Now that Joe Biden has announced all of his nominations for key positions shaping the administration’s foreign policy and domestic economic policy, it’s pretty clear that “the Squad” (which some have quietly blamed for the Democrats’ surprisingly poor performance in House races across the country) and their progressive allies got shafted. Biden took none of their recommendations for top positions (neither Elizabeth Warren nor Bernie Sanders will play prominent roles).

AOC and her allies are badly in need of a win to try and show their backers that they didn’t completely fold on their principles by backing Biden. And with a few more progressive members joining their ranks in the upcoming Congress, AOC needs to step up and be a leader if she has any hope of running for president in 2028 (she won’t quite meet the minimum age in 2024).

‘The Squad’ is looking for a scalp, and they’re going after a key player in the incipient Biden Administration: Bruce Reed, Biden’s former chief of staff during his years as VP. Biden and his team have picked Reed to lead the OMB, a relatively sleepy office that makes recommendations about the federal budget.

According to a report in Axios, AOC and Ilhan Omar are circulating a petition calling on Biden to drop Reed, criticizing him as a deficit hawk.

It’s an interesting choice considering that Biden’s National Security team is filled with deep state stalwarts who have never said no to a foreign entanglement.

But, apparently, AOC & Co. are okay with that. But the fact that Reed once recommended cuts to Social Security and Medicare makes him unpalatable to leftists. Reed led the Bowles-Simpson Commission under Barack Obama, which progressives opposed because of the cuts. “Biden must not repeat Obama’s mistake,” the petition warns.

The petition which has been signed by AOC, Omar and fellow Squad member Rashida Tlaib, objects to Reed, characterizing him as a “major test for the soul of the Biden presidency,” and demanding that OMB “be staffed with people who will prioritize working people, not Wall Street deficit scaremongers.”

Two other new progressive lawmakers – Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush — are also backing the petition. They recently joined a protest movement urging Biden to keep his promise to pass a $2 trillion version of the “Green New Deal”./p>

In a separate incident, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee hired the actor Mark Ruffalo to record and then blast out an e-mail to their nearly 1 million members urging Biden to pick Rep. Deb Haaland for secretary of the Interior, one of the few remaining cabinet-level positions that’s still up for grabs.

The climate justice democrats are urging Biden to consider creating a climate mobilization office within the White House, to ensure that climate hysteria will continue to inform policy even after Biden’s time in office is up.

Right now, leftists are terrified that a Biden presidency will simply morph into ‘Obama Part 3’ and everyone will forget about them and all the protest movements they helped organize as the fever of ‘Democratic socialism’ finally breaks.