AOC Staff Shake-Up Fuels New 2028 Speculation
“I’m focused on winning the midterms. I’m running for Congress right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I haven’t ruled out the possibility..and I’m very humbled..”
Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), newly re-enrolled member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), still won’t say whether she wants to run for president or challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his Senate seat in 2028. What she is doing is quietly building the infrastructure to do either, as Axios reports her political staff is being reorganized ahead of that decision.
Ocasio-Cortez is losing some longtime staffers and bringing others back. Chief of staff Mike Casca, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, is also taking on a larger role, according to Axios.
Her longtime campaign manager and senior adviser, Oliver Hidalgo-Wohlleben, will leave in September after working with Ocasio-Cortez since the 2020 primary cycle. Fiorella Bini, another longtime aide, took over as interim campaign manager this month.
Aya Saed, Ocasio-Cortez’s former legislative director, returned this spring as a deputy chief of staff in her House office and an adviser to the campaign. Tanushri Shankar-Ross, who left the team in 2023, is also back as a senior adviser. Creative director Tyler Evans left this summer.
The 2028 speculation has gotten loud enough that it’s hard to read any of these staff moves as routine housekeeping.
Hidalgo-Wohlleben said he needed a break after six years of campaigning.
“I never believed I would get to do a job like this let alone walk away from one,” he told Axios. “But after running nonstop since the 2020 primaries, I also know it’s the right time for me to take a break.”
The more interesting name may be Mike Casca.
Casca, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, has been given an expanded portfolio as the other changes take place. He was a senior communications adviser on Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and later served as Sanders’ deputy chief of staff in the Senate.
Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign also uses Middle Seat, a consulting firm founded by former Sanders officials. She recently appeared in content produced by More Perfect Union, run by Faiz Shakir, former presidential campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Axios reported that Sanders’ political network could give her an existing base of staff and infrastructure for a 2028 campaign. In other words, the most organized socialist political machine in modern Democrat Party history would be ready to go on day one.
Ocasio-Cortez herself poured gasoline on the 2028 talk earlier this month.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl recently asked her whether she would run for president, citing a New Hampshire poll showing her leading a prospective Democratic field.
“I’m focused on winning the midterms. I’m running for Congress right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I haven’t ruled out the possibility, and I’m very humbled to the tremendous amount of support out there.”
Karl also asked whether she could challenge Schumer. Ocasio-Cortez replied that “anything is possible at this juncture.” Schumer’s seat is up in 2028.
Translation: she ruled out nothing, committed to nothing, and left every door open while collecting the goodwill that comes with being coy about a presidential run.
Ocasio-Cortez rejoined the DSA this month after her membership had lapsed. The DSA said she renewed in August and is a member in good standing. The DSA is not your grandfather’s labor union. It is an explicitly socialist organization whose local chapters have endorsed positions ranging from abolishing the police to opposing U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Other progressive candidates this cycle quietly let their memberships lapse to avoid the political baggage. Ocasio-Cortez went the other direction.
She says the midterms are her focus right now. Fine.
But she’s also rejoined the socialists, reshuffled her staff, and gotten cozy with the Sanders machine. For someone who’s just trying to win a House race, that’s a lot of groundwork to be laying. Make of that what you will.
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She’s an idiot and she’s about as humble as Little Richard
As a bartender she never figured out how to make a Gin & Tonic.
She has tons of experience with Sex on the Beach though!
Idiot or not, she is dangerous.
Yep. Young. Photogenic. Attractive. Huge social media presence. Skillfully uses tech to drive messaging and news cycle. ‘Radical enough’ for 95% of the lefty, wokiestas. Name recognition/familiarity makes her less objectionable/jarring to fence sitting voters PO about huge rise in home prices/rents since 2019, higher fuel prices since Spring Iran conflict and sticky inflation. If she can get a stump speech down pat that raises lefty hopes and doesn’t scare centrist/Indy voters and can work to handle hostile media/debate formats …she is gonna be trouble. Especially when we consider that as the d/prog nominee she starts with a floor of 47-48% nationwide. Combine that with stronger/more effective get out the vote efforts among younger d/prog and particularly women and she could be a formidable candidate.
