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.
There's a fun thing that happens when people are deep in rabbit holes. They get led to insane conclusions by a breadcrumb of bullshit, usually starting out with a semi reasonable premise.
But then sometimes when they pop out of their rabbit hole they just jump straight from A to X, without explaining the chain of bullshit that led them down to X.
It's why Trump and other MAGAs say shit that is insane, not like as a metaphor but like stuff that has zero connection to reality, regardless of what politics you believe in. You just haven't followed their path of increasingly absurd propositions, but they followed it because each new proposition was only slightly more out there than the last.
In this case, I suspect there was something like
(A) Trump is leading polls --> (B) Biden cannot beat trump --> (C) we need to replace Biden --> (D) replacing Biden is the best thing to do for the nation --> (E) anyone who supports Biden is acting contrary to the best interests of the nation
By this logic, the more (A) is happening, the more (E) is correct. But he skipped B through D, so it's more clear how absurd the conclusion is because you didn't get the frog-in-boiling-water parade of misinformation and propaganda.
My conclusion is not insane, it’s practical. I was a 100% Biden supporter, defended him vehemently. You can check my history here and in Kbin. He was my pick in 2016 (ironically though, after Kamala and Booker dropped from the race). Hell, I fucking stood up and cheered during the SOTU. My wife calls him her grandpa.
And then I watched that disastrous debate. He clearly isn’t all there anymore. And my eyes opened entirely. The signs have been there for years.
I love what he’s done for our country. I love his cabinet. I follow politics probably more than 90% of y’all here and have for decades. I was there for Bill when he won against all odds. I was decimated when Al Gore, who was probably our best shot for climate change policy, lost to Bush and Nader. And again I was spurned when Hillary lost by thin margins in swing states while trouncing the popular vote.
Hell, I’ll likely run for some office someday. How many else of you would actually belly up to the bar rather than just bluster here?
Our guy’s mind is deluded. The tip of our spear has blunted. It’s time to take grandpas keys away before he wraps our family’s only car around a lightpole.
Being the president isn’t a televised debate, it’s a 3,000+ person job of leading the executive branch. Biden has a speech impediment, and the older you get the more difficult it is to hide those shortcomings.
He has done an amazing job considering the absolute catastrophe fuckface draft dodger left for him. Given the choice between old draft dodger bitch and old guy who loves his children and has a speech impediment, it’s not a difficult choice.
Sure, I get what you’re saying 100%, but it’s not me and 99% of the people on here that you need to convince.
I get it, and these people are the same reason we got Trump in the first place. They are willing to forgo voting for Biden because he is not the perfect candidate, or their candidate.
Instead we get “their” candidate which is abortion and porn banned, increased taxes for all of us, corpo tax breaks, and much less freedom. But they will turn around and say “it’s not my fault, democrats should have ran someone else to make me happy to vote”.
People lack the ability to be adults about voting and vote against literal fascism.
Bullshit. If you actually loved Biden's cabinet and his team, and if you actually believed that his cognitive ability was in decline, you'd tell us to vote for him and then have him step aside AFTER the election, so the EXTREMELY WELL-ESTABLISHED PROCESS of taking over from an incapacitated POTUS can begin.
I’ll vote for his corpse, but I’m not sure Joe voter in Pennsylvania will.
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.
Ah, yes, you were with him up UNTIL the debate. Would've been more believable if you said genocide instead, lol. Totally believable, not a flagrant lie at all. How does this argument even have to do with what you originally said?
I’ll be 100% honest with you here. My feelings on the Jewish / Palestine conflict are very mixed.
If you care about the Palestinians because you disapprove of war and genocide, then I think you should also understand that Hamas made their bed when they murdered and raped Jews at the start of the conflict. And believe me, I know the cassus belli for this have been there for even before my parents were born.
I also am aware that most of you will downvote my opinion on this matter. That’s your right, but the world is indeed nuanced, neither side is in the right here and the evangelicals will only continue to fan the flames until their perceived Judgement Day has come.
If you care what’s happening there, you should also care about what’s happening in Ukraine, Darfur, with the Rohingya, the Congo, Yemen, the Uyghurs and the First Nations in America, and likely more that I don’t even know about.
But the way through those is to ensure we have a strong state department. You know who would tear down the state department like he did in his first term?
Hamas did not rape any Jews on 7oct. In fact the UN and recent HRW report stated there is no evidence of any rape on 7oct
You are confusing Hamas with israel who mass rapes Palestinians through history.
Your information is outdated.
2/3 down the page. https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/17/questions-and-answers-hamas-led-armed-groups-october-7-2023-assault-israel#:~:text=Human%20Rights%20Watch's%20investigation%20found,without%20consent%2C%20of%20sexualized%20images.
They also state Israel doesn't have any forensic of video evidence.
Did you read one paragraph lower?
Did you? Did they find evidence of the thing they stated they found no evidence of?
Again, what does any of this have to do with your original statement. You're all over the place.
Please refer to your comment that I responded to. You mention that you’d think I should have said I supported him until the genocide. So I gave you why I still supported him.
I have no qualms to having side discussions on my views, it may help you see my perspective and why my conclusion of the main topic differs from your own.
Mad props for trying to explain the mental gymnastics.