're going to do it in a little bit more detail, aren't we? I mean, number one, it is really interesting, isn't it, who she is and how she suddenly found herself back in the spotlight.

2:08Because you feel she is one of these characters, don't you, who's been around for a bit. She has been very much on the left in the Democratic Party, big figure on the left in the Democratic Party. And just this week, she has reinserted herself into the national debate and into the Democrats debate. Yeah, I would say yes, it is possible, certainly, that she could be president. She has that kind of national platform, national visibility that you need to be able to run for president. She has a national fundraising network. You're right. She has changed a bit since she came in in 2019. She was part of that squad, if you remember, of young, progressive socialist women that included Ilhan Omar.

2:49and Cori Bush and some others. But she has since kind of become a separate personality unto herself. And for Democrats who are looking for a new young left-wing face of the party, I think she's one of the ones that comes to mind first. And you say, Anthony, she was part of that squad of young left-wingers. I mean, I think she was always the most visible woman, wasn't she? She's particularly young. She pulled off a huge electoral upset when she got first elected to Congress. She was only 28. She did it by defeating in a primary election a sitting congressman who'd been in Congress for 20 years or so, one of the most powerful Democrats there was.

3:29She knocked out in the primary and then went on to win the race. She has always been very open and paraded her working class roots. She was working as a bartender and a waitress when she got elected. She came from a working class family. She's also very glamorous, very media friendly in that respect. The camera loves her, so she's always got a lot of attention. And she was playing a good social media game from the very beginning. I mean, I'm sure you were watching her election in New York, Anthony. I wasn't working in the United States at the time. And I think she first came to my attention by hitting Twitter, as it was then, and Instagram, talking fervently about politics, but also telling us what brand of lipstick she was wearing at the same time and she did it very naturally and very effectively.

4:16Yeah, I think that has been her particular talent, especially early on. She would be streaming live for hours at a time, making bean burritos or whatever at home, but then also talking about politics. And she was able to connect and break through with young voters in a way that some of the older Democrats, they don't even have the tools and the authenticity to be able to do that. Let's listen to the moment she found out she'd been elected. So this is the first election to Congress. She's on live television. It's 2018. I'm going to grab her. She's right here. I can't let you know. Oh, my God. She's looking at herself on television right now.

4:55How are you feeling? Can you put it into words? Nope. I cannot put this into words. All right. Your supporters here are very excited for you. Hi. This is a grassroots campaign. Can you believe the numbers that you're seeing right now? I cannot believe these numbers right now. Well, I think what we've seen is that working class Americans want a clear champion, and there is nothing radical about moral clarity in 2018. For someone who can't put how she's feeling into words, that was a pretty well-formed statement, and that shows you just the kind of polish that she has, as well as quite a lot of charisma, and why, if you were going to pick anybody from the Democratic Socialist movement or from the progressive left of the Democrats, She's the most obvious one, I think, to be thinking about if they're on a wave and potentially able to capture the nomination in 2028.

5:46Anthony, do you remember her first coming across your radar? Yeah, I mean, it was a surprise when she won. Certainly there was rumblings that that she had a chance because she was actively campaigning in this congressional district. And Joe Crowley, who had been there, as you mentioned, for 20 years, really didn't do much there. He was kind of resting on his laurels. He didn't show up for debates, leaving the field clear in the primary race, which is where she beat him. This is a very solidly Democratic district. Also, I think that the district had changed demographically considerably. And this was one of the first signs that these demographic changes could lead to established Democratic politicians, no matter how much power they may have in Washington, getting upset.

6:34So this was, you know, I've spent a lot of time covering Republicans where Republican incumbents had been ousted, surprisingly. Congressman Cantor from Virginia was a leadership in the Republican Party and him getting knocked out of office in a primary in Virginia in 2012 or 14, I think it was. That was a sign of the ground shifting in the Republican Party leading up to Donald Trump. Well, here we have the same sort of thing happening for Democrats. And AOC was one of the first, certainly not the last. Abdul El-Sa 'id, we just saw a few weeks ago, another kind of left-wing insurgent candidate being able to use grassroots to ride and beat an establishment-chosen successor.

7:15I think that is another good example that AOC started a trend that we're still seeing today. Yeah, and that's the really interesting thing which we're going to get to, aren't we, is whether this is just a succession of left-wing candidates kind of firing off and everyone gets excited and then they sort of go away or become more right-wing. Something sort of happens to them. And potentially, I think there might be those who are saying that now about AOC. But we should also say, right back in the day, there was a minor league BBC journalist who wrote, the progressive left just fired a warning shot across the bow of the Democratic Party establishment.

