Not Radical Enough? Will the DSA Stop AOC in 2028?

**Josh Holmes** (0:00)
Is the DSA going to put an end to AOC before her campaign even starts for whatever leadership that she's pursuing, most likely a president of the United States?

**Michael Duncan** (0:10)
She stopped being this disruptor within the Democrat caucus and worked within the system, and I think that's probably why the DSA of today looks a little leery at the AOC's woke one, right, as the voice of the future.

**Josh Holmes** (0:24)
It's pretty hard to ignore the power base within the Democrat Party, which is this DSA uprising.

**Michael Duncan** (0:31)
It should scare every Republican that they're having this fight about who gets credit out in the open because it tells you how confident they are that they're going to win in November.

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**Michael Duncan** (2:15)
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This is why you listen to the Ruthless Podcast, nobody else would ask that question.

**John Ashbrook** (2:30)
The only political podcast we're listening to is the Ruthless Podcast.

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Good Tuesday to you.

**Josh Holmes** (2:43)
Welcome to September in the Ruthless variety program. I am Josh Holmes along with comfortably smug Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook, a full cast and crew left to right across your radio dial.
Listen, we're going to do, I think between now and November, a thousand different shows and iterations of the midterm elections, and you'll get some of that this week. But there are some things that are happening that I think are worth discussion because they talk about what after November looks like, what in this case that we're going to talk about today, what the Democratic Party looks like because we have covered for, I don't know, probably 18 months, the Home Office Caucus and the DSA take over the Democratic Party.
What that means in terms of fielding a candidate, I think if you were to ask your average political prognosticator, eight months ago, they would have told you like Gavin Newsom, or like Pritzker, or maybe Shapiro in Pennsylvania. But as you've watched primary season play out, it's pretty hard to ignore the power base within the Democratic Party, which is this DSA uprising. And there is like the genuine article, which I think in my view should probably be institutionalized at some level. And they're trying to blend that with the political opportunist side, and the Bernie and in particular AOC. And I've had, I don't know about you fellas, but I've had some conversations with Democrats and some neutral arbiters who are in the political system, where I just ask the question, you know, like who, if you were to put chips in right now, who would you pick? And the vast majority of them say AOC.

**John Ashbrook** (4:42)
I'm not surprised by that. And you know, there was an observation that Duncan made last month about how a lot of the fights that you're seeing play out online on the right are really just proxy battles for the Republican nomination fight in 2028
I think the same is probably true on the DEM side, that a lot of the fights between the DSA and the establishment and the fights within the DSA are proxy battles for their 28 nomination process. But I agree with you, and I've heard the same thing from Democrats I've talked to, that AOC's name keeps coming up and up. And maybe, you know, you hear a little bit more John Ossoff here and there, you hear some other names that aren't on that list that you read off here and there. So it's a little bit wide open underneath AOC, but her name is always on everybody's mind.