Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's message on the campaign trail increasingly echoes Barack Obama's early rhetoric during his 2008 campaign for president.Why it matters: Ocasio-Cortez is broadening her pitch beyond revolutionary democratic socialism to something closer to Obama's "Change You Can Believe In" ahead of a potential 2028 run for the White House.Former senior Obama adviser David Axelrod also hears the parallels, telling Axios: "Folks forget how much the Obama campaign in 2008 was an insurgency against the broken politics of those times. So AOC's words, while her own, are familiar in spirit."Driving the news: Campaigning in Michigan this weekend for progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Ocasio-Cortez argued for liberal policies while making a more universal case against politics-as-usual."Is the answer to our problems to turn to the same playbook over and over again?" she asked a crowd of Democrats here. "A playbook that says in order to win we must be defenders of the same status quo that is drowning us and tells us the aspiration to change our government and the ambition to even try is foolish?
No, it is not foolish, Michigan."That recalled Obama in 2007, telling Democrats in Iowa that "the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won't do in this election.… That's why I am asking you to stop settling for what the cynics say we have to accept. In this election — in this moment — let us reach for what we know is possible."AOC also channeled Obama's "hope and change" rhetoric while campaigning in Montana in May, telling voters to "ask your skeptical neighbor to believe. Our hope is the only thing that creates change, and that's why so many people try to talk us out of it."El-Sayed told Axios ahead of his rally with Ocasio-Cortez in Lansing, Mich., that when he first heard Obama speak, "I didn't know politics would sound like that, and I think for a lot of people who are listening to what she has to say, I think they're feeling the same way."Zoom in: Ocasio-Cortez embraces some of Obama's themes, but believes in more left-wing policies like Medicare for All, a moratorium on building the data centers powering AI, more skepticism of trade deals, and more.She's not the only potential 2028 contender trying to position themself as a change candidate, but the 36-year-old New Yorker has less establishment…
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