Who will lead the revolution?
With Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign just about Berned out, some are looking to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her friends to pick up where the 78-year-old socialist left off.
“There is definitely an opportunity for her and other members of the squad,” Jabari Brisport, a Democratic Socialist-endorsed candidate running for state Senate in New York told The Post. “AOC has been a leader since she was elected and before that.”
Our Revolution, a nonprofit political organization spun out of Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid, agreed, noting that Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar all had attributes the movement was looking to promote.
“There’s a hunger for elevating women and [Ocasio-Cortez] certainly fits that profile. Will she be the next leader? I don’t know, but she certainly has the profile,” said Paco Fabián, an Our Revolution spokesman, adding the group would be keen for her to advance to higher office.
“We supported her first run for Congress when she took out [Joe] Crowley. It depends who she is running against, but I could see us supporting her running for Senate,” Fabián said.
“One of the strengths of Omar and Tlaib is they aren’t afraid to not hold back, even with criticism of democratic leaders, and that’s something people are really longing for,” added progressive activist Jordan Uhl. “People are growing increasingly fed up with the status quo.”
Once seen as being on a glide path to the Democratic nomination with impressive victories in early states like New Hampshire and Nevada, the wheels came off the Sanders bus on Super Tuesday. In advance of the vote, once formidable establishment rivals like ex-South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, endorsed Joe Biden, who went on to win the lion’s share of delegates.
A week later Biden romped to victory in five more states across the country — including Michigan — a rust belt stronghold Sanders won four years earlier in an upset over Hillary Clinton.
While nobody expects the Vermont senator to call it quits, Sanders’ inner circle has been candid about his prospects.
“While our campaign has won the battle of ideas, we are losing the battle over electability to Joe Biden,” campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in an email to fans on Wednesday, which noted Sanders and wife Jane would be heading to Vermont and “holding conversations with supporters to get input and assess the path forward.”
The missive notably did not include a request for donations.
Since going to Congress in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez has become the most high-profile Democratic Socialist after Sanders. She commands more than 11 million followers on social media and her pronouncements and opinions on all subjects regularly make news. At just 30 years of age, she is part of the millennial demographic which powered Sanders’ revolution and the two have frequently appeared on the stump together.
Still, critics were quick to point out that a coronation wasn’t in the bag, saying AOC — only a House freshman — would have a hard time uniting Sanders’ fractious coalition.
“She connects with woke hipsters the same way Bernie does, but she doesn’t connect with gruff working-class voters the same way Bernie does,” Andy Surabian, a GOP strategist and former special assistant to President Trump, told The Post.
“All political movements are a combination of ideology, but also a cult of personality,” he added, likening Sanders to Ron Paul and the brief Libertarian fever which swept the country during his unlikely 2008 presidential run.
Several sources close to Sanders’ organizers echoed the same, warning that — despite his “not me, us” campaign slogan — the crotchety septuagenarian was the only one holding together a movement riven by its own internal divisions.
“I would agree with the Ron Paul assessment,” a high-level Bernie Bro close to the Sanders campaign told The Post. “Do I think anybody is going to be able to pick up Bernie’s movement and run with it? No. Will somebody be able to raise a quarter billion dollars off the Bernie movement? Probably not.”
“The movement,” he added, “has got to evolve.”