I think it's too early to worry or care about 2028, but I think that AOC has become excellent at speaking to a wide variety of voters and is already strong enough to not worry about upsetting the activists that were influential in her initial primary victory. And now that ICE agents are wearing masks and grabbing students and moms off the streets, "defund ICE" seems like a better idea than when AOC first advocated for it.
Yep it definitely is too soon to get worked up about 2028, especially with Trump so erratic that we have no idea what our society, economy, and government will look like three years from now. I agree AOC becomes stronger the more unhinged Trump acts…your reference to her ICE position is a great one. But if Trump’s moderates his positions and behaves himself better then the case for an AOC backlash campaign loses steam.
This is a very mundane question to what was a thoughtful and well-argued piece, but thinking specifically of Pennsylvania, where in the state might AOC perform better in 2028 than Harris had in 2024? And are there any places in PA where she may underperform Harris? I have thoughts, but I'd much rather hear yours. :)
Perfectly valid question…especially coming from a guy with your expertise and interests. AOC has the potential to outperform Harris in nearly every Pennsylvania County. Allegheny County where I live has a bias towards progressives (e.g. Summer Lee) and anti-corporate populists (e.g. Chris Deluzio). She will do great here, especially with her ability to inspire young and minority voters who sat out in 2024. Same goes for Philadelphia and its immediate metropolitan area. In between, you have a sea of red. The conventional wisdom is that in a conservative area a conservative Democrat is the way to go. But if you look at the 2016 Primary map, Bernie did the best in counties that Trump dominated in the general election. These folks are disaffected, frustrated and alienated so they go with Trump because he validates those feelings and actually shows up in these communities that Democrats have ignored for decades. If AOC keeps her outsider status and engages these communities in good faith there is a potential for a horseshoe theory jump from far right to far left. Obviously she can’t come close to winning these counties but if she can claw back closer to the 60-40 losses like when Obama ran in 2008 as opposed to the insane 85-15 losses we saw in 2024 she will take pressure off the need to over perform in the urban areas. Also, with Trump winning over 80% in some counties I don’t see the GOP going anywhere but down unless the MAGA Golden Age becomes a reality.
The only area I think AOC will struggle compared to Harris is in the affluent Philly outer suburbs that have been trending blue since the DNC has started courting educated white RINOs. She also doesn’t have the Northeast PA roots to compete with Scranton Joe’s results in that area in 2020. But as I’m sure you know all of this is contingent on whether Trump really executes his insane trade policies and wrecks the economy. If so then I think AOC 2028 can outperform Harris 2024 throughout the state, especially if she’s running against a sycophantic bore like JD Vince.
Really impressive answer, Jon, and I agree with much of what you said. Cards on the table, I'm a big Beshear fan at the moment, and I think that overall, he'd be the safer 2028 pick. But it does seem that Harris was somehow the worst of both worlds as a candidate, and that AOC could only improve in PA (and beyond) compared to Harris. You've given me a lot to think about. :)
Beshear is a very solid pick. You know I’ve been a big fan since the 2024 Veep Stakes. Hey doesn’t have a the star power of an AOC, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But what he rivals her in is authenticity. His relatively woke positions seem to come from a place of genuine humanitarian concern for all his constituents rather than just superficial symbolic nods to cultural trends. If he can win over the hearts of Kentucky voters I’m sure he’d do great in Pennsyltucky Appalachia, not to mention Philly and Pittsburgh.
Your piece about Beshear from last summer is still one of my favorites, and to this day, I think Harris would have come closer to winning, even if only marginally, by picking Beshear rather than Walz.
Not gonna lie, a Beshear-AOC ticket in 2028 is intriguing, and never crossed my mind until just now!
I try not to think too much about what could have been, but it’s not hard to conceive of a scenario where Harris picks Beshear and wins. I wanted Beshear as VP for the dramatic spectacle of the real Appalachian going against the phony Appalachian in the debate. As much as I like Tim Walz his debate with Vance was a real turning point for the Trump campaign. Walz being so agreeable with Vance killed all Dem messaging about MAGA being weird, dangerous, and extremist. Pretty sure Beshear would have given Vance a much tougher time for using Kentucky as a backdrop for his glorified college admissions essay of a memoir and tied it back to the fraud and self-dealing that is at the heart of the MAGA agenda.
