If you are a "socialist" operating within the system by participating in electoralism, your job as an elected representative are two fold: heighten the contradictions in the political sphere; throw a monkey wrench in the normal day to day activities of the imperialist death machine. That's it, it's really not that difficult. You show up to congress, say you got elected to pass m4a or vote no on ICE funding, vote down imperialist wars, vote down bank bail outs. Your votes will be lonely and will probably have zero effect in the grand scheme of things, but that's the point. A socialist representative, even a squad of them, is functionally weak and incapable of bringing about proper change.
By advocating exactly for the things the working class supports (healthcare pls), showing solidarity with the international proletariat (no wars pls), and trying to give power to the workers (union protections, higher minimum wage) and you fail, time after time, you fail to get any meaningful support from your colleages; you are demonstrating to the working class that this system is not for YOU. You are trying to get them to wake up and realize the system is fundamentally at odds with THEM.
Failure to do this each and every step of the way is opportunism of the highest order. Refusing to stand up for your own demands, and asking to get votes on healthcare, larger stimulus checks, and better working conditions for the working class, is a failure.
I don't know what is in the water on DC, or if it just takes a certain kind of fucking brainworms to even run for congress, let alone win; but goddamn the whole process of slowly "justificating" the process of siding with Pelosi and Schumer on the procedural votes; the idea of not holding Pelosi's entire leadership position hostage is asinine. Nobody cares if you are a latinx congresswoman from the bronx if you don't pass anything fucking meaningful, or "politically" die trying.
omg, who gives a shit. Why is this still a thing?
AOC is a DSA progressive, Jimmy Dore is a god knows that -- they're not socialists or communists, I don't know why we're talking about idiotic liberal democracy procedures like they matter. And I'm saying this as a guy who usually cares about electorialism to an extent-- this whole controversy is just mind-boggling.
I mean, I get breadtubers arguing over it, but why is this a thing here?
I mean, I get breadtubers arguing over it, but why is this a thing here?
Because everyone here is a lib, besides me of course
It's not even over a serious attempt to build power, it's a fucking hashtag campaign. Just pointless fighting over what brand of socdem they are and what the messaging of the dissent is gonna look like. Everyone drawing lines over who's a "real leftist" over idealistic nonsense
Why can't we just shut the fuck up about Jimmy Dore and AOC this shit happened like a week ago jesus christ
Chapo is and always has been a total hell of electorialists and people complaining about electorialists put me out of my misery
It's not about Dore. The fucker actually has something worth considering.
Ok, we shut the fuck up and do what? Post more reddit screenshots and random threads about china? Fuck that this is the most interesting thing to happen in left politics since the election, if AOC's whole brand crashes like the Hindenburg because of this, that's interesting and worth engaging in if nothing but for the CHANCE to radicalize the radlibs who believed in her shtick
In a country where electoralism is currently the only most normal people participate in politics and economic discussion, wouldn't a public split between "the left" and Pelosi be beneficial, as opposed to toeing the dem party line? I'm not even saying I'm convinced of either side, but more importantly why can't we struggle sesh over this? It's not like there is an endless barrage of strikes or mass movements we can talk about in the US.
Because it's utterly pointless! We're not gonna be able to use our combined psychic energies to convince 'the squad' to hold a vote they clearly think is useless. So both sides are just sitting here bitching at each other about nothing, there's nothing our arguments can do here, and there's nothing to learn from this either. It's a complete waste of everyone involved's time and effort.
Yes I totally agree with you that us / podcast celebrities / twitter users have no say in the matter and it is 100% useless in that sense. But I do think this discussion is raising a lot of important questions as it relates to people's theory of change. Yes electoralism is a dead end, but in this country it must be something that the left engages with. In this case I think a lot of us have gotten a first-hand look at the limitations of electing "socialists" that aren't liable to answer to the organization they originally represented. Regardless of what your position on the "Dore issue" is.
