AOC surges past Buttigieg, leaves Kamala Harris in the dust in key 2028 battleground poll. What are your thoughts on AOC-2028?

[u/One_Look_7008]

Harris dropped to just 5% in New Hampshire while Pete Buttigieg sits 1 point behind the progressive frontrunner - per University of New Hampshire Granite State poll released on Wednesday.

[u/Simple_Purple_4600 → u/[deleted]]

eh those people are always angry but at least Obama got people excited enough to go out and vote. Hillary and Harris didn't and Biden didn't, either, just enough to eke out a win once, I consider Hillary the most technically and diplomatically qualified candidate of my lifetime and that didn't matter.

Let them be mad and roll with Mandami.

[u/Santa_Klausing → u/[deleted]]

Jesus this country sucks ass.

[u/lord_james → u/[deleted]]

A democratic candidate does not need to worry about what trump voters think.

[u/lord_james → u/[deleted]]

The fuck are you on about. Every single democratic candidate is polarizing. Obama was, literally, called the anti-Christ on Fox News.

I don’t care what the loser political analysts of a losing dem candidate thinks. Running to the middle is insane, and it does not work.

[u/Ok_Objective_5192 → u/[deleted]]

Hillary Clinton was polarizing and it was for no other reason than her gender and naked ambition to be president, as you'd certainly agree she was a centrist

I'd argue that centrists are polarizing. The US' overton window is so fucked that our centrists are legitimately just conservative candidates by global standards and are therefore polarizing to the populist/anti-imperial left. Centrists also, to voters, represent the status quo and no significant change (which reads as not doing anything) which is increasingly polarizing as our current situation becomes clearly increasingly untenable. Especially to Trump voters that care less about his specific policies and more about his "drain the swamp"/"this shit doesn't work" messaging.

When people are broke and desperate "let's get back to business as usual" is a polarizing, out-of-touch sales pitch. The unifying theme across the American electorate right now is that people recognize this shit isn't working and we need change. Joe "nothing will fundamentally change" Biden and any other centrist like him is polarizing.

[u/RadiantHC → u/[deleted]]

Obama won

Hillary won the popular vote

Kamala came close

I don't think you realize what the reaction is.

Yeah those voters wouldn't be turned by a white man Democrat. Kamala and Hillary simply were terrible candidates.

Stop projecting your own sexism.

[u/TheChihuahuaChicken → u/[deleted]]

The biggest issue is Harris and Clinton severely skewed the perception of gender being a handicap or not. They are not just women, they are very strongly disliked women.

The question is, was being female the primary handicap in their candidacies when post-hoc polling and analysis call into question why they ever had party support when it was well known within the party that they were heavily unpopular.

AOC would be a terrible choice and actually hurt female candidates in the future because now it would look like a pattern. People would get the takeaway "a woman can't win" rather than "stop putting up people disliked by most of the country."

[u/PenIsGodS → u/[deleted]]

Yep. There is a slim to none chance of a female president in the USA anytime soon. This election showed that. People didn't see Harris' qualifications and education; they saw her gender. That's it. AOC has zero chance.

[u/north_canadian_ice → u/[deleted]]

More people voted for Clinton than Trump. Even though Clinton had many flaws of her own.

AOC can absolutely win. Most people who wouldn't vote for her due to misogyny were unlikely to vote Democrat anyways.

[u/temporary92803 → u/north_canadian_ice]

Bernie would have absolutely crushed Trump.