 Listen, it's not surprising to see elected Democrats and people running to lead the Democratic Party like Bernie Sanders and AOC all commit to supporting other Democrats. That's not surprising in the slightest to me. It's something that we all expect. This is how party politics oftentimes works. Now I think that if Bernie and AOC were to be a little bit more Machiavellian in the way that they play politics, a little bit more savvier, they could be more effective. If they play hardball with the establishment every once and again. But that doesn't change the fact that I do expect them ultimately to fall in line at the end of the day. But Bernie Sanders, you know, he called his supporters irresponsible, but AOC chose to take a different approach. And I think that this approach ultimately is going to be the one that is more conducive to Democrats winning. Because while she is ultimately tacitly saying or actually explicitly saying she's going to support Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's nominee, which I don't actually think she should say because the minute that you say you're going to support someone, then you lose all leverage and he hasn't reached out to her, she says. So I think that's part of the reason why he hasn't because he already knows that she's going to support him. But you know, regardless, what she says about voting blue, no matter who, I think this is a more reasonable response. And people like Bernie Sanders, Joy Reid, Mehdi Hassan, not that they're all equal. You know, I don't think that, you know, Joy Reid is a good faith actor here. But their approach to this vote blue, no matter who, it's all wrong. And I think that if anything, it's counterproductive because they're driving people away. If you try to hit someone over the head, you're not going to get them to listen. Like people don't respond to that. So you've got to meet people at their level if you genuinely think that people should support Joe Biden. And I won't be exercising that strategy. But to see the way that a lot of people are face planting and trying to convince others to use that strategy, it goes to show you that they are more willing to talk at people than actually listen. So in an interview with the New York Times, I think AOC did a really adequate job of explaining what unity actually means. She said there's this talk about unity as this kind of vague kumbaya kind of term. Unity and unifying isn't a feeling, it's a process. And what I hope does not happen in this process is that everyone just tries to shoot along and brush real policies that mean the difference of life and death or affording your insulin and not affording your insulin. Just brush that under the rug as an aesthetic difference of style. There's also this idea that if we all just support the nominee, that voters will come along as well. I flagged very early two patterns that I saw among Biden's campaign, which is underperformance among Latinos and young people, both of which are very important demographics in November. And so I don't think this conversation about changes that need to be made is what about throwing the progressive wing of the party? A couple of bones. I think this is about how we can win the whole process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved. That's how you know it's working. And if Biden is only doing things he's comfortable with, then that's not enough. And then she was asked, can you give me examples of areas that you want to see him get uncomfortable? She says they floated this olive branch to the progressive left of lowering the Medicare age to 60. And it's almost insulting. I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50. So we're talking about a progressive concession that is 10 years worse than what the nominee had in 2016. Progressives aren't a monolith like every voting block is in a monolith. But I also know from a Latino perspective, I think we need a real plan to be better than what happened during his service with the Obama administration in terms of deportations, in terms of apprehensions. I mean, even in terms of rhetoric, it was just a couple of months ago that he told an immigrant activist to vote for someone else. I want to see him get uncomfortable there. Putting dreamers on a path to citizenship is great. But that's a policy concession from 10 years ago. And I respect what she's saying here. I don't agree with everything that she said in this article and I'll link to the full thing if you want to read it. But she is coming at this in the right way. She is putting the burden, the lion's share of responsibility on Joe Biden, not on voters, not on Bernie Sanders supporters. And that's exactly what the left should be doing. I think that it's perfectly reasonable to advocate for Joe Biden for purposes of harm reduction, because, you know, I do believe that he is the lesser of two evils. I think that we are looking at a Supreme Court growing that conservative majority if Trump is president. I think we're looking at the prospect of war with Iran. If Trump remains president. So I agree with them that Donald Trump is the greater evil. However, admitting that someone is the greater evil doesn't mean that we should sweep all of the issues brought up by the left under the rug. And that's what it feels like when Bernie Sanders says it'd be really irresponsible if my supporters didn't back Biden. I mean, what are you expecting? Like these wounds are still very fresh. He just endorsed Biden a day before he called his supporters irresponsible. People are still grappling with the reality that we lost the second election in a row and the fact that Bernie's supporters aren't given any room to breathe and they're already being bombarded with, oh, you must want Donald Trump to win. This is so counterproductive. It's so counterproductive and it's insulting, right? It's completely ignoring all of the concerns that