AOC Is Damaged Goods

Democrats keep floating Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as their answer to 2028 like the last eight years didn't happen. That's the strange part. She's not a fresh face anymore. She's a decade into a political brand built on maximalist promises that mostly went nowhere, and the people cheering loudest for a future AOC run seem to have quietly memory-holed the actual record.

Start with the Green New Deal, since that's still the thing most voters associate with her name. It was rolled out with enormous fanfare, treated by her allies as the defining document of a new progressive era, and then it collapsed almost immediately under the weight of its own drafting errors and cost estimates nobody could defend. That's not a footnote. That's the launch. When your signature policy becomes a punchline before it even gets a floor vote, it tends to stick to you.

Then there's the governing style, which has always leaned harder into viral moments than legislative craft. Twitter fights, committee-hearing clips, dress slogans at a gala that costs more than most families make in a year while she talks about taxing the rich. Voters notice that kind of thing even when the press corps waves it off as theater. It's the sort of contradiction that opponents don't even need to exaggerate, because the footage does the work for them.

None of this means she can't win a primary. Name recognition and energy count for something in a crowded field. But a national campaign is a different animal than a safe Queens and Bronx district, and it drags every old clip and every unfulfilled promise back into daylight. Democrats can pretend the baggage isn't there. Republicans should be thrilled they're pretending.