I think this article is mostly correct and summarizes well how an anti-woke turn would probably fail.
As an aside, I think there's something not even political about this problem. The Mounk piece basically cites a lot of examples of "woke" progressives being just flat-out nasty, hounding people out, ganging up on people, etc. as his signs of a problem. But I'm actually not sure there's any inherent relationship to say, the ideas of Ibram Kendi here, who I've been told is actually a nice guy, lol.
It seems clear to me that if "woke" people are nasty and annoying and offputting to people - they'll still be nasty and annoying and offputting if they go "anti-woke" and throw trans people or Palestinians under the bus. In fact, I think we see tons of examples of this on centrist liberal twitter! I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't even wokeness, but just the kind of person who self-selects into left-of-center politics/activism. And maybe AOC is a big break from that. Also, maybe not. I suspect not, but I don't know.
I agree 100%. The toxic behaviors that get branded “woke ideology” are mainly just the liberal side of bullying and dehumanization that has been algorithmically amplified in the social media age. People are jerks online about all issues whether it’s video games, restaurant reviews, dog grooming, or politics. Most of the folks who talk about wokeness as some menacing political paradigm shift have just been bullied from people on their left, which is bound to happen given the intellectual environment created by big tech. But the ideas that are prevalent on the woke left were prominent even back when I studied philosophy and law in the late 90s and early 2000s. What changed was not the political ideology as much as the culture, the technology, and the codes of civility that have been purposefully eroded to promote engagement and profits for those who own social media platforms.
I think the social media age is part of it. I also think education polarization is a big big part of it. Personality wise, I think a certain type of person is disproportionately sorting from one party in the other.
I wouldn't make any broad generalizing statements about the average conservative or the average liberal, but it's clear to me that the average R->D defector from 2016-2024 is way more toxic/judgmental/elitist (think ur average Bulwark writer) than the average D->R defector (I note both of these groups are very unrepresentative of their larger coalitions).
Like Joe Walsh seemed to be a miserable person when he was calling Obama the gamer word. And now he seems to be a miserable person as a "woke" resistance guy. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan seemed like a chill dude when he was a Bernie guy - and he still seems chill despite his increasingly odd politics.
That being said, I think it's very possible that the social media era helped accelerate this education polarization. People always said "twitter is not real life", but twitter always seemed to be real life minus five years. All the left-wing brainrot cancel culture bullying toxicity I saw in 2010 and on college campuses became reality by 2015. All the right-wing paranoid 80 IQ brainrot I saw online in 2020 became reality by 2025...
Good article, you've given me reasons for hope and even root for AOC.
My principles haven't changed. I want the Government out of my Bedroom, the Target bathroom and out of Trans people's pants. I want better Healthcare.
I've definitely been bullied by people to my Left. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still bitter about it. Both for the viciousness and cruelty of it and the UTTERLY TRIVIAL nature of the things the bullying happened over: Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Video Games, Comics and other kinds of escapist entertainment.
I initially wrote a better comment and deleted it by accident (mobile) but I still want to say I agree with everything you've said here. AOC's speech in Arizona confirmed in my eyes that she can absolutely carry a message that appeals to independents, including "woke" ideas in a way that doesnt appear overtly ideological. She said her beliefs are due to her past as a waitress, not because she's some Marxist, and called out those purity tests directly. Her post election Instagram polls provide somesuuport for that position. How many AOC-Trump voters responded by saying their authenticity captured them? AOC is nothing if not authentic.
I think dems would regret compromising on their ideals to try and get a moderate nominated. Imagine how devastating it would be to nominate someone like "i can't wait to cut corporate taxes" Shapiro only for him to be labeled a "far left lunatic" anyway. Besides, why is it that Republicans can nominate the most extreme far right and alienating candidates available every time but dems think they can win by appealing to the center? There is no center, there's only the persuadable, and I think AOC can do it.
I agree. Authenticity is such an underrated political asset. Trump gets authenticity points for admitting he lies, buys off politicians, and doesn’t pay his taxes. The Dems should see whether voters are receptive to AOC’s sincerity which comes from a much nobler (if occasionally woke and cringey) place. Instead they’d rather have a Buttigieg or Shapiro whose speaking voices aren’t even authentic…just mediocre Obama impersonations.