the left brought up to begin with. People respond when you meet them at their level. OK, and if you are a voter in a swing state, these are the people who you have to win over. So you've got to acknowledge just off the bat. There's going to be a number of people who supported Bernie that will not back Biden. But most of these people are in safe states, not swing states. Stop yelling at them. Stop yelling at people because not everyone is going to vote no matter who, because it, in my opinion, isn't as big of an issue. If I lived in a swing state, I would reconsider my position. But you have to approach swing voters in people in swing states and convince them that there's going to be some sort of payoff for them if they come out and vote for Joe Biden, if they actually wait in line for hours and overcome barriers to voting and, you know, make it past voter suppression and voter ID laws. Like, you have to show them that there's a real material difference that will be made by supporting Joe Biden and a lot of people rightfully don't believe that there will be a material difference to their lives. They believe they're still going to be in the same fucked predicament if it's Trump or Biden and the responsibility is on Biden to make sure that he reaches out to them. It's not the other way around. Voters are the ones who he should be earning. We shouldn't be having the fucking fight for Joe Biden. He should be fighting for the voters. So what AOC is doing here is she's approaching this from a reasonable perspective. She is coming to reluctant Bernie Sanders supporters from a place of reasoning because she's been here herself, right? I'm sure she didn't enjoy voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016. So she gets it. And, you know, when you just do nothing but berate people, I promise you, you're not going to win them over. OK, I've already conceded on the argument that I think that the harm reduction argument is it's valid. I wouldn't be exercising that argument because I live in Oregon. But other people who don't live in safe blue or, you know, red states, deep red states, those are the people ultimately who will make or break this election. And it's not even them. Like, I don't necessarily believe that Bernie Sanders supporters should be the overall main focus, contrary to popular belief, because what we saw back in 2016 was that a third of Americans didn't come out to vote at all. And so until Democrats acknowledge that they have to bring out non-voters by offering them policies that will improve their material conditions, I mean, we're going to be in this predicament. Like, we can try to place blame on voters if you want to. I don't think that's a good strategy, but we know what it takes for Democrats to win. Turn out has to be high. And when you see enthusiasm for Joe Biden lower than the enthusiasm level for Hillary Clinton back in 2016, you can't blame anyone but Joe Biden for that, who has ran a campaign that may be worse than Hillary Clinton's. I don't know if they're equal in my eyes, but at least Hillary Clinton, like, was articulate, at least she was competent. But with Joe Biden, he comes off as incompetent, and he's also not really offering any policy concessions, so it's just it makes for a disastrous situation. We were warning Democrats during the primary that Joe Biden was not the electable candidate in spite of how much they tried to shove that argument down our throats. We said that, you know, this is not going to bode well for them if they do the same strategy in 2020 that they used in 2016 and they just they don't care because I think they revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the establishment doesn't actually care about beating Donald Trump. Chris Matthews was openly speculating whether or not it'd be better for Democrats to let Trump win than have Bernie be the nominee. Remember, Nevada? So, you know, I just, first of all, I think that this entire argument about unity is disingenuous, considering we for weeks watched as the establishment and other rivals of Bernie Sanders said that they would try to get superdelegates to take the nomination away from Bernie Sanders if he won. So it already seems disingenuous, just inherently because of all of that, because of that bad blood, because we know that they're just, you know, they're telling you something, they're holding you to a standard that they would have never held themselves to. So for AOC to approach this way, I do think that this is going to be more successful. So if you genuinely believe that people should vote for Joe Biden, this is the approach that you should follow, not shaming them and calling them irresponsible or saying that they're guilty of Donald Trump wins. That's not the correct approach. That is a tone deaf approach and it ignores and really, I think, undermines all of the issues that the left has been talking about, especially if you're on the left, like you have to let people know that you understand that they're hurting and that even though they're still going to be hurting with Joe Biden, that's on Joe Biden to convince them that they're going to be better off with him, not the other way around. Like this whole argument is just so insufferable. And I'm already preemptively dreading the inevitable conversation we have in 2024 when Democrats tell us we have to support Michael Bloomberg, otherwise Tom Cotton is going to win. It's just it's a never ending cycle and it's exhausting. And until we actually rise up and take direct action and call for general strikes, I don't think anything is going to change because, you know, we have to show the establishment that we are not going to play their game, but because they think that we will or they think that they can win without us. This is why we, you know, see ourselves in this situation every four years. And I don't know about you, but I'm really sick of it.