7:51That journalist, folks, was Anthony Zerker. And you're dead right. And you're dead right then. But I suppose the question then that you were pondering is the extent to which it was a warning shot or something a bit more. And it is interesting, isn't it, that once she got into Congress, it was a bit more because she really took the bull by the horns when it came to making a name for herself and doing it in a pretty aggressive manner. We should listen to a bit of her doing what I suppose Kamala Harris also did this, didn't she, when she got to the Senate. You use these hearings to kind of really polish your image as an aggressive political combatant.

8:33And let's listen to AOC doing a bit of that. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids, their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist. In your ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures, some of who advanced the conspiracy theory that white supremacy is a hoax, Did you discuss so-called social media bias against conservatives, and do you believe there is a bias?

9:16Congresswoman, I don't remember everything that was in the question. That's all right. I'll move on. Can you explain? That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person? Are your feelings hurt? Move her words down. Oh, girl, baby girl. Oh, really? Don't even play with me. Baby girl? I don't think so. We are going to move and we're going to take your words down. That was her in combat with Marjorie Taylor Greene on the floor of the House of Representatives there. Now, we're talking about AOC this week, partly because there has been a lot of news from the progressive left of the Democratic Party, and therefore it feels like it's a good time to be talking about them potentially, maybe even winning the Democratic primary races in 2028.

10:03But she's also made the news herself in a couple of ways. She went on social media with a video of herself taking a hormone injection and announcing that she has decided to freeze her ex. She's 36. It's turned out that she has just split up with her long term fiancé as well or split up at some point with him and is single. And she said she was doing this and making it public because she wanted to normalize conversations around the process in this political environment and highlight the cost of this for a lot of women who want to do this kind of thing. But at the same time, of course, she has propelled herself back into the headlines and people have been doing interviews with her and talking about her as potentially the leader, essentially, of this left wing movement through the Democratic Party.

10:47Yeah. And I think that reflects a vacuum right now in the left. Bernie Sanders is not running again, but he was obviously the person who really created this new progressive left wing movement when he ran for president in 2015 and 2016. But he's in his mid to late 80s at this point. So that's that's not happening. So I think Elizabeth Warren's too old. Elizabeth Warren also is too old. You know, she ran in 2020. I think she's in her late 70s also. So there's no clear successor. And AOC, one of the interesting things about her in that ensuing time between when she was elected in 2019 and now is that she got to Congress.

11:28And we heard a little clips of those hearings. But she wasn't a show horse. She actually worked in Congress and she made connections and she didn't grandstand. She engaged in the legislative process. She kind of proved that she was more than just a flash in the pan. And so now she's in a position, a stronger position, I think, to be able to present herself as the progressive, the face of the progressive party, the progressive left. And this announcement about freezing her eggs has absolutely bolder googly to the Republicans and her opponents. It has been fascinating because obviously this isn't going to be the centre of a political platform or anything like that.

12:09It's a piece of personal news. But watching MAGA Republicans struggling to know how to react. They want to say it's terrible and awful because it's AOC doing it, but they're pro-family, aren't they? But of course, they're probably not women putting off having children because, as Republicans would say, they're putting their career first. But at the same time, do they want to stop women from using fertility treatments to have babies? They are all over the place about how to react. Fascinating split screen as well, isn't it, Justin? When you look at Caroline Leavitt, the very high profile press secretary for Donald Trump in the White House, standing down this week because she says, having come back to work, having had her second child, it's just too much.

12:49It's an all-consuming job and she needs to spend time with her family right now. So she's stepping back from the workplace for her family, just as AOC is saying that she wants to preserve the right to have a family at some point, but the time is not now. So, I mean, it has thrown all of this conversation, you know, right into the headlines in a way that's fascinating. So you've just said Boulder Googly as well, which just occurs to me that quite a few of our American listeners might be losing us at that because they're not experts on cricket, not the kind of experts that you and Anthony are. And indeed, I might pretend to be.

13:24So a googly is, it's a bit, it's like a curveball, basically, without going into great detail about what it is. It's a particular ball that you bowl. But anyway, it's a cricketing metaphor. Let's just leave it there. And the thing is, she bowled two googly's, didn't she? And this is the important thing. So the first googly was that. The second googly, then following on from that video, was this interview she did with Jonathan Karl on ABC News, the first appearance on a big major Sunday news show for a couple of years. He asked her about the journey she's been on, the political journey she's been on, whether she was more cautious now and why she wasn't backing some of the more left-wing candidates who've been around in this primary season.

14:09And she used this fascinating phrase. Let's have a listen to what she said. I have a local city councilman that has this saying, woke one was crazy. Woke one was crazy. And I think that what's important is that we have to assess what expanded it is saying. Did the movement go too far with some of those positions? I mean, you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police. Well, you know, I think I think that during this time and during especially during covid, there was a huge opening of the Overton window. We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns.