The idea that redirection and trying to reclaim woke will aid in a presidential campaign seems to be misreading what voters want. They don’t want to be redirected. I still can’t believe after a decade of this Mess we are still focusing on messaging instead of shifting our stances to align with what voters want. They want Democrats to change. Focusing on economic matters is helpful but doesn’t change the fact that Americans deeply care about the culture stuff.
And while it’s fun to think about an AOC presidential run in 2028, I think it’s pretty odd to take it seriously considering that she hasn’t demonstrated any ability to win a state wide race and hasn’t held any executive office. If she manages to win in 2026, the Senate or the governorship, that will change, but it’ll be a stretch to think that she’d be capable or qualified to be president in 2028. Only one person has managed to do such a thing and he happened to be a truly generational talent.
And then the primary field in 2028 will be filled with credible, capable alternatives. This won’t be like 2008 where the Democratic candidates were unpopular and scandal ridden. How does AOC stack up against a seasoned Beshear, Whitmer, Shapiro? How does she distinguish herself from candidates just as charismatic as her like Ossof, Warnock or Gallego (Warnock is one of the few whose speech at the DNC was as good as if not better than AOCs’s)? All of these candidates have demonstrated the ability to build broad tents and win races in red places. Hell, most of them would probs bring states along with them.
Sometimes I think AOC is what the pundits think an acceptable candidate would look like.
Nobody has suggested “kicking trans people out” of the Party. And “wokeness is a fluid concept”? Seriously? Wokeness is a giant pair of cement overshoes on a Democratic party that’s just been thrown off the pier. Hard and heavy and dried on tight. Gonna have to break it off. The “groups” won’t stand for a threat to their cushy corporate donation streams. The billionaire trans activist Dem party donors (“Jennifer” Pritzger, “Martine” Rothblatt and Jon Stryker) will at least attempt to ruthlessly kneecap anybody who has the temerity to politely suggest that sex is real, binary and immutable. This is unfortunate because well over 60% of Dem voters do not believe that males should play on female teams or vs female opponents for the painfully obvious reason that they represent measurably different classes of athlete, like feather and heavy weight boxers. And besides what parent, Dem or Repub, really wants a fully intact male, who calls himself “a woman”, walking around their daughter’s locker room with everything flapping about, while she is trying to get suited up to compete. “Woke”, whatever it once was, has come to mean a militant refusal to accept everyday reality, in favor of various trendy, shallow, superficial, “flavor of the month” intersectionalities, “oppressions”, and terminally squishy “lived experiences”. Sorry. There’s gonna have to be a hard break. Which means at least one more election cycle in the wilderness. Which the planetary climate cannot afford. Oh well. At least a generation of pampered knuckleheads got to “feel safe” for a decade or so…or at least whine about it publicly. Hey, don’t look at me. I’ve been opposed to this sh*t for decades, since back when we ironically called it “political correctness”. And, no, I don’t have the luxury of time. I’ve got about one more election cycle left before I get too damn old to participate. Or give a sh*t. Or maybe even keep breathing. So I don’t take my comment lightly. Neither should anybody take “wokeness” lightly. It’s an energy bar with a cyanide pill stuffed into the peanut butter.
The problem is that in opposing Trump’s trade policies, the position of the Democratic Party is nearly identical to that of the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Trump has support from auto and steel unions. This is not a winning strategy for attracting blue collar voters.
The only case for AOC to run is if you want Vance to win. That’s it. That is it. That’s all. For anyone who doubts it, just depart from the coasts for a bit; you’ll know in no time.
Starting from a place of general dismissal for AOC, I've come to respect her. That said, I just don't see her being portrayed by the opposition as anything more than a spokesmodel for emotional superficial (read woke) appeals. For all her apparent ethical and moral positioning, she's never managed anything more than a revolving door of aides and bar tabs. She runs on emotional appeal. She is a celebri-tician. Do folks NOT want competency in managing wildly complex issues of the economy and geopolitical conflicts? Maybe they don't, but I think they do. There is no way she can be presented as a competent manager.
Per Beshear....
"He doesn’t have a the star power of an AOC, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing."
I see that as a good thing. Competence in management might be highly attractive after we've gone through the mess of the current administration.
Interesting article.
