Just Say Yes to AOC: A Response to "Just Say No: Avoiding an AOC 2029 Disaster"

"When I was first elected to the House, [...] I looked for the they. They who run things. They who know how things really work. They who know what they are doing. But I couldn't find the they." [...] I went to the Senate. But there was still no they. And then I started to get invited to the White House, and to closed-door briefings, and to meetings with top officials. No they." "What I finally realized," [...] "is that there is no they. There is only we, and we usually don't know what the fuck we're doing."

Lindsey Graham, former United States Senator

On July 14th, 2026, Noah Emke, a union worker and member of the Marxist Unity Group (a caucus in the Democratic Socialists of America), submitted an article to the Marxist publication Cosmonaut titled "Just Say No: Avoiding an AOC 2029 Disaster." in which he argues that if the question is whether the DSA should endorse Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 2028 presidential run, the answer is an emphatic no. Emke claims that AOC's presidency would be akin to a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the veneer of surface-level democratic socialism poorly concealing the essence of typical bourgeois Democrat politics:

“To put it bluntly, a President AOC would enact their policies while wearing our colors, thus neutralizing the threat of a social-democratic challenge.”

He backs this claim up with evidence that AOC has a track record of holding the party line on important issues like the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the migrant crisis. Emke goes further and predicts the next major international crisis will involve Taiwan, which he foresees ending in a liberal-imperialist humiliation if AOC is given the presidential reins. Against this, he imagines a genuinely socialist president, who would have to be an ultra-radical anomaly in the history of American politics. This president will have to turn against the positions of all previous administrations so violently that it risks a legit counterrevolution, ending in a coup. 

Emke admits an important limitation of the Democratic Socialists of America:

“The unfortunate truth is that we have not yet built an organization that can produce a Presidential candidate better than AOC.” 

He goes on to say that the issue is that the DSA hasn’t learned to “say no” and lacks the organizational prudence to make the right decisions and reject the wrong ones. He argues that this exclusionary attitude is the general advantage that the Democratic Party has over the DSA: 

“We need to learn to say no. We have no power because we have no boundaries. [...] When DSA took over a state’s Democratic Committee, the newcomers were not allowed to use any of their resources. When Mamdani won the primary, key establishment figures had no qualms about letting Cuomo split the vote. Then, no matter how oppositional a candidate is when they are getting elected, once they are actually in office, the Democratic establishment has power over them.” 

In Emke’s view, the DSA is just way too accepting, its arms open so widely that it cannot shield its body from an onslaught of bullets. He cites the case of Brad Lander, who Zohran Mamdani endorsed despite Lander’s Liberal-Zionist tendency. According to Emke, the DSA made the right decision not to endorse Lander, only to end up with egg on its face when Mamdani, the flagship DSA politician, did so, leading to a dizzying and inappropriate conflation in the media between Lander and the DSA, and, subsequently, with democratic socialism. 

This conflation in the media is of great concern to Emke, given the rapid rise of democratic socialism as both a political movement and a cultural force. Furthermore, he claims that the incessant individualism of tying the DSA to single elected officials is really the heart of the issue, since it gives any future DSA-backed official an eternal hall pass to do whatever they want without consequence: 

“The issue here is not a matter of rivalry between potential leaders and mouthpieces, or even really about democratic principle, but about the dangers of investing too much power in private individuals. It would be counterproductive to try and prove that this or that individual has been “co-opted,” but the reality is that individual media figures are corruptible, they have interests that often go against those of the movement, and there is no mechanism to hold them accountable.”

What is Emke’s solution? The solution of any ‘Leninist’ with good political sense: we need to build the party, specifically its discipline. To achieve this, he proposes the adoption of a series of good practices that are prerequisites to the success of an actually independent socialist party: 

“For a more long-term, general-purpose option, we could adopt something like the Mamdani-endorsed 1-2-3-4 Proposal to make DSA a functional surrogate party. With this, all of our politicians could start speaking together with DSA’s voice, hopefully making the organization’s preferences louder than those of the media figures we enjoy. Merely exerting some pressure on our politicians could turn DSA from an asset to be co-opted and discarded into a political actor, capable of actually making policy. Better yet, we could go from primary challenges to general election runs against Democrats.”

In summary, the reorganization of the DSA is posited as a prerequisite for a successful socialist presidency, for avoiding catastrophe, for usurping the Democrats, and ultimately for securing the future of American civilization. The DSA, and the DSA alone, bears a titanic responsibility that it would make Atlas blush! 

Sometimes I feel as though American Marxism is much less a theory or ideological lens than it is a sophisticated form of lobotomization. I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, but, to modify a phrase from Emke, the madness enacts our stupidity while wearing our colors. At this very moment, at the rising climax of democratic socialism, endorsing AOC is just plain common sense. This common sense is obscured by so-called revolutionary thought, or perhaps the ongoing caricature of revolutionary thought we call American Marxism. It's such an advanced and abstract way of thinking that it commits the same mistakes as a classic Geese allegory - the doomed flight of Icarus. In this case, though, the Marxist takes flight towards the high heavens of principled ideology, and instead of wax, it is their ability to discern obvious correct positions that melts, causing the socialist to come tumbling down not just to the Earth but even lower - straight to hell. It is downright idiotic for the Democratic Socialists of America to say “no” to the most prominent socialist candidate in recent memory, no matter how much principled moralism is at stake.