One point that was mentioned on Bad Faith by Brie was that a huge portion of dem voters actually think that Joe Biden and the other loser centrists DO support medicare for all. That means that people saying "just look at the cosponsors" or the last election....well huge portions of voters don't do that. And while the media probably wouldn't cover a symbolic m4a vote very much, they WOULD cover a big fight between the squad and girl boss pelosi where the bernie bros are stopping feminism from happening. I don't know if people learning that centrist dems don't actually support m4a would make any difference, but I also think it would be worth trying something with the leverage as opposed to just towing the line with Pelosi, when not fighting her is a dead end anyway, even if it literally does NOTHING positive at all I'd rather at least make their lives slightly more annoying and not let the libs have the "civility" (deference) they crave.
That's basically where I'm at. On the other hand I'm really not in the organizing circles so I can't really say, and I worry about constantly hearing opinions from online randos and podcast hosts.
It is performatgive. That's the point! Your job as an elected "proletariat" is to go to congress and die on the fucking cross of good policy and still be demonized like a satanic agent of chaos that they think commies are. Your job is to make absolutely no one happy. Your colleagues ought to hate you. Your socialist comrades ought to think you are wasting your time (because you are) but the point is being made; the bourgeois do not want the working class to be remotely well-off. It is a class war after all.
Most people who oppose this seem to legitimately believe the US kkkongress can and will eventually do good things if we play the cards right. Some of the advocates for forcing the vote also think this way, probably a majority of them, but nonetheless it's the correct strategy. Of course the media will come out and say "the reason people voted against it is because it won't pass" or try to talk down to people about how M4A is actually bad/unrealistic/racist/ableist/whatever, but that's a good thing. Regular people who want fuckin healthcare will see that it's bullshit and disillusion them with the media AND the system. The one issue I see with the strategy is that it's not unlikely that the disorganized left might not be there to tell the people what needs to be done to change the system that is failing them. We want people disillusioned, but we don't want them demoralized.
Yes, thank you! Both strategies are doomed to fail. Jimmy Dore is an idiot for thinking it will work, and "the squad" are wrong in their entryist strategy. Once that's accepted, we can discuss what will and won't work. I'm totally in favor of a desperate push in hopes that the dems will be weakened somewhat.
I think Jimmy Dore actually knows it will fail but has to say he thinks it will work in order to get more people on board. Or maybe he really is just an idiot lol either way they should do it
Is there anything that you think people like AOC can do? I've always been in the camp of force as many votes as possible, make it clear they don't give a fuck about working people and then constantly talk about protesting and unions and stuff. Every time a politician has to publicly come out against MFA or the GND it should lower their public support and credibility. That way people become disillusioned with the system while also seeing another way of operating.
If you think that's doomed to fail what else is there?
Yeah I think I agree with you? I have no idea what "progressive" congress members can do really other than agitate with a platform, but yes it seems like a coordinated break from the dems is bound to happen at some point.
They are opportunists. They launder revolutionary and leftist critiques of capital in ways that make most people passive critics of the system, without actively engaging in the solutions as advocated by revolutionary theorists. They have no real, defensible argument for siding with AOC and Pelosi on this; so the only way to attack the message is by killing the messenger.
Dore straight up lied about AOC's vote on the CARES act. He's a fucking dumbass grifter who claimed he "got this done in 2 weeks". Yeah dude, you got a bunch of dumb twitter shit done, because that's so fucking hard to do.
It's not attacking the messenger to point out he lied about AOC's vote on the CARES act, it's directly fucking relevant to the entire idea that he's worth listening to and this is some great strategy, not some fucking dumb bullshit to drive up his own profile. His entire attempt at attacking AOC is misguided at best, cynical at worst. It's actively misinforming people to rile them up against someone who doesn't have the fucking power you think she does.
This vote gets you literally fucking nothing. No one has actually explained what would change because of it. The president will be a guy who said on TV he would veto M4A if it came across his desk. The VP co-sponsored M4A then backed off of it. What leverage do you have? What platform do you have to "punish" anyone who votes against it? Ossoff was asked if he supports M4A and flatly said no, with no shame and no hesitation. We already know Democrats refuse to support M4A. They fucking tell you when you ask. So what is actually changed from this one fucking vote, proposed by a dipshit comedian with a youtube channel, who actively lies about shit so as to rile up people against a congresswoman he now wants to single out as single handedly blocking M4A, supposed to fucking do?
Forget Dore. I can't listen to the guy tbh, never have. The concept is correct.
Bad Faith is pretty good on the ideas around this in this week's ep.
