AOC could be next face of Democrats amid potential presidential run chatter

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be the face of the U.S. Democratic Party in four years if she decides on a presidential run.

But for now, the progressive New York member of congress is eyeing the top job with the House Oversight Committee, saying she is “interested” in replacing current ranking member and Maryland representative Jamie Raskin.

“I’ll be making a decision shortly,” Ocasio-Cortez, 35, told Axios earlier this week.

It appears Ocasio-Cortez — widely known as “AOC” — would face Gerry Connolly, 74, of Virginia for the top job at the main investigative committee for the House of Representatives, which has jurisdiction over the federal civil service, government management and accounting measures, government operations and activities, and the postal service, among other responsibilities.

Reports suggest Ocasio-Cortez’s significant grassroots support could enable her to make a run for U.S. president at the end of Donald Trump’s second term in office in 2028.

“She’s somebody who can cut through the noise and doesn’t talk like Washington,” one Democratic strategist told The Hill, adding she has the ability to “cut through the BS and tell it like it is.”

However, another said AOC appeals to the left-leaning part of the party, which could hurt her potential pursuit of the presidency.

“She and the ‘squad’ started pushing too hard, too fast,” the second strategist said. “D.C. doesn’t work that way. And our party doesn’t work that way. We need to get back to the basics.”

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Meanwhile, Monica Crowley, who worked in Donald Trump’s first administration, recently warned Republicans to take Ocasio-Cortez seriously as a presidential candidate.

“She has tremendous grassroots support,” Crowley told guest host Lisa Boothe on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle last Friday.

“She was an early adopter of social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etcetera. She is connecting directly to voters.”

However, Crowley said there was another important point about her and the Democratic Party.

“The lesson of this last 2024 election, and Donald Trump’s landslide mandate victory, is that the country has had enough of the radical Left, it’s had enough of socialism, it’s had enough of cancel culture and wokeness, and it rejected roundly all of those things. So, I don’t think in four short years the country is going to say, ‘We need more communism.'”