FAQ

Both groups sponsoring this effort, RootsAction and Progressive Democrats of America, are committed to helping the Democratic Party win the midterm elections — and only then will this campaign launch in earnest. “Party unity” will be strengthened if there’s a realistic expectation that the party’s full spectrum of views will be well-represented on presidential debate platforms in 2027 and ’28.

 

Yes. 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.

 

No. The announcement of this campaign must have come as a surprise to both Khanna and AOC; we didn’t give them any advance notice of it, and they never suggested to us that we do any such thing.

 

Khanna calls himself a “progressive capitalist,” while AOC calls herself a “democratic socialist.” RootsAction cofounders Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon answer the question this way: “While there is a difference in how these two politicians label themselves, most voters will be 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 on the recent Fighting Oligarchy Tour; Khanna was a surrogate and national co-chair in Bernie’s 2020 presidential campaign.”

 

It’s expected that well over a dozen Democrats will enter the 2028 race. More than 25 ran in 2020. RootsAction’s Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have written: “If both [Khanna and AOC] enter the race, 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 Democratic 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.

 

“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 candidate raising similar issues of inequality and corporate greed had actually moved the whole Democratic debate in a notably more progressive direction.

 

“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.”