He claims she didn't vote against it and that she supported it, or at least we shouldn't believe her when she says she didn't. That's contradicted by her speech on the day of the vote, and her own statements and interviews saying she voted no, and her primary opponent attacking her for it (the vote was done in a way that it wasn't recorded, but one no vote is registered). He's been saying it as part of him riling people up against her to declare her as a fraud for thinking pushing for an M4A vote right now won't really do anything.
https://twitter.com/themattdimitri/status/1339478371214917632 Absolutely unhinged rant
Meanwhile, here is Jimmy doing a lot of work helping Tulsi pull back from supporting M4A https://twitter.com/Nitzky89/status/1339976725271355393
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/out-of-touch-aoc-primary-challenger-says-vote-against-cares-act-slap-in-the-face-to-poorest-people-in-her-district
Yet again I'll repeat, finding any excuse to vote for Pelosi as Speaker - even if it is to get a list of scalps to collect - is liberalism. The only cool outcome from this would be if the vote were somehow forced (it won't be) and the socdems still torpedoed Pelosi's speakership and burned that bridge for good.
Honestly the M4A vote is dumb and pointless, but the idea of leveraging their effect on Dems' small majority against Pelosi is good. Instead of holding some pointless vote just get rid of Pelosi.
I'm so tired of this debate. AOC isn't trying to achieve the goals you stated. She isn't trying to throw a monkey wrench into politics. She's trying to build a coalition with power inside the current system. Whether you think that is correct or not is irrelevant.
Jimmy Dore, on the other hand, is just an angry dude on youtube who's loving the clicks and the ad revenue. He doesn't know jack shit about socialism or communism and he isn't trying to build a movement. What he is doing is targeting the most popular young left politician we have and making her out to be the villain when she's one of the handful of outright advocates of M4A. If you think that's a good thing then cool, that's just like your opinion. I don't.
i.e. committee positions
Didn't AOC just get booted off the Energy and Commerce Committee?
I'm torn on trying to arm-bar Pelosi for an M4A vote. I honestly don't think it's going to get the kind of backing that the Bad Faith folks think it can create, but I do think it's the kind of platform you could eventually build a new party around (or, at least, a Tea Party-like caucus). That appears to be the real end-goal of the Berniecrats going forward.
But the Squad just weathered a blistering broadside of primary challenges. They failed to add to their ranks in the general. And we're going into the next cycle with Joe Biden hanging like an albatross around the progressives' necks.
The theory that you can just play nice with Pelosi and eventually build yourself a coalition of progressive voters is still slippery. I continue to see lots of Americans - even left-leaning liberals - default to the "safe" candidates or get gulled but snakes like Warren and rats like Buttigieg.
I don't know, man. I don't know if this entryist shit is going to work. I think dunking on AOC over it is dumb and Dore is just doing this for the RadLibs attention. But it's not looking great.
If you know for a fact you don't have the votes, then it isn't helpful. Obviously AOC wants M4A. That isn't the issue. She's making a calculated decision to try and leverage more power for the progressive wing of the party. This is what electoralism looks like. It's dumb, but it's the way it is.
But he spoke in terms of anti imperialism and destroying the war machine.
So did Ron Paul.
he spoke at a protest that I was at, which I will not name just for privacy sake
:-/
Someone explain to me the difference between forcing a M4A floor vote that won't pass and forcing an impeachment vote that won't pass.
Pretty sure the reason for not caring was that it had no chance of passing.
They can pass it. They have a majority, it's just a matter of compromising with the left wing of their decrepit fucking party. Their majority in the house is very, very light, and socialists/Progressives could torpedo democrat laws if they wanted to. This tactic worked for the republicans, why wouldn't it work there ?
Even if they managed to, it still wouldn't get past the senate.
If every time leftists have leverage they force an unsuccessful vote for M4A instead of using it in some other tactical way they won't ever have significant power. That's the reasoning.
If you think that electoralism is completely pointless then you don't find that argument convincing. If you think electoralism can be usefull as a means to garner popularity and influence policy until we get to revolution, then you probably don't like what Jimmy Dore is doing.
The best way to do it is by primarying centrists and then getting into positions of influence within congress. Centrists aren't going to vote for it no matter how many times you bring it to the floor.
