Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) dismissed a question of whether or not she’ll run for president in 2028 on Friday night, stating that her “ambition is way bigger.”
“My ambition is to change this country,” Ocasio-Cortez told Democratic strategist David Axelrod during a conversation hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. “Presidents come and go, Senate, House seats, elected officials, come and go, but single-payer healthcare is forever. A living wage is forever. Workers’ rights are forever. Women’s rights — all of that.”
However, according to Ocasio-Cortez, her political ambitions are to “meet the moment,” noting that “conditions change radically all the time.”
“So I make my response less to an attachment to some … title or position, and working backwards from there.” Ocasio-Cortez told Axelrod. “But I make decisions by waking up in the morning, looking out the window and observing the conditions of this country and saying what move or what decision can I make today that is going to get us closer to that future, stronger, faster, better than yesterday and those conditions.”
She went on to say her “decisions come from a very substantive place,” highlighting that no elite power can prevent her from “waking up every day in service of the working class.”
“And I can do that in the House. I can do it in the Senate. I can do it from the White House. I can do it from a shack in upstate New York, chopping wood and being a burnout — like, I can do it,” Ocasio-Cortez concluded.