A hardline caucus inside the Democratic Socialists of America is publicly rejecting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, as a potential 2028 presidential contender, accusing her of abandoning the socialist movement that helped launch her career.
The Democratic Socialists of America’s Liberation Caucus, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist bloc within DSA, said in a statement that it would not “endorse or give succor” to an Ocasio-Cortez campaign, arguing she has made repeated “capitulations to the imperialists.” The caucus’s statement invokes conditions national DSA’s National Political Committee attached to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s 2024 re-election endorsement, including opposition to Israeli military funding and support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which the committee determined she had not met.
The statement also faulted Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for hosting a panel with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which the caucus describes as a Zionist organization, and for recently distancing herself from the “defund the police” movement. In an ABC interview, she called the 2020-era left-wing political moment she dubbed “Woke 1” “crazy” while discussing past calls to defund the police and abolish prisons. The caucus called that reversal the mark of an “opportunist dilettante.”
The rejection comes as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s national profile continues to climb. She led the field of prospective 2028 Democratic contenders in a New Hampshire primary poll released in July, edging former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and running far ahead of former Vice President Kamala Harris.
DSA’s national leadership has been split over how — and how soon — to weigh in on a potential AOC bid. The organization’s National Political Committee voted down a proposal in July to let members decide on a 2028 endorsement through an all-member poll, leaving the matter to DSA’s existing convention process — a move Fox News reported could push any formal endorsement decision to the group’s national convention in August 2027. A committee member publicly disputed claims that the vote barred chapters from conducting their own polls.
The Liberation Caucus statement singled out the NYC chapter’s continued support for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as evidence of “the rightist clique” shielding an elected official from accountability, adding that the chapter has floated splitting from the national DSA rather than cut ties with her.
Formed in 2025, the caucus describes itself as advancing “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” and maintains a page defending Maoist history. On the Great Leap Forward famine, the caucus does not dispute that mass starvation occurred but disputes the conventional narrative attributing it to Maoist policy, pointing instead to factors such as natural disasters and the Soviet withdrawal of aid, and it challenges widely cited famine death tolls.
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