Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warns anti-Biden Democrats about what comes next if they succeed
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warns anti-Biden Democrats about what comes next if they succeed
The progressive New Yorker spoke on Instagram about the potential risks of pressuring President Joe Biden to end his campaign.
She's right. It's annoying at best to have these people saying Biden is a problem, without articulating at least an idea of who should be nominated and how that would work this late in the game.
In my opinion, it's quite similar to Brexit: maybe you can get a majority coalition to disapprove of the status quo, but good luck getting them to actually propose a more popular alternative. Much less proposing an actual procedure for getting that alternative onto ballots.
Structurally and functionally, our political systems are not set up to run anyone other than the person who won the primary. Changing a presumptive nominee this late in the cycle is fraught with potential complications, but can be done if there's sufficient support for a specific alternative candidate. Realistically, it's Biden or it's Harris. There's no feasible way to get someone else at the top of the ticket.
Exactly
Everyone can agree on something being an issue but there needs to be consensus on solutions
Personally I think Kamala Harris is a viable plan. She's already VP, she's instantly recognizable, and she's also polling well against trump.
And honestly I'm starting to think the plan might be something along the lines of "Keep Biden in until after the election then scoot Harris in under the 25th amendment"
I don't know if she can. There's still a lot of latent racism and misogyny in American culture, and she'd have to overcome both. Bidens old, but he's a he and the color of skin that's important, for some reason. I wish it weren't so, but it is. I think she could beat a Jeb Bush hands down, but Trump has a knack for flaming those racist and misogynistic feelings in people that aren't usually that way.
"Keep Biden in until after the election then scoot Harris in under the 25th amendment"
That's the worst possible plan, IMO. Biden can lead, I would be fine with him being president for another 4 years. The issue is he can't win against Donald Trump. He was behind in all swing states, and that was before the debate, multiple gaffes and speech mistakes, moments of confusion and freezing, etc...
I think it's healthy to have these conversations, although not this late in the game. At the very least, the Trump campaign would need to completely shift if someone else is nominated which would set them back a bit.
I doubt anyone who was going to vote for Biden before the debate changed their mind and decided to vote for Trump afterwards. The biggest concern is people who have not been paying attention to the news and getting them to mobilize on election day. If the Democrats can't get people excited to vote, then we'll have another 4 more years of Trump.
It's also not just voting, but donations and volunteering. People don't think Biden can win, so they're directing efforts to other candidates. Exciting those that are already team players has real impacts.
Biden may very well not survive to the election. Plenty of people were raising concerns about his age and the physical and mental decline that were patently obvious four years ago, and were briskly told to shut the fuck up.
Run Harris. That’s the solution, because the democrats are allergic to actually cultivating new leaders.
Kinda makes you wonder if they’re democrats at all….
Right?
You're right, I'm not a Democrat. I'm a socialist and anti-fascist. My interest right now is seeing the fascist lose. I don't see a path for Biden to win.
Biden shouldn't have run again. The Dems should have primaried him. If they had, all of this would have been apparent long ago, but instead his aids have tightly controlled his media appearances for months to hide his cognitive decline from everyone except those playing close attention.
It only gets worse for Biden from here. He is at both his floor and ceiling, he has the "vote blue no matter who" and that's it.
There is definitely risk in running Kamala or someone else at the top of the ticket. They might lose anyways. But any other Dem would start approximately at Biden's spot in the polls and then have numerous paths to get where we need to beat Trump.
In the US there seem to be only two relevant parties: the "non-Democrats", and the "non-Republicans".
Kinda sounds like an Autocratic Monarchy would keep both sides happy, doesn't it? 🤦
We have a convention for a reason. Biden says he's dropping out, his delegates are released to vote for a different candidate.
Someone nominates Mark Kelly for the top of the ticket, the delegates vote him into the nomination, he accepts, and Trump loses.
It's a pretty simple plan, and rests on the assumption that Biden and Harris can put country and party ahead of their pride.
I think Mark Kelly would be a safe bet for the nomination. I heard he was already approached about it
I think there is money involved to create this narrative
Move Biden left in 2020 became just take Biden again 2024. I will keep the language US centric. Democrats are surprised they are losing progressives by appeasing conservatives and moderates. A better progressive option is Jill Stein or Dr. Cornel West. Would be surprising for a coalition between Democrats and Greens.
Progressives are concentrated in states that are going to vote blue no matter who. Democrats already win the popular vote because of these states, but lose in the electoral college, specifically because they ignore the swing states and the red states.
Go look at every living Democrat who has won an election in a red state. Those are the candidates who can poach voters from Trump's base and win the election. One of those candidates is your nominee.
OK, but all of this is only relevant if you believe Biden in his current state is able to win against Trump. The people who want Biden out believe that Biden stands no chance.
it's looking increasingly difficult for the Democrats. Biden's not impressing people, the business with Israel is putting off some of his supporters, and they've left it very late to not have a Plan B. You'd think that any party running an 81-year-old candidate would have a fallback plan ready from the outset, or might anticipate difficulties and run a younger candidate in the first place, but apparently the Democratic Party doesn't look that far ahead.
They should have been building Harris up for the last 4 years instead of giving her shit issues Biden didn't want to deal with. They knew it was possible she'd be forced to lead the party, but they were just so singularly focused on Joe Biden like he was a regular president and his reputation was the only important thing to manage.
You'd think that any party running an 81-year-old candidate would have a fallback plan ready
Hm, just wondering... what's the Republicans' fallback plan while running a 79-year-old candidate?
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.
But you probably are going to lose
Only if you allow it.
Do you respond to some stupid political polling and scare mongering articles by insisting that Biden can't win and demotivating Democrat voters? Or do you respond by talking to people and getting them to text their friends in swing states to tell them to vote?
Mobilize voters rather than just passively putting down your own check mark in November. Build energy for the campaign rather than diminishing it.
It's not the fucking weather that we can't do anything about. It's not a hurricane. It's human beings making a choice. Our narratives matter to that choice. It literally makes all the difference in the world.
Don't passively assume defeat. Especially as it gets close to November. Let the media burn all their sabotaging, pro-corpo bullshit now. Let it be old news. Get inoculated against it. Then this fall, when we're getting close, be relentless. Reach out, make connections, push that missing voter participation so it's fresh in everyone's minds.
We absolutely have this, but only if we put out the effort to take it.
Biggest thing is just to vote whether it's Biden or his replacement.