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.
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.