14:50And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that were had in that time were quite fruitful. Woke won. I think we maybe need to remind people exactly what the woke movement was, at least the way it was presented in 2020, as AOC mentions there, during the COVID shutdown. That was also right at the height of the Me Too movement, where a lot of women were coming forward with their stories about sexual harassment and assault at the hand of powerful men and the pushback against those men where you had lists of people who, say, in Hollywood, were considered the worst offenders.

15:34And then after the George Floyd murder, the protests for civil rights and the idea that black lives matter and that the society and American political institutions were inherently racist and structured against black people and other people of color, and that bold steps needed to be taken to address this. She's not entirely disassociating herself from things like, you know, defund the police, open the borders, all the other things that make up woke one. But she's also saying, hey, that was then, this is now. And, you know, we've talked again and again and again, haven't we, about how the Democrats, not to say that any of these things were right or wrong, it's not our position to say that, But they are not in the mainstream of American opinion, certainly not outside the big cities.

16:25So to what extent can the Democrats kind of reconcile themselves with their recent past and also persuade Americans that they are really now focused on affordability and on the whole business of providing electrical power for data centers that is causing so much upset around the United States? In other words, things that are real issues, real pocketbook issues for people and somehow find a way of putting all of this stuff behind them. And I thought as a first effort to do that, I thought it was pretty effective, actually. Yeah, there was a number of things that I'm sure she's going to need to try and move away from if she is genuinely going to run for president.

17:05There's the policy positions, which it's easy to characterize and make sound very far out there and that most voters, frankly, won't agree with. And that is the things you're saying, like open the borders, close all the prisons, defund the police, things that are not anywhere close to the mainstream of American politics. And then there's the kind of ideological tests that the left put to each other where they started this war of ideological and moral purity, where if you didn't completely agree with some of their most outlandish statements, then you would be cancelled within the movement as well.

17:39And that made it very, very difficult for people who wanted to try and moderate their positions to come up through it. So whether AOC can succeed in leading her part of the party away from that will be very interesting. That's clearly what she's trying to do to move them into a much more electoral and acceptable position. I watched a clip on the show Young Turks, which is kind of a progressive left TV program. Cenk Uyghur has been a young Turk, although he's not so young anymore for a decade. And he was critical of AOC. He said he he felt sorry having to say this, but he compared her to Kyrsten Sinema, who was a senator from Arizona who started as a progressive, then became a kind of a centrist who associated more with the Republicans by the end of her time in the Senate than than she did at the beginning.

18:27and said that AOC was following down that track, that she had become too connected to the money and the power and the kind of go along, get along culture in Washington, D.C. And he said this, you know, not angrily, but more sadly. And that's the risk, right? AOC, she didn't endorse some of these progressive left candidates. She didn't endorse the Democratic Socialist who was running for Wisconsin governor, Francisca Hong, who ended up losing narrowly in a race on Tuesday, did not endorse those challengers in New York City who Zofran Mamdani, the mayor, had backed, who unseated some incumbent Congress people there.

19:13where she has been a little more reluctant to back some of the more radical members of her own party who have ended up being successful. It's perfectly possible that we will see her running in the primaries in 2028 for the Democratic nomination with somebody to the left of her bringing up all of these things. I mean, possibly even Abdul El-Sayed, who just won the primary in Michigan. If he wins his Senate seat, that would put him in a fairly strong position to perhaps try and represent even further to the left than AOC. So it's always the case, isn't it, that you have to appeal to such a broad swathe of the party that you will disenfranchise some parts.

19:52But yeah, I would say she doesn't necessarily have the left wing sewn up if she was going to go into this. It looks like her bigger challenge would be to persuade moderates, but she might have her problems on the left as well. I think actually that's a really interesting point. I think actually she would welcome someone on the left of her because I think she can then present herself to the party. So she's got the stridency, the salience, all that kind of youthfulness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, still in her 30s, et cetera. But also she'll be able to say to the party, don't be frightened like you were once frightened of Bernie Sanders.

20:25Look at the panic back in 2016 that led eventually to Hillary Clinton and to the disaster. Don't panic again because I've got people, there are all sorts of firebrands, crazies, people still in woke one on my left. Don't take any notice of them. I can pull the party together, but do it from the left. Isn't that a convincing corridor for her to be in? I think it definitely would help. I think you're right. I don't think she's going to run for president in 2020. And I don't think she's making the moves now. You just undermined our entire conversation. It's OK. She's still important. And actually, she could be a kingmaker or a queenmaker within the party.

21:09I mean, I think the freezing the egg things kind of shows the challenges. She's 36 years old and she's got a long career ahead of her. I think she might be much more interested in running for Senate and going after Chuck Schumer in a couple of years, but she's keeping her options open because that gets her TV appearances and meet the press and we're here talking about her, right? But she isn't making the maneuvers behind the scenes right now that you would think would set up a presidential run, because, I mean, it's almost time for these folks to start throwing their hats in the ring. And people like Gavin Newsom and J.B.

