Ocasio-Cortez endorses Biden’s reelection campaign, sending a strong signal of Democratic unity

NEW YORK (AP) — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, sending a strong sign of Democratic unity from one of the party’s most liberal members.

“I think he’s done quite well, given the limitations that we have,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the “Pod Save America” podcast Thursday. “I do think that there are ebbs and flows.”

Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described democratic socialist from New York, has sometimes bucked Biden and the party’s leaders, including voting against the deal the president negotiated with Republicans in May to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and casting the lone Democratic vote against a spending bill to keep the government operating and avoid a partial government shutdown.

She endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and demurred in an interview last year when asked if she would support the incumbent president in 2024.

Biden is facing nominal primary challenges for next year’s election in self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Ocasio, when asked about whether she’d support Biden, said: “I believe, given that field, yes.”

The congresswoman said she felt Biden had a strong start in his presidency with the passage of the American Rescue Plan, aimed at relief from the impact of the pandemic, and the Inflation Reduction Act, a major climate and health care law.

“But,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “there are also areas that I think could have gone better.”