Biden Already Being Sabotaged by AOC, Leader of the Extreme Wing of the Democratic Party
Joe Biden has just announced for the presidency, which means it’s time for everyone who was holding back while he wasn’t officially a candidate to pounce. (Just like Republicans!)
There’s been plenty of criticism of Biden in the run-up to his announcement, with several pundits noting that Biden’s record wasn’t sufficiently liberal for the modern Democrats.
“For decades Biden gave liberal cover to white backlash. He wasn’t an incidental opponent of busing; he was a leader who helped derail integration,” Jamelle Bouie wrote in a March piece for The New York Times.
“He didn’t just vote for punitive legislation on crime and drugs; he wrote it. His political persona is still informed by that past, even if he were to repudiate those positions now. Biden could lead Democrats to victory over Trump, but his political style might affirm the assumptions behind Trumpism. The outward signs of our political dysfunction would be gone, but the disease would still remain.”
That’s pundits — not politicians. We didn’t really see much criticism from elected Democrats. We still haven’t, but one of the most conspicuous members of the Democratic caucus in the House has become one of the first to strike against the 76-year-old final vice president. And, in case you didn’t read the headline: It’s probably who you think it is.
In an interview with the podcast “Skullduggery,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she thought that a Biden presidency would be regressive rather than progressive.
“That does not particularly animate right now,” she said, according to Fox News.
The freshman New York Democrat said she “a lot of issues” with Biden’s run, which hadn’t been announced when the interview was conducted.
“I can understand why people would be excited by that, this idea that we can go back to the good old days with Obama, with Obama’s vice president,” she said.
“There’s an emotional element to that, but I don’t want to go back. I want to go forward.”
As for who she’s impressed with?
“I haven’t endorsed anybody, but I’m very supportive of Bernie,” she said.
“I also think what Elizabeth Warren has been bringing to the table is … truly remarkable, truly remarkable and transformational.”
Neither Sanders nor Warren would have as much of a chance against Donald Trump as Biden, but defeating Trump isn’t exactly what she has in mind. Instead, it’s remaking the party in the image of the left.
Not that Joe Biden has any room to complain, mind you.
The inmates may be running the asylum, but Biden was part of an administration that unlocked and opened the doors to the padded cells. The Democrats have been in the process to giving the party over to the activist base for more than a decade now. The result of this, after the 2018 election, was that Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow freshmen — Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — began absorbing all of the air in the room.
Some members of the party establishment have tried to get the narrative back on track. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a recent “60 Minutes” interview, said that the far left of the party was “like five people” and not representative of the party as a whole.
That’s quite some spin. If the far left hasn’t entrenched itself within the Democrat mainstream, they’re certainly close. Witness the presidential candidates, who’ve embraced policies that would have been considered outré five years ago: a wealth tax, free college and $50,000 amnesty for student loans, reparations for slavery, the Green New Deal, packing the Supreme Court, eliminating the Electoral College — those sorts of things.
Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-endorsement may have been made before Biden announced, but it is important. After all, she may just be 29 years old, but she’s one of the best-known Democrats in the field. And she’s right, at least in Democrat rubric: Biden may be creepy Uncle Joe, but he’s still more sane and electable than the rest of the Democrat field. Then again, when you live in dreamland, all of these candidates seem electable.
In a few years, it could be Ocasio-Cortez getting the nomination. “I think about it every once in a while, but … this is pretty hard already,” she said when asked about running for the presidency when she’s old enough. Translation: She’s going for it. She’ll have no chance of winning the presidency, mind you, but her chances of winning the nomination are actually pretty high. That should scare a lot of us, but especially Joe Biden. Not that he’s running against her, but as his party slides further into the muck of progressivism, it doesn’t bode well for his chances.
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