The progressive New Yorker spoke on Instagram about the potential risks of pressuring President Joe Biden to end his campaign.

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.

  • @[email protected]English
    7•5 months ago

    Thanks for the synopsis.

    In regards to a few of your points:

    • There is a reason “generic democrat” polls better in general. It’s because they’re an unknown quantity. People assume they’ll be better. Most people are not tuned in and do not know who Whitmer, Newsom, etc. are. Give it like two weeks of negative ads on them calling them socialists, etc. and boom, the polls drop. I would fully expect the polls to shift for a new candidate but LOWER, not higher. It’s much easier to inspire fear in unknown candidates rather than known ones.
    • Biden is a known quantity. He cannot be decried as a “socialist” or any other thing. People know him for better or worse and that’s that.
    • Elderly? The most reliable voting block in the country? Ignore them at your own peril for an unknown.

    AOC makes solid points and so I take a few things differently from you and say she is precisely right in her analysis. I think if the Dems switch then we get a Humphrey/Mondale mashup where the Democrats are absolutely trounced in the general.

    The time for this crap was 2 years ago, not the past month. Democrats need to find a stiff upper lip and back Biden with all their might.