Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has issued a dire warning to her party about the chaos that could ensue if they succeed in pushing President Joe Biden off the ticket. And she criticized Democrats who’ve given off-the-record quotes that suggest the party has resigned itself to a second Trump term.
In an Instagram Live video on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez warned liberals that a brokered convention could lead to chaos, in part because she says some of the Democratic “elites” who want Biden out also don’t want Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee in his place.
“If you think that is going to be an easy transition, I’m here to tell you that a huge amount of the donor class and these elites who are pushing for the president not to be the nominee also do not want to see the VP be the nominee,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez claimed none of the people she’s spoken with who are calling on Biden to drop out — including lawmakers and legal experts — have articulated a plan to swap out the nominee without minimizing the serious legal and procedural challenges that are likely to ensue.
Ocasio-Cortez also highlighted the racial, ethnic and class divisions that appear to have formed between the majority of those pining to blow up the ticket — led mostly by white Democrats and media pundits — and those elected officials who feel they and their constituents have too much at stake to upend the process at this point and so are willing to do the work to re-elect Biden-Harris. She alluded to this cultural divide in her video when she spoke out against anonymous sources expressing a sense of fatalism on behalf of Democrats about what might happen if Biden remains on the ticket:
What I will say is what upsets me is [Democrats] saying we will lose. For me, to a certain extent, I don’t care what name is on there. We are not losing. I don’t know about you, but my community does not have the option to lose. My community does not have the luxury of accepting loss in July of an election year. My people are the first ones deported. They’re the first ones put in Rikers. They’re the first ones whose families are killed by war.
Same. It’s the most out-of-step I’ve ever been with her and Bernie, a bit jarring for me. I mean, I get it, it’s free political capital for progressives to voice support here. But still, as soon as the party started having this conversation through the media, Biden’s candidacy became unviable.
Could be that they are doing this to keep them from dumping Harris too, which might be the necessary compromise for the party in the end.
Yeah, his campaign has been dead since a senator went public in opposition. You don’t put in the visible performance he did at the debate, then publicly lose major Democrats, and somehow turn around an already losing campaign. I really don’t get anyone who thinks there’s some path for Biden to win. He didn’t need to lose the faith of a majority of the party to be unviable (which he now has), losing any significant segment was enough to be crippling.
There’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle and people trying to act like it just seem out of touch with reality. Whatever risks you think a new candidate has, at least there’s a chance.