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.
This gives me a moment of pause. I have grave concerns about Biden's ability to campaign, concerns that apparently seem to be shared by Obama after their June fundraiser in LA. I also have serious concerns that if the fundraising class decide to withhold support from Biden, and that between a lack of in person campaigning and a lack of funding, his whole campaign is going to be DOA. Biden can't lean on grassroots fundraising they way Bernie could, and it's now become clear that the reason Biden hasn't been making a lot of appearances is because they wanted to keep it under wraps until now so that there wouldn't be a real primary. But here we are in the real deal and Biden is struggle bussing through interviews. My assumption has pretty much been that he'd step down from the presidency and Harris would become the natural candidate in his place as his VP (Along with the hilarious side effect of making republicans waste all that money on "47" flair). But I guess AOC thinks this won't be the case. I wish I knew better what she seems to know.
Nancy came out as for an open primary. AOC is warning her ilk about why that's a bad idea, and making sure her constituents know it.