{"id":633439,"date":"2026-05-09T19:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T19:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/633439\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T19:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T19:50:12","slug":"my-ambition-is-to-change-the-country-aoc-says-when-asked-about-seeking-higher-office-in-2028-alexandria-ocasio-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/633439\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My ambition is to change the country,\u2019 AOC says when asked about seeking higher office in 2028 | Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York<\/a> congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a> answered a question about potentially running for higher office in 2028 by declaring: \u201cMy ambition is to change the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democrat delivered that remark at a political forum in Chicago<\/a> on Friday amid widespread belief that she is positioning herself to run for the White House in 2028 or challenge her party\u2019s leader in the US Senate, fellow New Yorker Chuck Schumer.<\/p>\n

Democratic strategist David Axelrod directly asked Ocasio-Cortez whether she planned to run for either while he hosted a conversation<\/a> at the University of Chicago\u2019s Institute of Politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s funny is they assume my ambition is a title or a seat,\u201d the Bronx US House representative replied. \u201cMy ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go. Senate, House seats, elected officials come and go.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut single-payer healthcare is forever,\u201d she added, in reference to the kind of national healthcare platform she has long supported over the private system entrenched in the US.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez then ran through a litany of her other signature policy positions, saying: \u201cA living wage is forever, workers\u2019 rights are forever, women\u2019s rights, all of that, and so anyways \u2026 to a finer point to your question is that when you aren\u2019t attached, when you haven\u2019t been like fantasizing about being this or that since the time you were seven years old, it is tremendously liberating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the exchange, Ocasio-Cortez said she wanted to \u201cmake decisions from a place of how are we going to change the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s evocative response to Axelrod \u2013 once an adviser to the former Democratic president Barack Obama \u2013 comes amid early jockeying among her party for its 2028 presidential nomination. That is bound to kick into a higher gear after the midterm elections in November determine the lay of the political land for the rest of Donald Trump\u2019s second presidency.<\/p>\n

A Harvard CAPS\/Harris poll<\/a> taken in April showed support among Democratic voters for former vice-president Kamala Harris at 24%; California\u2019s governor, Gavin Newsom, at 12%; and ex-transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and Ocasio-Cortez each at 9%.<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez said that instead of aiming for higher office, \u201cI get to wake up every day and say, \u2018How am I going to meet the moment?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd conditions change radically all the time. So I make my response less to an attachment to some positional title or position and working backwards from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ocasio-Cortez\u2019s remarks come days after she appeared on a podcast with comedian Ilana Glazer. In that exchange, the progressive congresswoman spoke of entrenched economic, racial and social inequalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have these systems, when you have corporations, when you have an economic elite \u2026 there\u2019s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned, right?\u201d Ocasio-Cortez remarked.<\/p>\n

She added that under the US system, \u201cYou can\u2019t earn a billion dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez answered a question about potentially running for higher office in 2028 by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-633439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}