AOC For President 2024! Here’s What They’ll Say
And some ammunition you’ll need to deal with the naysayers
On October 13th, 2024, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) will turn 35 years old. That means that she can be elected President Of The United States in 2024. And, yes, I want her for my president. Especially this year, 2020, as we head into an historically unpopular match-up between two really tired, old, white men, there’s nothing I’d like more than to see an eloquent, energetic person with high ideals representing our nation on the world stage.
But, if you mention that you want AOC for president in 2024, you may receive immediate blow back, and, yes, I already know what they’ll say:
☼ She’s too young
☼ She doesn’t have enough experience
☼ She’s too liberal
When this happens, here’s how you can respond.
What They Say: She’s too young
These days, the problem is that candidates are too old, not too young. The two youngest presidents when they took office were Theodore Roosevelt (42)
and John F. Kennedy (43). They were both within eight years of AOC’s age when she takes office. Not only that, both of these presidents did quite well in the historical rankings of presidents, with Roosevelt in the top five and Kennedy in the top fifteen across multiple scholarly surveys. In short, age alone does not appear to be a determining factor in presidential success.
What You Say: The two youngest presidents in history, Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, were both within 8 years of AOC’s age when she’ll take office, and they are highly ranked in scholarly surveys.
What They Say: She doesn’t have enough experience
You only have to watch the Netflix documentary, Knock Down The House, which chronicles AOC’s run for the Democratic primary, to see that even at the age of 28, she was fully capable of debating a career politician like Joe Crowley. Want further proof from her on-the-job speeches? Look here.
I’d say that the video record clearly shows that AOC is capable of being president, but, even without that, the stats are in her favor.
If AOC is still in the House Of Representatives in 2024, she’ll have served 3 terms as a publicly elected official in Washington. How does that compare to our past presidents? For one thing, serving in the House Of Representatives is the most common political experience category of any president. Nineteen U.S. Presidents served in the House. But there were also six presidents who never held a publicly elected position prior to becoming president. Those are Donald Trump, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, and Zachary Taylor. Of these six, three are war heroes (Taylor, Grant, and Eisenhower), two are businessmen (Hoover and Trump), and Taft was a federal judge. Of these six, only Eisenhower is rated in the top ten in the historical rankings of presidents. Overall, more than half of presidents have either served in the House or had no publicly elected experience at all.
On top of her House experience, I’d say that AOC has key life experience that few sitting presidents have: the experience of being a member of the working class service industry. There, you learn patience, diplomacy, and empathy with people from all walks of life, among other skills. Yes, AOC has more than enough experience to be president.
What You Say: Serving in the House Of Representatives is the most common political experience category of any president. Nineteen U.S. Presidents served in the House just like AOC. In 2024, she’ll have served three terms in the House. And anyway, six U.S. presidents never had any publicly elected political experience before becoming president.
What They Say: She’s too liberal
AOC calls herself a Democratic Socialist. That’s the agenda popularized by Bernie Sanders. Specifically, AOC supports the Green New Deal, a set of legislative imperatives that include: transitioning to renewable energy, universal health care, increasing the minimum wage, preventing monopolies, and addressing climate change, among other things. This might have seemed like a radical agenda fifteen years ago, but it’s increasingly mainstream.
In fact, these days, I think the idea of an AOC presidency does not scare moderates nearly as much as the possibility of losing the presidency to some conservative with clearly anti-progressive values. In our stratified two-party system, that’s a constant problem. It’s also a constant puzzle. Could Bernie have beaten Trump in 2016? Does the two-party system give potential primary candidates a fair chance at winning?
In any case, I don’t see a downside to AOC running in the presidential primary and challenging any other Democrat who wants to step up. Let’s see who can capture the people’s imagination.
There are two things in AOC’s favor here. First, as mentioned above, the Green New Deal has many components that are more mainstream than one might think. Second, the electorate, especially the under-30 voting block, is moving to the left, not the right. Is AOC the candidate that can finally galvanize this huge, typically under-voting, young electorate? We’ll never know unless we try it.
What You Say: There’s no way we’ll know how popular she is at the national level unless she runs in the Democratic Primary for president. If you think another Democrat would make a better candidate then back them. May the best candidate win.
I think this is all the ammunition you need to respond to the naysayers, but there is one detail left: AOC hasn’t announced her candidacy yet.
