Why centrists now oppose Biden and progressives like AOC defend him

This week saw two Democrats take diverging stances on President Joe Biden.

On Thursday, Senator Joe Manchin, the mercurial conservative Democrat from West Virginia, said that the president “is not the person I thought he was” and questioned how he moved so far to the left. His words came despite the fact that — given the 50-50 breakdown in the Senate during the last Congress — Democrats actually had to bend over backwards to accommodate Manchin, not the other way around.

Conversely, on Tuesday evening, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — a progressive supporter of Medicare for all, the Green New Deal and a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas — appeared on CNN to defend Biden. She noted specifically that Trump and Biden are about the same age, making concerns about Biden’s age moot, while “Donald Trump has 91 indictments.” She proceeded to called Biden, who was in his second term in the Senate when she was born, “one of most successful presidents in modern American history” and praised him on passing the Inflation Reduction Act — the climate and health care legislation that Manchin all but wrote after he killed Build Back Better.

The common narrative in Washington is that progressives regularly clash with Biden. But in truth, moderate and conservative Democrats are now the biggest roadblocks to Biden’s chances to become president, whereas progressives, despite their deep reservations, are helping to bolster him.

Manchin, of course, is not the only conservative or moderate Democrat who serves as a roadblock to Biden. Dean Phillips of Minnesota — who in Congress serves as a member of the New Democrat Coalition and moderate “Problem Solvers” caucus — has even staged a quixotic campaign for president, even