Are AOC and Jasmine Crockett sabotaging Democrats’ 2028 chances?

“Nature hates a vacuum” is a truism that applies especially to politics.

Since President Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in November, peeling off many formerly loyal Democratic voters from diverse communities, much of the talk has been about the Democratic Party being rudderless, leaderless and lost.

Viewers of CNN and MSNBC — as well as various other left-of-center media outlets — will have noticed that Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have been making regular appearances of late. Why?

One explanation I have heard from Democratic operatives is that Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez are trying to fill the vacuum created by Harris’s loss, the absence of a clear 2028 frontrunner and a coherent agenda. With chaos comes opportunity — opportunity, perhaps, for them.

They are correct to believe that such chaos has created a timely window for them to generate a great deal of attention for themselves. But what cost might their rise inflict upon the Democratic Party in 2028?

To paraphrase the line from “Top Gun,” are the egos of Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez writing checks that their records and real-world experience can’t cash? Do they even care? Or have they so bought into the calculation that they could become president that nothing else matters — not even the good of the Democratic Party?

Long ago, my old boss, former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) joked, “The most dangerous place in Washington is between Chuck Schumer and a TV camera.” That same joke seems to apply today to Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez.

The two have a built-in constituency, but it is a constituency that is shrinking rapidly, built around messages that failed in 2024. Both Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez have either called to “defund the police” in the past or supported groups and politicians that did so. Both strongly support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which millions in our nation believe to illegally discriminate by placing identity politics ahead of merit, all the while wasting taxpayer money on a dubious DEI consultant class.

Leaving those issues aside, the main “policy” that both Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett seem to articulate when they do settle in front of one of those cameras is to attack Trump. They don’t seem to address crime in their districts, the punishing effects of illegal immigration, human trafficking, failing public schools, the politicization of healthcare or the maladies of our crumbling inner cities.

No — their entire platforms seem to be that they hate Trump, love government spending, demand billions for reparations and want to increase the size of the nanny-state.

It can be assumed that either Crockett or Ocasio-Cortez getting the Democratic nomination for president in 2028 would be a dream come true and a prayer answered for the Trump-Vance White House, the Republican National Committee, Republican donors, conservative media, countless podcasts and blogs and tens of millions of Americans looking to build upon the Trump agenda. It would be a nightmare for the centrist and sane wing of the Democratic Party.

When asked on Fox News late last year about Ocasio-Cortez getting the nomination, well-known Democratic strategist and pollster Doug Schoen stressed that “it would be a disaster.” He also remarked that “most Democrats don’t want extreme left-wing politics.” In case some in the Democratic leadership have not been paying attention, that would be the exact politics of Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez: “extreme” and “far-left.”

All of which raises a question: As Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett clog the airwaves singing their own praises, what will the Democratic leadership do over the coming months? Will they tip-toe around these two leading characters while allowing the pair to create talking point after talking point for Vice President JD Vance? Or will they call them out for being out of step with the vast majority of the population, including countless Democrats?

My guess is that they will tip-toe around Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez, out of fear of the party's far-left wing. But this is a cowardly strategy which, if not eventually reversed, would balkanize the Democratic Party while assuring at least four more years of Republican rule from the White House.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.

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