I tend to think the Dem/Prog floor nationally is closer to 35%-40%. And many Lefties have been de-aligning from the Dems due to their recent craziness. That’s not to say they might still choose to support a specific Dem candidate, but it’s hardly a hard floor of widespread support.
Harris got almost 48.5% of the vote in ’24.
There are Indy voters but IMO the notion that they are more than 5-6% is mythology. If the so called Indy voters choose to vote but when doing so always pull the d/prog lever or always pull the GoP lever they ain’t really ‘independent’.
Sadly the alignment of women, particularly college educated women, the 65+ demo along with the usual tribalist POC + LGBT extremists, budding marxists and unions or at least their leadership +their $ skews way left to the d/prog. That’s their core
AOC + WH = a terrifying equation for America.
I don’t disagree. An AOC WH would be a nightmare for the Nation.
All good points…yet I believe she is a smokescreen designed to distract. No way this one gets anywhere near the presidency. Then again, if an announcement is made from a very shallow Democrat slim-pickins pool of vacuous losers (albeit some are dangerous) this could work in The Feckless R’s favor. Besides, The Commie Bern will go after her once he realizes he’s been edged out once again.
^^^^ 100% this.
This awful woman does not possess the intellect required to mow the White House lawn, for goodness sake.
If you compare and contrast Sandy’s lifetime accomplishments with another prominent New Yorker who currently lives in the White House, the only thing she’s done is pour beer and complain about capitalism, as opposed to building big things and employing thousands of people.
Kids, if you’re thinking about dropping $100k +++ on an undergraduate degree, take Boston University off your list unless you want to be like AOC.
Gaw… the fact this is even a thing is appalling.
Joe Biden was sworn in as POTUS despite his many shortcomings including the open secret that he was, at best, not very smart and probably already going senile while campaigning in ’20.
AOC is an idiot, yes, but a cunning one who could draw support from the know-nothing generations of AWFLs who have elected people like the current idiot mayor of Seattle, LA mayor Bass, Boston mayor Wu, and many others. She’d be a figurehead president like Biden only with communists running the show in the background. Beware.
Originally I suspected she was coached and fed lines by DSA operatives whose plan to infiltrate all of Congress…she was the first one in their invasion bullpen. Bottom line, Sandy Cortez is an empty pantsuit Manchurian…but could be dangerous as we see half the Demented middle class woman, and some men, would vote for her…same ones who would acquit Lindsey Clancy of murdering her children.
She is very dangerous.
Mercifully, Occasional-Cortex’s intrinsic and glaring stupidity and vapidity make her decidedly less dangerous than she otherwise could be. Toss in her pathological narcissism, and you have a Dhimmi-crat apparatchik who has zero appeal to Rust Belt voters and middle-class voters who live in rural areas in “purple” or “red” states.
#47 won an astounding ~82%-plus of U.S. counties, in the 2024 election. The Dhimmi-crats’ support is extremely geographically narrow, concentrated in major coastal cities, and a few in-land cities. The Dhimmi-crats’ agenda is pure poison and garbage; no one outside their base of young, urban fanatics is buying their corrosive and destructive insanity.
“Mercifully, Occasional-Cortex’s intrinsic and glaring stupidity and vapidity make her decidedly less dangerous than she otherwise could be.”
America fell for a guy who could get hopelessly lost on a school playground.
He didn’t get 81 million votes
He got about 10 million at 4 am
Shame on Trump form not having Gestapo in those states, breaking down doors
Kind of like Gore and Bush
Only worse
He should have known
The Wuhan virus background, plus obvious cheating by the Dhimmi-crats, were at play in the 2020 presidential election and helped install Sleepy Joe in the White House. The Dhimmi-crats are going to find cheating a lot harder to do, going forward, now that people are paying attention.
She would have the media fawning all over her. That, along with her ability to stir up her base, could mean serious trouble.
Yes. She’s stupid, but she’s cunning and has charisma.
She’s dangerous BECAUSE she’s so stupid she would actually try to do some of the lunatic nonsense that Democrats spew to get elected.
