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COULD KHANNA AND AOC RESHAPE THE 2028 DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY?  
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Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon
September 15, 2026
LA Progressive
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_ Why a progressive presidential campaign could change the
issues—and the constituencies—at the center of the race. _

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RootsAction as an online progressive
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group challenging not only Republicans but also the corporatism
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and militarism of the Democratic Party. RootsAction supported Bernie
Sanders for president in 2016 and 2020. Two years before the 2024
election disaster that returned Donald Trump to the White House,
RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign, with the warning
that the renomination of Joe Biden by Democrats “would be a tragic
mistake
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Despite polls showing as early as 2022 that strong majorities of
Democrats
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wanted a 2024 nominee other than Biden, the “Don’t Run Joe”
message went unheeded until Biden’s debate debacle in June 2024. By
then, it was too late for the open primary
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process needed to produce a ticket that could inspire activists –
and defeat the fascistic faux-populism
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of Trump.

Like the 2024 victory of the twice-impeached, repeatedly indicted
Trump, his 2016 win was avoidable. Tad Devine makes the case in his
new book, “How the Democrats Screwed Bernie.” Devine had been a
top strategist for mainstream Democrats for decades before he joined
Bernie’s first presidential
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campaign.

One lesson we’ve learned over the last 15 years is that it’s a big
mistake for activists to sit back and expect the Democratic Party
establishment to serve up candidates who can mobilize voters and win
elections. That establishment failed us in winnable presidential
elections in 2000, 2004, 2016 and 2024. Devine, who knows the
mechanisms inside and out, says the dollar-dominated process is often
rigged against outsider “candidates who connect with voters, who
understand voter anxieties” – and these genuinely populist
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candidates “are more likely to succeed in general elections than
those who rely primarily on insider muscle.”

This week, RootsAction teamed up with Progressive Democrats of America
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to announce that we will jointly launch, just after the November
midterm elections
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a campaign urging Reps. Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run
for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. “The voices of
Khanna and/or AOC are needed in the presidential campaign to ensure
that voters hear serious solutions,” the campaign’s petition
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advocate atop the ticket, the Democratic response would be woefully
underwhelming – enabling right-wing demagoguery to push voter unrest
in dangerous and divisive directions.”

The petition statement adds that the presence of Khanna and/or AOC in
the presidential race “is crucial to foster debate on healthcare,
jobs, AI, militarism and the U.S. relationship with Israel, along with
many other issues important to a wide range of voters.”

Congressman Khanna – whose name recognition has grown recently
because of his legislative battles to release the Epstein files and to
end the Iran War, and his detention in the occupied West Bank by
Israeli settlers – represents our country’s wealthiest district
and much of Silicon Valley. He wants to increase taxes on the rich. He
calls himself “a progressive capitalist.”

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez entered the House with great fanfare after
a 2018 Democratic primary victory over one of the party’s top
leaders on Capitol Hill (Joe Crowley, now a corporate
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lobbyist
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representing a working-class, Latino-majority district in New York
City. She led the effort to bring the jobs-creating Green New Deal
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proposal to Congress. She calls herself “a democratic socialist.”

While there is a difference in how these two politicians label
themselves, most voters will be much more interested in whether each
will address the needs of the working class and fight the greed of the
billionaires. Both are direct political descendants of Bernie Sanders
– AOC was active in the 2016 Bernie campaign, which inspired her to
run for Congress, and she regularly joined Bernie last year at
Fighting Oligarchy
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rallies; Khanna was a surrogate and national co-chair in Bernie’s
2020 presidential campaign.

RootsAction’s coalition partner in this initiative, Progressive
Democrats of America, has a history of major success in candidate
recruitment. In late 2013, PDA launched the “Run, Bernie, Run”
movement, which drafted Sen. Sanders to seek the Democratic nomination
in 2016 – a campaign that elevated the national conversation and
helped spark today’s progressive upsurge.

The RunRoRunAOC.org petition [[link removed]] argues that
either Khanna or Ocasio-Cortez – or both of them – need to be in
the presidential race. If both enter it, the organizations behind this
recruitment initiative are not worried that the two will somehow
“split the progressive vote.” As shown by the historic wave of
insurgent victories in this year’s Democratic primaries, the
party’s electoral base is largely and increasingly progressive.
It’s not a small sliver of voters. And a progressive bloc of
delegates at the party’s national convention in August 2028 would be
all to the good, pushing for popular policies such as taxing the rich,
resisting Big Tech’s AI data centers, abolishing ICE, green jobs
initiatives, enhanced Medicare
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for All, cutting the military budget and stopping the weapons flow to
Israel.

During last year’s New York City mayoral campaign – which,
thankfully, employed ranked-choice voting – two progressive
candidates actually ran as a duo in the Democratic primary: Zohran
Mamdani and Brad Lander. Mamdani became mayor thanks significantly to
Lander, and now Lander is heading to Congress thanks in part to
Mamdani’s endorsement and support. In other races, progressives have
run in tandem in crowded fields, maintaining a non-aggression strategy
while bolstering each other’s positions.

We should remember that in the early months of the 2019-2020
Democratic presidential race – before a fraught personal split
between Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie – the presence of the two
previously friendly candidates raising similar issues of inequality
and corporate greed had actually moved the whole Democratic debate in
a notably more progressive direction.

Despite millions of dollars flooding into the campaign coffers of
corporatist Democratic candidates from special interests representing
AI, crypto and Israel, and despite assists to those candidates from
corporate media, the 2026 Democratic primaries have produced an
unprecedented wave of victories by underfunded progressive candidates.
These insurgent successes have occurred at local and statewide levels.

It will soon be time for progressives to focus on the national level.

Leaving the 2028 presidential nominating process to the money-drenched
party elites – with their record of electoral defeats, governance
failures and betrayals – would be a recipe for disaster.

_JEFF COHEN was an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College
and founder of the media watch group __FAIR_ [[link removed]]_. In
2011, he cofounded the online activism group __RootsAction.org_
[[link removed]]_. He is the author of “__Cable News
Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media_
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_NORMAN SOLOMON is the national director of RootsAction.org and
executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback
edition of his latest book, __War Made Invisible: How America Hides
the Human Toll of Its Military Machine_
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includes an afterword about the Gaza war._

* AOC
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* Ro Khanna
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* 2028 Elections
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* presidential primary
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