It Started Out As a Joke. But Now No One Is Laughing at This Candidate’s Chances for 2028.

New in PJ Media:

The socialists won big in New York the other day, and that victory in turn has significantly boosted the presidential hopes of someone whose candidacy was up until recently more the punchline of a joke than a serious proposal. Are you ready for President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? You may have to be.

The New York Post reported Saturday that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-McSorley’s) has gotten “such an ego boost” from the socialist sweep that she “may ditch her long-anticipated plot to unseat Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for bigger game.”

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, was enthusiastic, saying: “New York’s clean sweep was a political earthquake that shows voters generally want to shake up the system. Whatever percent chance [Ocasio-Cortez] put on running for president a week ago, it should be a higher percent chance now – absolutely. It could have gone from 5% to 20%.”

Meanwhile, someone whom the Post identifies only as “a top establishment Dem” says that AOC doesn’t really want to take on Schumer, anyway, as she already has her eyes on the big prize: “She’s never itched to be a senator, one of 100, because you don’t become a leader — that takes years and a deep record of legislating. Plus, who wants to be junior senator [in New York] to Kirsten Gillibrand?”

Another unnamed Post source, “a longtime New York Democratic operative,” agrees, saying: “Every light on the dashboard is flashing [that] people want generational change,” and that after the latest primaries, “Everyone’s freaking out.”

As well they should. The Democrats’ newly open embrace of socialism is unlikely to play well in the heartland, and AOC’s rising star is just the latest symptom of a far deeper malady that could sink the party (or the country, if these clowns do take the House and/or Senate and the presidency).

AOC herself wouldn’t confirm that her swizzle stick is in the ring for 2028, but she did sound as if she were positioning herself to be just what she thinks America needs: “I think there will always be a place — and a winning place — for a candidate that fights for guaranteed health care for every American, raising wages, and taking on a lot of the corporate corruption that’s driving up prices.”

She may be right. After several generations of relentless socialist indoctrination from leftist professors and even secondary school teachers, plus a wholesale decline of academic standards in the same period, all too many Americans are completely unaware of the fact that socialism is the most catastrophically failed ideology in the history of the world, and never stop to think for a moment about who is going to pay for all the free stuff that AOC and her comrades are promising.

There is more. Read the rest here.