President Biden might be out of the presidential race, but there are still lingering questions about his health and, more importantly, why so many Democrats stuck with him all the way to the end – even when it was obvious he needed to drop out. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: President Biden might be out of the presidential race, but there are still lingering questions about his health. And more importantly, why so many Democrats stuck with him all the way to the end, even when it was obvious. I mean, it was obvious he should have dropped out. We got so much criticism. We were talking about it for two months, weren’t we? And oh my God, you would’ve thought we’re trying to undermine the entire country. But they stuck, Bernie stuck with him and the squad stuck with him. Explain why. What are the underpinnings of that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is a really very weird thing to say the least. Obviously, Bernie Sanders was never the biggest fan of Joe Biden. AOC has not been a huge fan. The squad has not. But they were some of the loudest voices saying, we gotta keep Biden. He is the best chance to win. When obviously he was not. And everybody else under the sun said, you guys are nuts too now, Biden’s gotta go. But this wonderful article from Truth Out kind of explains it in a way that says, listen, they actually have the most invested in this Biden administration because they were the ones who did secure some concessions. Not a ton, but.
Mike Papantonio: Not many at all.
Farron Cousins: Right. But they were the ones who truly believed at this point, we’ve kind of got him where we want him, and now we can keep pushing him to the left. It didn’t work out so well, but they thought, well, this is our guy. We know how to get to him now. And so it’s, again, just a very awkward and weird situation where these people that I have a ton of respect for making a horrible decision to stick by Biden when everybody else in the world said, this guy has to go.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there were some things that they just couldn’t agree on, and there was some split. Again, you talk about the squad and you go, oh my God, this is, they’re largely ineffective. If you look at what they have accomplished with legislation.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I mean, on paper, yeah, it’s not good.
Mike Papantonio: Now, it’s great for a newspaper headline. AOC says this, or whoever might say, it’s great for a headline. But if you look at their effectiveness on their domestic side in their, in their jurisdiction, or their districts, they’re able to accomplish things. Which is what they should be doing in their district. But on a national scale, they’ve just accomplished almost zero where it comes right down to it.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know what’s funny too, though, is the Biden Supreme Court recommendations. He actually came to that, a week and a half before he wrote his op-ed, he had a call with progressive lawmakers, not just your regular old Democrats, but the progressives and got their input. So that is something and AOC has been leading the charge against the Supreme Court for months now, and that is one of those things, unfortunately for this, it’s a little too little too late. But that is one of the things where they had his ear, I guess I should say. But again, it’s not going to be fruitful. But I think they still thought maybe, maybe we can keep pushing him, but there would’ve been nobody to push because he wasn’t gonna win.
Mike Papantonio: They’re having trouble with the concept of progressive genocide. That’s where everything starts falling apart. And that is where you start seeing the split with the AOC squad.
