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.
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:
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?