Geese has tirelessly lobbed the argument against anti-electoralists that we should support AOC’s candidacy like the “rope supports the hanged man” in Lenin’s often repeated words, but that is not the argument I’m making here. My critique reduces to bewilderment that the socialists won’t simply go with the way that the wind is blowing, an error that, miraculously, was avoided in the endorsement of Zohran Mamdani, which, despite his flaws, has been an ongoing victory for socialism. But even that endorsement was mired in excessive controversy and baffling infighting. 

Emke charges DSA and AOC with the inability to stand up for socialism in our present form of organization. He fears that an apocalypse of biblical proportions will occur when we take the reins, because we simply aren’t “prepared enough” for national power. But like the Graham quote at the start of this article, Emke assumes that he is “they” that “knows” how to be a socialist president, only this case is worse than Graham’s assumption - Emke’s “they” aren’t even real people to find but rather are potentialites, living in the possible future where the DSA has done the work to bring about the necessary conditions for national power. Such conditions cannot be predicted; they will emerge in the midst of the first socialist administration, not before it. The conditions for genuine socialism can only come about as a matter of education, lessons learned not only by gaining national power but by having to maintain it. A child will never learn to swim if, before diving, they pad every inch of their body with a colorful array of floaties. They have to be forced to face their anxieties head-on and be thrown into the pool willy-nilly, flailing and thrashing in the deep end until they calm down and learn how to float. 

For the moment, let’s take on Emke’s solution and just say no to AOC. What will follow? Reorganization of the DSA under the weakest possible conditions. Reorganization and political maneuvering either with some neoliberal Democrat president, or much worse, a downright fascist Republican one. Reorganization based on diverging theoretical possibilities rather than converging practical experience. Reorganization among the same people who have failed to re-organize DSA since the last convention. What Emke wants is for the DSA to grow in strength and discipline without holding any national power or having any increase in cultural relevance. And while, as a historical materialist, I sympathize with his argument against the hyper-individuality of backing figures like Mamdani, would socialism occupy its current position if he wasn’t the mayor of New York City? If the mayor of New York can have such an effect on socialism, imagine what a self-identifying socialist president can do. The two are actually related - AOC’s presidency strengthens Mamdani’s position as socialist king-maker and vice versa, because it is all a part of the same movement. But the AOC-critical side of the DSA suffers profound short-sightedness when dealing with this fact. 

AOC’s presidency will teach us how to swim, how to fight for our lives to maintain the precious national power that we have achieved. It will teach us all what this reorganization is and why it is necessary. It is the mass participation and expansion of socialism that are clearly concomitant with the presidency and national power that are of the highest importance. 

Emke argues that an AOC presidency would lead to the masses turning against socialism: 

“DSA would be de-radicalized as we try to support "our" President even while she severely moderates her position, the masses turning against socialism when the first socialist President sends their retirement to Israel yet again.”

Emke’s concern with the masses turning their back on socialism due to AOC’s presidency is contradictory and idealistic. In order for AOC to become president, the masses have to have faith in socialism that cannot be shaken by her liberal tendencies. If anything, the opposite is true - her inevitable betrayal would make the masses more aligned with socialism, for they would desire a president who goes further than her. The only thing that will truly turn the masses away from socialism is if AOC simply fails at deliverism, at good governance. This isn’t to claim that socialism corresponds to deliverism, but that, in this moment, perception does. 

Marxists often fail to realize an unfortunate yet important truth about beliefs and popularity: that they are related through degradation. The popularity of an idea necessitates its debasement into vulgarity - this is just the way mass consumer society works. Usually, subcultures recognize this fact; for example, the Punk subculture tends to express this debasement when opining about the authentic life of their genre: that Punk died when it became mainstream. This isn’t the case for the Marxist subculture. Marxists assume that masses operate on the often myopic principles and pure interpretations that they themselves hold. Unfortunately, there is a long period during which a multitude understands an idea in its base form, as it is a caricature of its true underlying being. However, all is not lost, as this is but a temporary period. The ideas that are battle-worthy, that can survive this degrading period without falling either into obscurity or eternal vulgarization, emerge on the other side popularly understood in a way closer to their original intention, their actual expression. 

In America, democratic socialism and Marxism are poorly understood by everyone, but the silver lining is that this poor understanding is advantageous, as the deliverist successes of AOC’s inevitable betrayals will be attributed to the idea that socialism simply works. To be clear, this hinges on successful deliverism, and the masses aren’t too duped into thinking everything AOC will do is socialism. I agree strongly with Emke that AOC’s blunders on Gaza will not be seen as real socialism in action, no matter how base the idea of socialism will be during her presidency. And of course, there is the scenario that she does poorly as a president and the masses associate that poor performance with socialism. But that isn’t contained anywhere in Emke’s logic. Instead, a sufficiently radical socialist populace somehow turns against socialism because AOC wasn’t socialist enough. Again, herein lies the absurd contradiction - it is like wanting the weather to be very hot, but because it's merely warm, that situation causes the desire for frostbite. 

Emke is correct in his delineation of the properties of a genuine socialist president: that this sort of presidency would indeed have to be so radical as to stoke the flames of a possible coup. But the real, not ideal, precondition for reaching this level of authentic politics is not DSA’s independent adoption of party discipline in absentia from the presidential campaign. It is, instead, whatever actually exists as the best option for the cultural and historical expansion of socialism.

This expansion requires us to say yes to everything - yes to 1-2-3-4 proposals, yes to independent candidates, but also yes to AOC.