CNN’s Manu Raju broke down the latest CNN poll on how Democrats view the leadership of their party during his Sunday show panel this week and focused in on whether or not Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) really has the support to lead.
Raju kicked off the segment by playing a recent soundbite from Ocasio-Cortez in which she argued that “The Republicans have the White House, the Senate, and the House. If they want to do this, and if they want to screw over the American people, they can do this with their votes and their party.”
“The question Democrats have confronted since Election Day is, who actually is leading their party?” Raju continued, adding:
Well, a new CNN poll out this morning gives us a sense of who Democrats and Democratic leading voters think best aligns with their party’s core values. And that’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat and progressive firebrand who was furious at Senate Democrats for allowing the GOP spending bill to become law.
Now, it all comes to a slew of potential Democratic presidential candidates are already testing the waters for 2028. My panel is back. So just to look at a little bit more in this poll, the question about who best reflects the core values of the Democratic Party. If you break down among age group, perhaps no surprise, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with people who are younger than 45, 15% say that she does. That’s more than Kamala Harris. And, you know, she’s still with people above 45% doing reasonably well.
Now, just to be clear, there are a lot of voters who did not offer a response. 30% of voters didn’t offer a name in response to who aligns with the Democratic Party’s core values. But what’s your reaction to that? AOC, the progressive, one-time firebrand of the party, still a firebrand, representing the core values of the Democratic Party.
PBS’s Laura Barrón-López replied, “I noticed that Chuck Schumer’s name wasn’t on that at all. No, the congresswoman is clearly tapping into something across the Democratic base because she is someone who is – knows how to, unlike I think a lot of other Democrats, knows how to operate in this new media ecosystem, right, which is that just traditional media doesn’t work all the time, reaching voters in that way doesn’t work all the time.”
“She blankets social media across the board and makes herself available to voters in a way that you don’t see Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries making themselves available to voters. And I think that that’s also why you’re hearing her – voters are responding to her message and they’re feeling like out of everyone in the party she is potentially the person who is giving voice to their anger in terms of why are you cooperating with the Republican Party,” argued Barrón-López.
“She’s joining Bernie Sanders, who’s 83 years old, probably not going to run for the presidency again. She’s joining him in town halls next week in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado. Is there a path for AOC in 2028?” Raju followed up, turning to Axios’s Alex Isenstadt.
“Well, if that’s what the party wants, then potentially, her rise kind of reminds me of what happened to Republicans after Obama’s election in 2008, where it was the loudest voices in the Republican Party, the Tea Party, that really gained traction at a time when the Republican Party was lost. And maybe Democrats now find themselves in a similar situation in AOC. Maybe she best represents where Democratic voters are,” Isenstadt replied.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
