THE CENTRIST cabal that continues to dominate the political direction of the Democratic Party must take its considerable share of blame for foisting Donald Trump on the United States not once, but twice.
Their aversion to progressive politics, their terror at the prospect of losing their grip on the party, led them to spurn the popular Bernie Sanders—who many of his supporters argue would have defeated Trump—in favour of deeply unpopular corporate Democrats. First Hillary Clinton, then Kamala Harris, after an increasingly fragile Joe Biden was forced to bow out. The pattern is unmistakable: when confronted with a choice between energising the electorate or protecting their own internal hierarchy, the Democratic establishment chooses itself every time.
What is most worrying is that they seem to have learned nothing from these failures. Instead, they appear determined to repeat the same mistakes in the next presidential cycle. The Democratic National Committee recently released a 200-page report that was supposed to provide a full and frank assessment of what went wrong in 2024. Except it doesn’t. It reads less like an honest reckoning and more like an exercise in historical revisionism designed to absolve the party’s leadership of responsibility.
The report declares that Hillary Clinton failed to beat Trump not because she was an unappealing centrist defending a deeply unpopular status quo, but because of a “series of dramatic events, massive election interference, and poor strategy.” No details are provided. No evidence is offered. It is a convenient narrative that allows the establishment to avoid confronting the obvious: Clinton’s campaign failed because it offered nothing transformative to a country in crisis. It failed because millions of Americans were desperate for change and were not willing to settle for a candidate who promised continuity.
Along the way, the report even praises Bill Clinton for supposedly reclaiming “the vital centre of American discourse,” which it still claims—absurdly—is “where most Americans live.” This is the same “vital centre” that delivered mass incarceration, deregulation, welfare cuts, and the ideological groundwork for the inequality crisis that now defines American life. To pretend that this political formula still resonates is to ignore the last decade of political upheaval.
And yet it was Kamala Harris’s campaign—cautious, centrist, and straight out of the Bill Clinton playbook—that the DNC rallied behind in 2024. Offering nothing more than more of the same, it was entirely predictable that many working-class Americans would be seduced by Trump’s claims that he would bring down the hated status quo and deliver economic salvation. Whether those claims were credible is beside the point. What mattered was that Harris offered no competing vision. She ran on managerial competence at a time when voters were demanding structural change.
And her failure to condemn Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza proved to be disastrous. The Muslim community, as well as many progressive voters, simply turned their backs on Harris.
The DNC still seems determined to prevent the party from moving left. Their strategy, such as it is, appears to rest on the hope that after Trump, the Republican nominee will be an easy beat. Where have we heard that one before? The establishment said the same thing in 2016. They said it again in 2020. They said it again in 2024. Each time, they underestimated the depth of public anger and overestimated the appeal of centrist technocracy.
The problem for the DNC is that they are increasingly out of step with the mood of the country. They will have a damaging fight on their hands if they think they can easily foist another corporate-backed centrist on the Democratic Party rank and file. The electorate has changed. The crises facing the United States—economic inequality, climate breakdown, unaffordable housing, collapsing public services—are not issues that can be solved with incrementalism. Voters know this. The DNC pretends not to.
And of course, the DNC knows exactly who the rank and file want: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Recent polling among Democratic voters shows her as their preferred presidential candidate. Although she has yet to formally state her intentions, her actions speak loudly. She has been zigzagging across the country, stopping in key swing states, giving speeches, rallying alongside Democratic colleagues, and meeting with party insiders. These are not the movements of a passive bystander. These are the movements of someone preparing the ground.
Her recent endorsement by the Democratic Socialists of America—the country’s largest socialist organisation, and one AOC has been a member of since her university days—only strengthens her position. The DSA brings organisational muscle, volunteer networks, and a grassroots infrastructure that no centrist candidate can match. It is precisely the kind of force that can turn enthusiasm into turnout, and turnout into victory.
If AOC does decide to seek the Democratic nomination, she will ignite a wave of popular support that the DNC may not be able to contain. The establishment can manipulate debate schedules, lean on donors, and deploy its usual procedural tricks, but there is a limit to how much pressure they can exert when the base is moving in the opposite direction. The last decade has shown that the American electorate is hungry for bold ideas, not triangulation. They want candidates who speak to the scale of the crises they face, not politicians who promise to manage decline more efficiently.
The Democratic Party stands at a crossroads. It can continue clinging to a centrist ideology that has repeatedly failed to inspire voters and repeatedly failed to defeat Trump. Or it can embrace the energy, vision, and grassroots power that figures like AOC represent. The DNC seems determined to choose the former. The country is increasingly demanding the latter. If the establishment insists on fighting the future, it may soon discover that the future is prepared to fight back.
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