The midterms are over, so now — without missing a beat — the 2028 election manoeuvering has begun. A group called “Ready for AOC” has started a push to encourage New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president. That puts her among the two dozen Democrats who are estimated to have already begun forming exploratory committees and taking preliminary steps towards a presidential run. Of that number, Ocasio-Cortez would arguably be the most polarising.

It is hard to imagine a candidate who presses on the nerves of the culture wars in quite the way that AOC does. Much of that stems from her unambiguously Left-wing politics. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and her signature legislative proposal in Congress has been the “Green New Deal”, an extraordinarily expensive plan to transition the entire US energy system to renewable sources. She has tried to play down her embrace of what she referred to as “Woke One”, but opponents both inside and outside the party still see her as a standard-bearer for progressive excess. Meanwhile, Republicans have poked fun at the makeup and lifestyle videos she has posted online, with Donald Trump referring to her as “stupid” and “incompetent”.

While Ocasio-Cortez has a loyal base of supporters, the wider country feels differently. A Wall Street Journal poll from September found that while she held 72% favourability among Democrats, only 26% of independents and 3% of Republicans had a positive view of her. That polarisation makes it difficult to imagine that AOC could actually win a general election, though she has all the qualities to go deep into a Democratic primary, with name recognition and charisma far outstripping rivals such as Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigieg. Polymarket currently has her in second place in a prospective primary on 15%, behind only Ossoff.

AOC is also arguably best-placed to take advantage of the Democrats’ current direction. This past election cycle is when a genuine political Left seemed to take shape in America. For so long confined to grievance politics, or to an uncomfortably narrow perch within the Democratic Party, Left-wingers found an impressive organising apparatus in the DSA, a fringe organisation for decades which has now seen its membership expand twentyfold since 2015. At last week’s elections, a record six congressional candidates won their races. Some of the party’s most significant victories were achieved by avowed progressives, such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Troy Jackson in Maine.

That wind lifts Ocasio-Cortez’s sails. She is perfectly positioned to secure the party’s influential Leftist wing and be one of the last candidates standing in a primary that may well resemble the fundamentals of the 2016 Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders face-off.

But that popularity is, at the same time, bad news for the Democrats. For a voting plurality in a general election, the Green New Deal and socialist economics are non-starters. Independent voters remain suspicious of AOC for a good reason, and her charisma can’t hide how far her views lie outside the Overton window of mainstream American opinion. If she gets through the primary, she may bring the Democrats down with her.