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.
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
there’s a lesson to be learned and I’m a fucking nerd
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It's not about Dore. The fucker actually has something worth considering.
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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
I will be so sad if I have to abandon this sick username
Just say its ironic, no need to let a good name go to waste
it can instead be: for AOC, dmt
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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.
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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.