If there's one politician who I'm confident will somehow grasp defeat from the jaws of victory, it's AOC

She is fundamentally the front runner for 2028. The republicans will lose in a landslide unless they do some crazy electoral fuckery that it’s seeming they don’t have the juice for, and no other dems have any motion at all.

She’s consistently one of the most popular politicians in the country, especially on the Dem side. She’s positioned as a party outsider (whether that’s justified or not) and the base hates the party establishment. The median Democrat wants Chuck Schumer to commit sepuku on CNN. She’s been one of the loudest voices against Israel’s genocide and ICE’s terrorism (even despite “Joe Biden is working tirelessly for a ceasefire” which should’ve gotten her put in a wood chipper right behind Biden and Harris).

Who are her opponents even? Gruesome Gavin is the Dem Ron DeSantis, and is completely dead in the water outside of California. Pete Buttigieg has never received a single vote from a black person. Ro Khanna only appeals to people that prefer AOC. Josh Shapiro is a mega zionist who personally covered up a murder, both things that will end is campaign on day 1 (it’s honestly hilarious he even thinks it’s a remote possibility).

Is there anyone I’m missing?

CIA vs CIA vs CIA.

What wonderful menu selection

If AOC against odds actually came into office in '29, and at best dems win a simple majority in Congress because the electoral map deck is so stacked, they still have to contend with a 6-3 conservative supreme court plus thousands of conservative justices in the system, a gigantic fully funded immigration terror apparatus, completely stripped to the bone non-functional institutions, and countless EOs and bills to overturn or replace.

In the most rosy scenario a progressive wing works with the moderates to rollback or fix, what... 25% of all of this?

I don't really think these markets are completely neutral.

Like maybe I'd get behind a good Bernie-crat type campaign for the opportunities to engage in mass consciousnes. but the concrete basis for a moderate social democrat, or the left of that, to carry out any manner of social reform by taxing billionaires, does not exist. Maybe we can argue that its closer than its ever been, and who knows what'll happen in the next few years as consciousness among certain layers of workers is further left than its ever been. The USA has moved left on Palestine and I think we will move left on other issues like climate and energy reform, immigration, and maybe even certain threads of anti imperialism, such as reducing military spending.

But defeating socdems and reformers in polls is a way that the right and center demonstrate their own viability and claim that social reforms are unpopular with the vast majority of Americans. Like I wonder how much of these polls, and now predictive markets (seriously how compromised is a friggin casino, this is like free publicity for them and a potential honeypot) are just to like lure her and her supporters into running a presidential campaign that could end up discrediting democratic socialism as a viable political direction.

And sure this is all electoralism and to some extent just bourgie wonkishness, or maybe I'm paranoid, but the source for this is particularly compromised and unreliable from my perspective. Like having her winning the presidency before she's even announced. The media just keeps saying she would win, except the media is more corrupted by centralized reactionary political capital than it has ever been.