I think it's too early to worry or care about 2028, but I think that AOC has become excellent at speaking to a wide variety of voters and is already strong enough to not worry about upsetting the activists that were influential in her initial primary victory. And now that ICE agents are wearing masks and grabbing students and moms off the streets, "defund ICE" seems like a better idea than when AOC first advocated for it.
Yep it definitely is too soon to get worked up about 2028, especially with Trump so erratic that we have no idea what our society, economy, and government will look like three years from now. I agree AOC becomes stronger the more unhinged Trump acts…your reference to her ICE position is a great one. But if Trump’s moderates his positions and behaves himself better then the case for an AOC backlash campaign loses steam.
This is a very mundane question to what was a thoughtful and well-argued piece, but thinking specifically of Pennsylvania, where in the state might AOC perform better in 2028 than Harris had in 2024? And are there any places in PA where she may underperform Harris? I have thoughts, but I'd much rather hear yours. :)
Perfectly valid question…especially coming from a guy with your expertise and interests. AOC has the potential to outperform Harris in nearly every Pennsylvania County. Allegheny County where I live has a bias towards progressives (e.g. Summer Lee) and anti-corporate populists (e.g. Chris Deluzio). She will do great here, especially with her ability to inspire young and minority voters who sat out in 2024. Same goes for Philadelphia and its immediate metropolitan area. In between, you have a sea of red. The conventional wisdom is that in a conservative area a conservative Democrat is the way to go. But if you look at the 2016 Primary map, Bernie did the best in counties that Trump dominated in the general election. These folks are disaffected, frustrated and alienated so they go with Trump because he validates those feelings and actually shows up in these communities that Democrats have ignored for decades. If AOC keeps her outsider status and engages these communities in good faith there is a potential for a horseshoe theory jump from far right to far left. Obviously she can’t come close to winning these counties but if she can claw back closer to the 60-40 losses like when Obama ran in 2008 as opposed to the insane 85-15 losses we saw in 2024 she will take pressure off the need to over perform in the urban areas. Also, with Trump winning over 80% in some counties I don’t see the GOP going anywhere but down unless the MAGA Golden Age becomes a reality.
The only area I think AOC will struggle compared to Harris is in the affluent Philly outer suburbs that have been trending blue since the DNC has started courting educated white RINOs. She also doesn’t have the Northeast PA roots to compete with Scranton Joe’s results in that area in 2020. But as I’m sure you know all of this is contingent on whether Trump really executes his insane trade policies and wrecks the economy. If so then I think AOC 2028 can outperform Harris 2024 throughout the state, especially if she’s running against a sycophantic bore like JD Vince.
Really impressive answer, Jon, and I agree with much of what you said. Cards on the table, I'm a big Beshear fan at the moment, and I think that overall, he'd be the safer 2028 pick. But it does seem that Harris was somehow the worst of both worlds as a candidate, and that AOC could only improve in PA (and beyond) compared to Harris. You've given me a lot to think about. :)
Beshear is a very solid pick. You know I’ve been a big fan since the 2024 Veep Stakes. Hey doesn’t have a the star power of an AOC, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But what he rivals her in is authenticity. His relatively woke positions seem to come from a place of genuine humanitarian concern for all his constituents rather than just superficial symbolic nods to cultural trends. If he can win over the hearts of Kentucky voters I’m sure he’d do great in Pennsyltucky Appalachia, not to mention Philly and Pittsburgh.
Your piece about Beshear from last summer is still one of my favorites, and to this day, I think Harris would have come closer to winning, even if only marginally, by picking Beshear rather than Walz.
Not gonna lie, a Beshear-AOC ticket in 2028 is intriguing, and never crossed my mind until just now!
I try not to think too much about what could have been, but it’s not hard to conceive of a scenario where Harris picks Beshear and wins. I wanted Beshear as VP for the dramatic spectacle of the real Appalachian going against the phony Appalachian in the debate. As much as I like Tim Walz his debate with Vance was a real turning point for the Trump campaign. Walz being so agreeable with Vance killed all Dem messaging about MAGA being weird, dangerous, and extremist. Pretty sure Beshear would have given Vance a much tougher time for using Kentucky as a backdrop for his glorified college admissions essay of a memoir and tied it back to the fraud and self-dealing that is at the heart of the MAGA agenda.
