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.
Joe voter in Pennsylvania will absolutely not vote for “insert Dem here”.
Disrupting the Democratic campaign is a right wing strategem.
Again to poorly quote John Oliver, if the Brits and French can do it in a few months, so can we.
How refreshing would it be to have someone who is actually eloquent who can clearly convey his/her progressive ideals to the public? Remember how inspirational Obama was? Joe voter absolutely voted for that kind of candidate and would do so again.
You realize that the UK and France are entirely different countries with an entirely different system of government and voting, right? What the hell?
Sure, the time to make that argument was a year ago. Now, it’s just fucking up the Democrats. That’s the only reason this is even a thing.
When you look at the history across the world where you have a wounded weak incumbent and a conservative firebrand, who usually wins the election? Do you really think we’re so much different?
At my job, when a company says “we’re just too different” we challenge that and ask “in what way?” The majority of the time, it’s just that company is too rigid to change.
To bring it back to politics, we have a convention for a reason. It’s only up until recent history where the convention is more of a rubber stamp rather than a true conversation about the direction of the party.
Would you have supported the idea a year ago? I wouldn’t, and I doubt you would have either.
This isn’t a company that can just change.