The road test: Inside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s strategy ahead of a potential 2028 campaign | CNN Politics

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been doing a lot of knitting lately. She’s slowly churning out a collection of hats and sweaters as she quizzes aides about campaigns she’s thinking of endorsing or working with House colleagues on what to include in bills and how to communicate what they’re doing. Some of the knits, she wears herself. Some she gives out as gifts. Long gone are the days of her spontaneously joining a sit-in about the Green New Deal in Nancy Pelosi’s office. Now, she advises newer House members to learn from her early experiences of antagonizing party leadership and talks excitedly about her work on the House Energy and Commerce Committee: Her grilling of Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin during a committee hearing in April created a viral moment. The New York congresswoman is truly undecided about what she’ll do in 2028, when she can run for president or for the seat held by Sen. Chuck Schumer. But Ocasio-Cortez, 36, is positioning herself to try to reach nationally beyond the deepest blue parts of the Democratic base — and making clear in private that whatever she decides, she has no interest in being merely a protest candidate. Whate