I think this article is mostly correct and summarizes well how an anti-woke turn would probably fail.
As an aside, I think there's something not even political about this problem. The Mounk piece basically cites a lot of examples of "woke" progressives being just flat-out nasty, hounding people out, ganging up on people, etc. as his signs of a problem. But I'm actually not sure there's any inherent relationship to say, the ideas of Ibram Kendi here, who I've been told is actually a nice guy, lol.
It seems clear to me that if "woke" people are nasty and annoying and offputting to people - they'll still be nasty and annoying and offputting if they go "anti-woke" and throw trans people or Palestinians under the bus. In fact, I think we see tons of examples of this on centrist liberal twitter! I've come to the conclusion that the problem isn't even wokeness, but just the kind of person who self-selects into left-of-center politics/activism. And maybe AOC is a big break from that. Also, maybe not. I suspect not, but I don't know.
I agree 100%. The toxic behaviors that get branded “woke ideology” are mainly just the liberal side of bullying and dehumanization that has been algorithmically amplified in the social media age. People are jerks online about all issues whether it’s video games, restaurant reviews, dog grooming, or politics. Most of the folks who talk about wokeness as some menacing political paradigm shift have just been bullied from people on their left, which is bound to happen given the intellectual environment created by big tech. But the ideas that are prevalent on the woke left were prominent even back when I studied philosophy and law in the late 90s and early 2000s. What changed was not the political ideology as much as the culture, the technology, and the codes of civility that have been purposefully eroded to promote engagement and profits for those who own social media platforms.
I think the social media age is part of it. I also think education polarization is a big big part of it. Personality wise, I think a certain type of person is disproportionately sorting from one party in the other.
I wouldn't make any broad generalizing statements about the average conservative or the average liberal, but it's clear to me that the average R->D defector from 2016-2024 is way more toxic/judgmental/elitist (think ur average Bulwark writer) than the average D->R defector (I note both of these groups are very unrepresentative of their larger coalitions).
Like Joe Walsh seemed to be a miserable person when he was calling Obama the gamer word. And now he seems to be a miserable person as a "woke" resistance guy. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan seemed like a chill dude when he was a Bernie guy - and he still seems chill despite his increasingly odd politics.
That being said, I think it's very possible that the social media era helped accelerate this education polarization. People always said "twitter is not real life", but twitter always seemed to be real life minus five years. All the left-wing brainrot cancel culture bullying toxicity I saw in 2010 and on college campuses became reality by 2015. All the right-wing paranoid 80 IQ brainrot I saw online in 2020 became reality by 2025...
Good article, you've given me reasons for hope and even root for AOC.
My principles haven't changed. I want the Government out of my Bedroom, the Target bathroom and out of Trans people's pants. I want better Healthcare.
I've definitely been bullied by people to my Left. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still bitter about it. Both for the viciousness and cruelty of it and the UTTERLY TRIVIAL nature of the things the bullying happened over: Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Video Games, Comics and other kinds of escapist entertainment.
AOC for the win.
I initially wrote a better comment and deleted it by accident (mobile) but I still want to say I agree with everything you've said here. AOC's speech in Arizona confirmed in my eyes that she can absolutely carry a message that appeals to independents, including "woke" ideas in a way that doesnt appear overtly ideological. She said her beliefs are due to her past as a waitress, not because she's some Marxist, and called out those purity tests directly. Her post election Instagram polls provide somesuuport for that position. How many AOC-Trump voters responded by saying their authenticity captured them? AOC is nothing if not authentic.
I think dems would regret compromising on their ideals to try and get a moderate nominated. Imagine how devastating it would be to nominate someone like "i can't wait to cut corporate taxes" Shapiro only for him to be labeled a "far left lunatic" anyway. Besides, why is it that Republicans can nominate the most extreme far right and alienating candidates available every time but dems think they can win by appealing to the center? There is no center, there's only the persuadable, and I think AOC can do it.
I agree. Authenticity is such an underrated political asset. Trump gets authenticity points for admitting he lies, buys off politicians, and doesn’t pay his taxes. The Dems should see whether voters are receptive to AOC’s sincerity which comes from a much nobler (if occasionally woke and cringey) place. Instead they’d rather have a Buttigieg or Shapiro whose speaking voices aren’t even authentic…just mediocre Obama impersonations.
