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 whoāve given off-the-record quotes that suggest the party has resigned itself to a second Trump term.
InĀ 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 āelitesā who want Biden outĀ alsoĀ donāt want Vice PresidentĀ Kamala HarrisĀ as the nominee in his place.
āIf you think that is going to be an easy transition, Iām 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,ā she said.
Ocasio-Cortez claimed none of the people sheās spoken with who are calling onĀ Biden to drop outĀ ā including lawmakers and legal experts ā 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 thoseĀ pining to blow up the ticketĀ ā led mostly by white Democrats and media pundits ā 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 donāt care what name is on there. We are not losing. I donāt 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. Theyāre the first ones put in Rikers. Theyāre the first ones whose families are killed by war.
I agree that in practice, itāll be Harris. I think then the sensible conversation is whether sheāll have a better chance of winning than Biden will.
To me, the fact that she polls like 2 points ahead of him, while she is as she currently is an unknown quantity without all of the attacks against Biden that have been spun up (he invented inflation, he loves immigrants way too much, he killed Palestine, he betrayed Israel, etc etc pick your poison depending on the target audience involved), is a pretty good argument for rallying around Biden instead of switching to Harris and hoping sheāll keep that 2 points. I think once the same machine thatās been trying to burn Biden down gets spun up for real against her, sheāll crumple up and get crushed worse than Biden currently is. Maybe I am wrong in that.
I can see an argument that Biden may continue to fuck up doing things like he did at the debate, and so we need to switch even if by the calculus right now itās a losing proposition, because of that risk. That doesnāt seem crazy to me. But itās telling to me that people are saying āWe need to switch to candidate X who canāt be compared against Biden directlyā, instead of having the honest conversation about why it should be Harris.
I wish Jon Stewart would attend the convention as a candidate.
The only good argument I can think of for swapping candidates last minute is it will throw the Republican propaganda machine into disarray; theyāll need a good month or so to figure out a narrative against whoever it is. But theyāre already gearing up anti-Kamala stuff.