Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s flirtation with a presidential run is the latest warning sign of just how far the Democratic Party’s leadership has careened off the rails. After crushing defeats in the latest election, moderate Democrats have failed to take matters into their own hands, continuing to kneel to the strength of the far-left wing of their party who champion socialism, divisive class warfare and pipe dreams that seem to have come straight out of fairytales.

While there haven’t yet been any formal statements from the democratic socialist congresswoman, reports based on individuals familiar with her operations have confirmed that her team is actively positioning her for a White House or Senate campaign in 2028.

AOC’s message is abhorrently popular among Democrats, and Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic frontrunner in the New York City mayoral election, is essentially a male equivalent of AOC. He and many other socialists have championed absurd and dangerous policies that would wreck cities, states and our country if they were enacted.

Unfortunately for moderates like New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, AOC, despite her complete failure to accomplish anything of substance in Congress, excels at one thing New York’s current senators do not: getting her message across.

This should frighten Schumer and Gillibrand, as both have faced mounting criticism for their actions and inactions.

While Schumer is very effective at reaching people through the media, he is not nearly as effective at persuading them of his views as AOC is. As Senate minority leader, he struck a compromise with Republicans in March 2025 to avert a government shutdown, even though Democrats have long portrayed Republicans as the sole cause of such crises. In response, Democrats like AOC, backed by the far-left media, rallied the party in calling for Schumer’s resignation. That compromise, reasonable and, in many ways, a demonstration of Schumer’s leadership, was nonetheless viewed as a betrayal of the Democratic Party, or at least AOC’s vision of what the Democratic Party should be.

And of course many New Yorkers have viewed Gillibrand as a sort of low-hanging fruit who has been effectively absent. She’s evidently realized this and has, at least in the past year, come a bit further out of the woodwork to try and establish herself as her next campaign approaches.

AOC would not be planning one of these runs if she didn’t think she had a chance. No doubt her internal polling shows promise, and myriad factors, such as Mamdani’s high likelihood of winning New York City, and the massive, unprecedented ground operation he’s built in the state, particularly among young voters, have created a perfect storm to provide her with a real chance at getting real power.

The problem with democratic socialists is that they push ideas built on the fears and dreams of people across the United States who hope for a better tomorrow. Their message is always resoundingly utopian. Everybody succeeds. Everybody gets what they want. In a perfect world, if these objectives were feasible, it would be difficult to argue against them. But we don’t live in a perfect world. For every utopian ideal of a socialist, there is some major tradeoff that comes with it.

Want free college for everyone? Lower standards, worse educational quality and fewer resources for students who need them most. Want universal health care overnight? Rationed care, longer wait times, worse services and fewer health care breakthroughs.

But fortunately for democratic socialists, they can count on young, naive kids to believe in a better future that can be achieved without great consequence. We all recognize that wherever socialism or communism has been implemented, things have gone horribly wrong, and nations have fallen. We are a country built on capitalism, and we are the strongest in the world because of it. Becoming socialist would not make us better off. It would destroy us.

AOC’s real chance at taking a higher office should be a dire warning for Democrats. While she thrives on slogans and utopian promises that mask a destructive reality that evidently she can’t foresee, her ability to capture attention and mobilize followers gives her far more influence than her thin record of accomplishments deserves.

If Democrats continue to bend to her and the democratic socialist movement she embodies, they risk not only fracturing their party but dragging the country toward policies that would erode the very foundation of American strength. God help us all if she succeeds.

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