The idea that redirection and trying to reclaim woke will aid in a presidential campaign seems to be misreading what voters want. They don’t want to be redirected. I still can’t believe after a decade of this Mess we are still focusing on messaging instead of shifting our stances to align with what voters want. They want Democrats to change. Focusing on economic matters is helpful but doesn’t change the fact that Americans deeply care about the culture stuff.
And while it’s fun to think about an AOC presidential run in 2028, I think it’s pretty odd to take it seriously considering that she hasn’t demonstrated any ability to win a state wide race and hasn’t held any executive office. If she manages to win in 2026, the Senate or the governorship, that will change, but it’ll be a stretch to think that she’d be capable or qualified to be president in 2028. Only one person has managed to do such a thing and he happened to be a truly generational talent.
And then the primary field in 2028 will be filled with credible, capable alternatives. This won’t be like 2008 where the Democratic candidates were unpopular and scandal ridden. How does AOC stack up against a seasoned Beshear, Whitmer, Shapiro? How does she distinguish herself from candidates just as charismatic as her like Ossof, Warnock or Gallego (Warnock is one of the few whose speech at the DNC was as good as if not better than AOCs’s)? All of these candidates have demonstrated the ability to build broad tents and win races in red places. Hell, most of them would probs bring states along with them.
Sometimes I think AOC is what the pundits think an acceptable candidate would look like.
Nobody has suggested “kicking trans people out” of the Party. And “wokeness is a fluid concept”? Seriously? Wokeness is a giant pair of cement overshoes on a Democratic party that’s just been thrown off the pier. Hard and heavy and dried on tight. Gonna have to break it off. The “groups” won’t stand for a threat to their cushy corporate donation streams. The billionaire trans activist Dem party donors (“Jennifer” Pritzger, “Martine” Rothblatt and Jon Stryker) will at least attempt to ruthlessly kneecap anybody who has the temerity to politely suggest that sex is real, binary and immutable. This is unfortunate because well over 60% of Dem voters do not believe that males should play on female teams or vs female opponents for the painfully obvious reason that they represent measurably different classes of athlete, like feather and heavy weight boxers. And besides what parent, Dem or Repub, really wants a fully intact male, who calls himself “a woman”, walking around their daughter’s locker room with everything flapping about, while she is trying to get suited up to compete. “Woke”, whatever it once was, has come to mean a militant refusal to accept everyday reality, in favor of various trendy, shallow, superficial, “flavor of the month” intersectionalities, “oppressions”, and terminally squishy “lived experiences”. Sorry. There’s gonna have to be a hard break. Which means at least one more election cycle in the wilderness. Which the planetary climate cannot afford. Oh well. At least a generation of pampered knuckleheads got to “feel safe” for a decade or so…or at least whine about it publicly. Hey, don’t look at me. I’ve been opposed to this sh*t for decades, since back when we ironically called it “political correctness”. And, no, I don’t have the luxury of time. I’ve got about one more election cycle left before I get too damn old to participate. Or give a sh*t. Or maybe even keep breathing. So I don’t take my comment lightly. Neither should anybody take “wokeness” lightly. It’s an energy bar with a cyanide pill stuffed into the peanut butter.
The problem is that in opposing Trump’s trade policies, the position of the Democratic Party is nearly identical to that of the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Trump has support from auto and steel unions. This is not a winning strategy for attracting blue collar voters.
The only case for AOC to run is if you want Vance to win. That’s it. That is it. That’s all. For anyone who doubts it, just depart from the coasts for a bit; you’ll know in no time.
Starting from a place of general dismissal for AOC, I've come to respect her. That said, I just don't see her being portrayed by the opposition as anything more than a spokesmodel for emotional superficial (read woke) appeals. For all her apparent ethical and moral positioning, she's never managed anything more than a revolving door of aides and bar tabs. She runs on emotional appeal. She is a celebri-tician. Do folks NOT want competency in managing wildly complex issues of the economy and geopolitical conflicts? Maybe they don't, but I think they do. There is no way she can be presented as a competent manager.
Per Beshear....
"He doesn’t have a the star power of an AOC, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing."
I see that as a good thing. Competence in management might be highly attractive after we've gone through the mess of the current administration.