AoC, trained, selected, perhaps genetically engineered in a vat to have the sight. Damn Tleilaxu. They keep manufacturing these augmented humans-ish, who get loose n cause havoc. Or they set loose to cause havoc.
Chiquita Guevara is preternaturally skilled at inhabiting the personal of a 21st century US political adapt. Dumber than a box of rocks several other ways. Declines to engage with things like thinking when the persona has already told her the response that fits. Beats becoming your own human.
Nice Frank Herbert reference and who knows you might be right.
Tks for noticing. I sometimes claim we already know all we need to know about what’s going on:
Past: Tolkein
Current: Heinlein
Future: Herbert
As Crowder says: Change my mind.
I understand the woke left will support her, as they do all these idiots
Doesn’t make her smart , she’s an actual idiot
She was picked out of a video and groomed , and still is an idiot
I imagine her bartending skills were mediocre at best
The problem is that there are too many voters who are dumb enough to support her.
Communism: starts with a gun in the people’s face.
Socialism: ends with a gun in the people’s face.
Democratic socialism: after the razzle dazzle of moon beams and unicorn farts, people vote for a gun in their face.
I’ve always read that communism is a gun in the back of the head when the socialism part is over.
Their failures in Seattle and Portland have now grown outside of the “Because Trump” defense. The massive hikes in property taxes are due to drop in October as people become acutely aware that the loss of the commercial tax revenue is expected to come from their pockets.
Has AOC been endorsed by Hasan Piker yet?
This narcissistic, lazy, no-accomplishment, entitled, dumb-as-rocks twit isn’t fit to clean toilets; her viewing herself as alleged presidential material is utterly farcical and offensive.
If the vile and evil Dhimmi-crat communists/Islamofascists/Muslim supremacists are stupid enough to anoint Occasional-Cortex as their new, alleged “savior,” it will be fun watching her get crushed by Vance or Rubio, in the general election, in a landslide that will be reminiscent of Reagan’s crushing of Mondale.
Retards Working for a Retard Blowhard Replaced by Other Retards
FTFY
I’d say she’s going for the senate. Pretty sure she knows her recognition and financiers might want to see her get past an election in her state to have any real confidence she might have a chance nationally.
She’d certainly WANT to, but she can’t.
New York’s Senators are Schumer and Gillibrand, and both are going to be there for decades more. Gillibrand isn’t up for election until 2030 and she’s ‘only’ 59 years old.
No possible way she tries to unseat Schumer. If she even attempted it she’d be excommunicated from the party forever.
Don’t be too sure about Schumer, being Jewish makes him damaged goods in today’s D party.
She just rejoined the DSA again. Not a good move if she wants to run for higher office.
I’ll add to the chorus. She’s an idiot. I want to know who her puppet master is.
The “Justice Democrats.”
The problem is, she’s pretty which wins the votes of people of less than average intelligence, which is exactly 50% of them, and stupid enough to believe that makes her qualified for whatever position she wants.
The DNC will have been run well and truly out of ideas if this moron is the best they can do. And I thought a Mayor Pete run would be embarrassing.
She’s not the brightest bulb in the room, unless all the others are burnt out!
The people running the show don’t want bright bulbs, they want easily-manipulated tools like Biden, Harris and AOC.
They overshot that mark by a lot with Wilson in Seattle. She literally needs to have a handler within 6 ft at all times to deflect and answer questions.
The nice thing about AOC is that she gave us great footage of her lack of capability at that Munich Summit Conference. The only redeeming value of these clowns is that they all want tobe THE ONE who pushes it over the hill, so they jump the gun. Bill Klinton with the AWB set them back decades and even killed Hillarity’s chances. AOC showing everyone that she is an idiot when not given prepared questions will be a perpetual gift. And Mandami bringing up the whole Amazon debacle again with his 2.0 move is another gift. Amazon would be wise to just slow everything down by a day or two, and at the top of every NYC order place a disclaimer “we apologize for the delay and increased shipping charges while your mayor tries to tell us how to run our business.”
Pray that AOC does not rise to the occasion.
So a few staff changes will make her appear less malevolent and less stupid. Nah! Every Democrat move like this is also an insult to the intelligence of everyone (except dedicated leftist drones).
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