Are you ready for JD vs. AOC?

Administration Are you ready for JD vs. AOC? Comments: by Chris Stirewalt - 06/23/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Chris Stirewalt - 06/23/26 6:00 AM ET Comments: Link copied

NOW PLAYING

There is a lot to laugh at in Vice President Vance’s current conundrum. Him being served a pickle-flavored birthday cake on a chat show because the host said fudge cake would be “too gay” is a pretty good metaphor for the state of Vance’s quest for the presidency.

He keeps getting served up unappetizing fare. Right now, the menu consists of negotiating a peace deal with Iran that is guaranteed, at least in the short term, to be unpopular. Whatever Iran gets, hawks will say it is too much. Whatever the United States gets, doves will say it is less than we would have had if Vance’s boss had never started the war. Or he may get nothing and please no one.

But here’s the thing about Vance: He ate the cake. And he didn’t just choke down what the bro-right was offering. Vance subjected himself to the hosts of “The View” with seemingly equal enthusiasm as he brought to his jaunt through the podcasts of the right wing. You may like or dislike Vance, but you cannot accuse him of being squeamish. He will grab a fork and dig right in.

This comes with risks. One of the clear motivations behind Vance’s second biography is to address the questions in voters’ minds about a person who has already had two radically different identities in a still relatively brief public life. His effort to have (ahem) his cake and eat it too regarding Iran — acting reportedly anguished behind closed doors but publicly supportive of the administration — speaks to a level of calculation that makes people uncomfortable. Will the real JD Vance please stand up, and all that.

Then there are the enemies he makes along the way. How much time will Vance have to spend soothing anxious pro-Israel Republicans that his tough talk for Jerusalem was just theater? One assumes that before the shofar sounds for Rosh Hashanah in September, Vance will be back in the good graces of many of those now questioning his loyalty, but it won’t be easy.

This all helps explain the recent surge in support for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has caught up to Vance in some recent 2028 polls. Rubio, far more dignified, has benefited from the perception, as memorialized in the endless memes of his new jobs, that he is a competent person in an incompetent administration. But what would Rubio do if he found himself on the sour end of a pickle cake? Running for president is awful and dehumanizing. How would the idea of Rubio compare with the candidate in practice?

Until we know the answers — and what further mischief President Trump will inflict on his would-be successors — we’d have to say Vance is the heavy favorite to be the 2028 Republican nominee; not quite prohibitive yet, but getting there.

On the Democratic side, however, things look wide-open. This is the mixed blessing of the party out of power. With no incumbent or sitting vice president, there’s no baggage to haul. But without those stabilizing forces, Democrats are getting ready to have a big donnybrook.

The closest thing to a true front-runner they have right now is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has the fame, money and office to command serious respect from the party establishment and donor class. But his numbers have been waning since he was Trump’s chief antagonist last year.

Democrats looking for a safe pick are testing other options, including former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and, if he pulls off his reelection, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff. Newsom is going to have to sweat it out in South Carolina like the rest of them.

But what about the Democrats who are sick of playing it safe? The ones who believe that their party has gone 1 for 3 in post-Obama presidential elections precisely because they have chosen safe, establishment-backed candidates? These are the socialistic voters who have in the past backed Democratic candidates such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but also those who want the mad-as-hell kind of pitchfork populism of Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner. And that part is far more attitudinal than ideological. If Barack Obama was a progressive who sounded moderate, many Democrats might now even settle for a moderate who sounded outraged.

Which brings us to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Tuesday’s New York primaries. Ocasio-Cortez has been taking heat from some of the socialist true believers for her selective endorsements in this midterm cycle, as she backed neither the scandal-soaked Platner nor the hugely divisive Abdul El-Sayed for Senate in Michigan, even as she campaigns across the country with their (and her) benefactor, Sanders.

But it is in New York where her selective socialism has really caught the attention of the left.

Ocasio-Cortez, who began her rise by knocking off a Democratic incumbent in a primary, has been AWOL on the hometown candidates trying to do the same thing. Is she selling out to try to please the establishment? Has she gone Washington? If we look a little closer, though, we see her collaboration with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, to whom she once played angel investor. In races where it would be politically damaging to Mamdani to endorse socialists against incumbents, Ocasio-Cortez is there. But in the races where it would raise hackles for Ocasio-Cortez to back a challenger, hizzoner is front and center.

The rap on Ocasio-Cortez’s chances for 2028 is that she will end up where Sanders and Warren did: passed over by voters who liked the eat-the-rich vibes but feared a general election wipeout. But what we’re seeing today in New York is a 2028 candidate who is willing to make those calculated, Vancian choices to get ahead. Given her status as the first true millennial heartthrob of the far left, one imagines those voters will give her lots of leeway to do what it takes to win the prize this time.

Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for The Hill.