AOC lays out the stakes
In an hour-long live-stream, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attempts to lay out the plusses and minuses of Democrats swapping out their presidential candidate (Joe Biden) this late in the election season. The election isn’t in November, she reminds viewers, it’s in September when the first ballots go out. The end of September to early October.
She’s not seeing Beltway influencers gaming out the consequences of swapping out a presidential candidate without closely examining their watches and their calendars.
Making a radical decision like this based on July polling, she reminds viewers, is unwise. She’s won elections where polling showed her down by double digits.
An open convention at this point is convention is “crazy.” People considering one are not gaming out how that would play out.
I’ve said repeatedly here to those who say, “Joe needs to go,” get back to me with a candidate and a plan and we’ll talk. AOC is in some of the rooms where these discussions among leading Democrats take place. When she asks the “Joe needs to go” faction for their plan, she gets back blank stares. If there’s a plan, she’s not hearing one.
IF Joe Biden were to step aside, VP Kamala Harris is the only logical alternate candidate. Her name is already on state ballots. She’d have access to the $100 million campaign war chest. (Others wouldn’t.) Harris and Biden have been “campaigning their butts off.” But she also worries — she works around Hill Republicans — that Republicans have plans to fight any ballot change in court, especially in key swing states. Guess where those cases will end up?
AOC’s base is working-class voters. Some colleagues are more responsive to their donors than they are to their constituents. These decisions should not be made through theoretical discussions made by people obsessed with polls, a class of elite Democrats and big donors behind the scenes, some of whom want to replace both Biden and Harris.
Me now. Black voters are the backbone of the Democratic base. Many would be pissed to see Biden forced out. Passing over Harris as an alternative sounds both tactically and politically suicidal.
AOC repeats, if you think the people pushing the “Joe must go” narrative are defaulting to Harris as a Biden replacement, “you would be mistaken.”
We must win, says AOC. All the “we’re going to lose” talk irritates her, as it does me. Her constituents cannot afford for Democrats to lose. They cannot afford to weather the storm if we don’t. They are the first deported, the first sent to war, the first sent to Rikers Island.
Americans want to vote for winners. For God’s sake, start talking like winners!
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