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.
It's annoying that she put this on Instagram where there's no scrobble function, and she then spends so much time leading up to it.
For those not willing to sit around listening to off-the-cuff meandering, AOC's points:
My personal opinions:
So from everything AOC says, all that seems reasonable to me is (1) the observation that there is no good Democratic alternative plan, (2) the worry that the convention might run long so the alternative candidate can't appear on the ticket, (3) the possibility that a succesful Republican coup is significantly more likely with a candidate that might provide loopholes for the Supreme Court to work off of than with Biden, and (4) the possibility of losing Ohio if Biden would otherwise have won it.
However, even here, the parts of the alternative plan she is most worried about seems to be the legal trouble, which she seems most worried about only if the Democrats aren't on time with selecting a candidate. It seems to me that if only the Democrats are able to rally behind a new candidate before the Ohio deadline two days before the convention, none of her concerns apply more to the new candidate than to Biden. If it happens after the Ohio deadline, it only matters if there is a technicality that disqualifies the new candidate and Biden would otherwise have won Ohio and that technicality determines whether a coup succesfully occurs.
Is it not called "scrubbing"? Scrobble is music