21:43Pritzker and Josh Shapiro, they're all have much more established kind of grassroots organizations that they can turn the key on where she doesn't. But that again, Justin, that doesn't mean that she's not important and that the issues that she's bringing up and what she represents isn't really important, really worth grappling with, because I think it's fascinating that she didn't endorse some of these people who are running. I think it's fascinating that she's trying to distance herself from woke culture and focus on an economic message. I think she wants to take the party and the progressive left in a direction that is more appealing mainstream, where they can win in 2028, that they can get someone to run for the Democratic nomination and actually win it.

22:27And right now, there's no guarantee that that's possible. We saw Al-Sayed win barely in Michigan, despite leading in the polls. We saw Francesca Hong lose barely in Wisconsin. So the talk about this is a progressive moment. Anyone with this bold kind of slate of progressive ideas is going to be able to capture the party. That's not the case. They're going to need someone who is good, someone who is attractive to a larger swath of the party and someone who can raise the kind of money to go toe to toe with Gavin Newsom and the J.B. Pritzkers and Josh Shapiro's in the party. If you look at who was voting in those two primary races that you just referenced in Michigan and Wisconsin, where the progressive candidate got about 50 percent of the vote, just enough to win in Michigan, not quite enough to win in Wisconsin.

23:16Johnson, it was younger voters by and large that were supporting more progressive candidates. Do you think there's a generational shift of people AOC's age that if she was to leave this for potentially eight years, if a Democrat wins in 2028, that the Overton window, as she described it, will have moved to the position where there's more chance of a progressive presidential success? I think that's certainly possible. She would be, what, 40, 44, which is still pretty darn young and still can kind of claim that generational change mantle. And yeah, it seems like young voters are, at least in the Democratic Party, are much more progressive, much more diverse, maybe much more willing to support a candidate like AOC, and then she might have a better chance of winning and doesn't seem quite so fresh and inexperienced.

24:07And just to argue against myself, in a sense, I think, Anthony, you're right to draw attention to the fact that she is not by any manner or means the finished article. And she was at the Munich Security Conference recently. So big international gathering, chance to kind of strut your stuff when it comes to foreign affairs. Very important if you're going to be a presidential candidate, potentially. And she actually bombed. She wasn't very good at it at all. She was asked kind of easy questions about Ukraine and particularly about Taiwan. Would and should the US actually commit US troops to defend Taiwan if China were to move?

24:45You know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is a, this is of course a... And she was seen to be all at sea, even the New York Times, which is quite favourably disposed towards her thought she'd done really badly. So I think you're right. There is plenty of work still to be done. But I just think, number one, I think that's the case often with presidential candidates, a little bit out from the actual race. And number two, I just don't think there is another candidate who could be the credible voice of the left when it comes to this huge primary that there's going to be for the presidency in 28 on both sides, of course, but particularly on the Democratic side we're talking about.

25:34And I just think she has a lot of what it would take and seems to me to be positioning herself deliberately to attract parts of the party. And she went on that tour with Bernie Sanders, didn't she? No two oligarchs tour or whatever it was called. And, you know, she does a lot of stuff that is national. And she's obviously decided now to be national again and nationally salient. And I think for all those reasons, I'm not discounting that she is going to run. Though I should also say, and actually we should just listen to him. You were saying, Anthony, that there are those on the left who are already saying, whoa, hang on a second.

26:08We don't like this. We don't like the direction she's going in. I talked to Hassan Paikar, this guy who live streams on Twitch and is a big, big figure now on the progressive left, the aggressive progressive left. I can put it like that. Very aggressive person who's said some pretty out there things, including once that America deserved 9-11. And he's also said things about Hamas and Israel that are deeply offensive to a lot of American Jews. But for all of that, he is a big figure on the American left at the moment. And I've interviewed him for my day job for the Today program here in Britain.

26:46And we talked a little bit about AOC and he was actually pretty lukewarm about her, although he did also say, and this is the clip that we ought to listen to now. I asked him, OK, is there going to be, can you get a left candidate, a progressive left candidate, a socialist candidate into position to be the party's nominee in 2028? Is that where all of this that we've just been talking about, all these primaries and all the rest of it, is that where it eventually gets to? And this is what he said. I believe the chances are very high, and I'm going to continue working in that direction every single day tirelessly, which is what I think the Republican side and even some in the establishment Democrats actually recognize as a real danger.

27:31It's not a danger to American democracy, of course, but it's more so a danger to the business as usual politics, the status quo politics that has stiffed workers for far too long. You know, AOC was asked about Hassan Piker in that interview with Jonathan Karl that we played a clip of earlier. And she said, well, you know, Democrats were criticized for not going on Joe Rogan, despite some of his controversial views. She believes that people should be able to go on whatever podcast they want and reach out to the viewership, the audience of those. Hassan Piker is just kind of the left version of that.