The issue of Medicare for All has loomed so large in the last five years of debates within the Democratic Party that there are relatively few Democratic officeholders who haven’t expressed some sort of opinion about it — and with 118 cosponsors in the House, just “not being a cosponsor” already makes where any given member stands pretty clear. But I suppose it’s just barely possible that a few Democrats who’ve never been asked why they aren’t cosponsors might be asked why they voted no (or skipped the vote).
The second and more important problem is that there’s no evidence that voters will punish anyone at their polls for how they acted in such a floor vote — especially one where there was no suspense about that result. In the last Democratic nomination battle, a candidate who openly opposed Medicare for All — and didn’t even hedge his bets with any sort of triangulating rhetoric about “Medicare for all who want it” — won the nomination even though exit polls in state after state that he won showed that most Democratic voters disagreed with him on the issue.
Indeed, on the campaign trail, Biden openly promised to veto Medicare for All in the unlikely event that it was passed by both the House and Senate.
The grim fact of the matter is that most voters think Medicare for All is a good idea, but most don’t take the idea that it could become a reality in the foreseeable future seriously enough to punish politicians who oppose it at either the primary or general election stage. It’s hard to see how a preordained three-to-one House loss would help them take it more seriously...
Political theater can be a useful educational tool, but it can’t be a substitute for the long, slow, and often dismally unsexy work of organizing and mobilizing citizens at the grass roots and actually winning elections. And a widespread failure to appreciate these distinctions is the biggest problem not only with the fixation of much of the online left on insisting on engaging in a purely symbolic parliamentary maneuver that might well do more harm than good but with Jimmy Dore’s belief that AOC is a “sellout” who is “standing between” her constituents and health care.
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/jimmy-dore-aoc-medicare-for-all-pelosi-house-floor-vote-speaker
I don’t think that’s fundamentally at odds with my point. The failure to win those votes are an educational tool. Your job as a socialist or even soc dem candidate/politician should be to educate and radicalize, because the chances you pass anything useful are functionally nil.
I mean it is at odds in a sense. The point of that paragraph is that there is no possible way for effective propaganda to even be done either way. Making any noise with a vote at all does nothing right now, and to spend any amount of time concerning ourselves with it is a waste of time. Burgis' point is that the educational tool you think the vote is, is in fact illusory.
I don't totally agree with Burgis' point but I do agree spending any amount of time or effort on pressuring AOC for a m4a vote is a waste of scant resources. You'll notice also that virtually the entire labor organizing and other direct action groups in DSA have rightfully been completely silent on this issue, there's better things to do right now.
I see two questions here:
- Is this a good idea?
- If it is a good idea, is it such a blindingly obvious one, with such clear benefits and such modest risks, that we should be raking people over the coals for not doing it?
I can see a reasonable argument for 1, but I don't see any decent argument for 2. Even if the benefits outweigh the risks, I'm just not seeing it as a hill worth dying on.
I'm undecided as well but I don't see what we gain from blindly voting for Pelosi, which seems to be what will happen. I think the primary question is whether or not we want to hold Pelosi hostage at all by making the vote conditional on some issue, which I think most on here agree we should, or if we should vote at all. My use of the word "we" shows my illusion that I have any say in this but still lol
When the bill is killed by politicians who have already said they oppose it and were voted in anyways, who exactly are you educating?
I'm not posting this in an official mod capacity. I just can't turn that shit off.
The people against this are cowards. If Biden's not even going to give progressives a seat at the table, it's they who drew a line in the sand. Step the fuck over.
latinx congresswoman from the bronx
Stop doing this cringey white fake woke "I'm gonna add 'x' to the end of everything regardless of what the people I am talking about think to make it gender neutral" thing. Everyone in the community calls it "Brona" and doesn't care what white people think.
I don't understand the idea of the vote putting on record who's is for and who is against M4A. For the purposes of the election eceryone was on record last month. And if someone is falsely supprting M4A they're not going to reveal that unless it looks like it is actually passing, so not just now
If you're talking about how tough politics is and fantasising publically about a homestead in the country, do some shit for us on your way out the door.
If somebody other than Dore started this, wouldn't it be seen as being more credible?
