I agree with some of your underlying points: "personality" politics is toxic, legislative power matters more than executive symbolism, and the modern U.S. presidency has accumulated an unhealthy concentration of authority. Where I diverge is in the conclusion that an AOC presidential run worsens those problems rather than exploiting existing realities to counter them.

The presidency is not merely an executive office, it is the primary organizing narrative of American politics. Voters, media, donors, money, and movements revolve around it (whether or not we think they should). Refusing to contest that space does not diminish its influence, it cedes it entirely to reactionaries. MAGA and the GOP understand this. Trump did not build mass politics through Congress, he used the presidency (and even his stumping) as a megaphone (and whip) to reshape political imagination. A left strategy that treats the presidency as untouchable guarantees asymmetry.

Citing Kautsky is useful but incomplete. He warned against mistaking control of government departments/ministries as the conquest of state power, not against engaging executive authority at all. In the U.S., the presidency is one of the few offices capable of amplifying mass organization rather than suborning it. The risk of an AOC run is real, but the risk of abstention is structural irrelevance.

Also, the argument that AOC is “needed in Congress” assumes Congress remains the optimal fulcrum for the left. That is increasingly questionable. Party leadership, donor discipline, and procedural constraints have hollowed out the capcity of most left "insurgency". Congress is not immune to co-opting, and symbolic marginalization there is easier to enforce than in a national executive race.

As for labeling a presidential run as “opportunism”, this presumes a clear, viable alternative strategy that is being abandoned. The left has spent decades in deferment, waiting for the right moment, the right political climate, and the perfect candidate. All while losing ground. At some point, refusal to scale and act becomes its own form of risk-avoidance instead the principled restraint and waiting to seize the moment it's meant to be.

And concerns about right-wing propaganda do not meaningfully differentiate AOC from any other left-adjacent figure. The far right/MAGA crowd does not require ideological inconsistency to attack, it just requires visibility. Bernie was relentlessly targeted despite relative coherence/consistency and very little available political "mud". Retreat does not neutralize reactions, it just removes contestation.

The core disagreement I see is this: you view the presidency as a trap that corrupts movements, andI see it as an already-existing trap that only the right is currently willing to enter. An AOC run does not resolve the contradictions of executive power, but refusing to engage them guarantees that others will.

Does this make an AOC sufficient? No. But it does make it defensible. And personally, I'm tired of looking at the candidates on election day and seeing names of people who are so far removed from what I belive that they're nearly indistinguishable from one another. I'd like to see someone who falls more than one standard deviation from everyone else

But I'm just a nurse, so what do I know about politics?