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.
“Trust me, it’ll be super bad (in non-specific ways) to swap out Biden. There are unspecified people pushing to replace Biden for unspecified bad-faith reasons. Just ignore the obvious problems with the candidate, stop saying critical things and get in line. You naysayers don’t want to be responsible for handing Donald Trump the election, do you?”
Super strategy, guys.
“Trust me, it’ll be super bad to replace Biden without a strategy, and nobody can agree on a strategy”
Much better to stick with the strategy of browbeating anyone who points out Biden is losing and only speaks in complete sentences about half the time.
As opposed to the strategy that’s been spammed here for months:
“Well clearly the Democrats are useless and are going to lose. It’s Weekend at Bernie’s out there except it isn’t even Bernie. The DNC has never done anything for the people and have decided to roll over for Trump. My friends and I are just not going to vote, that’ll give the party a wakeup call.”
Unification is about the only strategy that will win this. I will absolutely vote blue no matter who, but if anyone was serious about replacing Biden they would have had to unify behind another candidate weeks or months ago. “Maybe Newsom” is NOT A STRATEGY.
I was with you until not voting. I have very real concerns about Biden’s ability to even be on the campaign trail. The dude struggles through schedules interviews and appearances in ways that he clearly didn’t used to. It seems to me that they did everything possible to hide his present condition so that there wouldn’t be a real primary, which is a shame, because I think that he’s no longer fit to serve the role of the presidency given present evidence. That said, I would vote for a dead body before I vote for Trump; I’m just frustrated that the democrats are making me.
I’m also absolutely vote blue no matter who. It’s seemed pretty clear to me that the strategy of the people who want Biden to drop out has been pressuring him into doing it voluntarily and endorsing a replacement, likely Harris.
(in non-specific ways)
(raises hand)
Who are we replacing him with?
If that doesn’t have an answer then I have one very specific way in which dropping him might make things worse
If the answer is “let the DNC figure it out, they’ve never steered us wrong before with a candidate” then I will have at least one follow up question
The likely answer is Harris, but the actual answer is whoever he endorses. Everyone on both sides of the issue has agreed that forcing him off the ticket won’t work, which is why it’s been a pressure campaign.
In any case, the notion the donors are going to all line up and bring someone we’ve never heard of out of a back room to supplant the obvious choice of the vice president or even a popular governor isn’t realistic.
I agree that in practice, it’ll be Harris. I think then the sensible conversation is whether she’ll 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 she’ll keep that 2 points. I think once the same machine that’s been trying to burn Biden down gets spun up for real against her, she’ll 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 it’s a losing proposition, because of that risk. That doesn’t seem crazy to me. But it’s telling to me that people are saying “We need to switch to candidate X who can’t be compared against Biden directly”, instead of having the honest conversation about why it should be Harris.
I wish Jon Stewart would attend the convention as a candidate.
I’m sorry but she says enough here about the machinations of the donor-class that makes me think someone absolutely heinous is being lined up to take Biden’s place
The notion that they’re going to whisk some corporate plant out of a back room that nobody’s ever heard of isn’t realistic. The favorites for a replacement are all no less donor-friendly than Biden has been.
The post you’re responding to says no one is making good suggestions, just saying “give up and come up with a new last minute plan”. Awful advice. Just awful.
No one cares if you critique anyone. It’s not anyone’s job to take bad plans seriously.
Did you read the post?
Did you read it?
What I will say is what upsets me is [Democrats] saying we will lose.
She stated over and over again in the stream that people voicing concerns about Biden’s ability are weakening him, and followed her new recurring habit of failing to rebut any of those concerns.
You’re acting like we’re entering completely unknown waters if we switch candidates. The strategy is simply to get a new candidate, likely the other person already on the ticket, run a campaign and win. The fact that several alternatives are polling neck and neck with the two candidates without even campaigning is a testament to how weak both Biden and Trump are.
That’s just more words, not more substance. You’re doing here exactly what AOC is calling out: giving a vague description of the surface of what you think will happen in a best case scenario with no tactical or even strategic consideration for first mitigating the chaos the basic act will create.
The problem isn’t that you need to come up with the play by play, the problem is that no one has. It’s literally the worst kind of plan: no plan at all.
It’s about the dumbest possible move, really, and it’s telling that the only motivation behind it is that he’s old.
Throw out the incumbent advantage, throw out all current strategies months before the election, hand wave away the candidate slate as objectively better with minimal examination, expose us to huge legal vulnerability against the most litigious party I’ve ever seen, who currently seems to have captured the judicial branch, in the highest stakes election I’ve seen so far, and do it all without any inkling of a play by play to create unity and mitigate doubt or even a hint of an acknowledgment of the problems that the move would cause in the best case scenario?
Awful.
