Liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has agreed to join one of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders’s policy task forces, as Democrats of all political persuasions team up to take on President Trump in the fall.
The New York Democrat, a vocal supporter of Sanders, will be co-chairwoman of a group focused on climate change with former Secretary of State John Kerry, Biden, and Sanders, announced Wednesday morning.
The task forces, which will also look at criminal justice reform, the economy, education, healthcare, and immigration, are expected to meet regularly ahead of the 2020 Democratic National Convention that’s supposed to take place mid-August in Milwaukee. They’ll then present their ideas to the party as members debate the platform with which they want to contest November’s elections.
“From health care to reforming our justice system to rebuilding a more inclusive and fair economy, the work of the task forces will be essential to identifying ways to build on our progress and not simply turn the clock back to a time before Donald Trump, but transform our country,” Biden wrote in a statement.
Biden promised to collaborate with Sanders, the runner-up in this cycle’s primary campaigns, in an effort to avoid the party fractures experienced in 2016 when the Vermont senator was slow to back eventual nominee Hillary Clinton.
Adopting positions of Sanders and former rival Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the two-term vice president and presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee is allowing Sanders to hold onto some of the delegates he would’ve otherwise forfeited when he suspended his White House bid so he can assert influence on the agenda.
“I commend Joe Biden for working together with my campaign to assemble a group of leading thinkers and activists who can and will unify our party in a transformational and progressive direction,” Sanders wrote.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, who both identify as socialists, vowed to push Biden further to the political left when it became clear he would be the Democratic Party’s next standard-bearer. The Biden camp hopes their support will help gin up enthusiasm for Delaware’s 36-year senator among younger, more liberal Democrats, a voting bloc with whom he’s struggled to connect.
“She believes the movement will only be successful if we continue to apply pressure both inside and outside the system. This is just one element of the broader fight for just policies,” an Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman said.
