Only Felix had a few good words for it - the rest retreated into lame doomed crap as though it’s only theatre.
Fuck that! Make Pelosi sweat! Fuck shit up and push hard now, while public support for M4A is peaking.
I’m not as on board with the M4A forced vote as a lot of people.
I guess I should clarify I’m not against it, but I would like to see them demand something that would give them power or have a bigger impact instead of or in addition to the floor vote.
David Sirota came up with some other things to ask for in addition to the M4A vote.
Yep. Saw all that too.
But M4A right now, when 14 million have just lost their insurance and a pandemic is raging, is crucial.
And even if the first vote loses, left muscle will be flexed and grow stronger.
while public support for M4A is peaking
We just elected a president who said without equivocation that he would veto M4A if it somehow got on his desk.
We already know who supports M4A and who doesn't, and we already know this vote wouldn't pass. There's not much to be gained here.
It would make a bunch of angry citizens feel like they influenced something and show that gathering an angry mob can do stuff if organized and directed towards a goal. As a means of getting healthcare it won't do anything. As a means of defeating Democrats forever, it won't do anything. As a means of just flexing some populist muscle, it would do something. Which is why the goal itself is just to hold the vote not to enact M4A. They already know that won't happen. Making that the goal would paint the movement as a failure when it inevitably doesn't pass. So the goal is just to get the vote. It's right in the hashtag. Force the vote, the vote is forced, victory.
There is a lot to be gained. There is nothing to be gained playing nice with Pelosi.
There is nothing to lose. A lost first vote is just a start, and the process is an opportunity to overwhelm every rep with const’ demands for M4A - scare the fuck out of them!
Reps are not your rulers. Reps are not your leaders. Reps must be made to understand that they are there to make things happen for you.
Reps get data briefings about constituents’ communications. Reps’ offices can be swarmed by sick people needing care.
It would be worth it just to make them squirm. The TV optics might help too.
Forcing a vote on M4A is absolutely a strategy of gaining and wielding power, even if it loses first time.
Some of America’s best laws lost the first time they were voted on.
A loss is not a failure.
Playing nice with Pelosi is a failing strategy.
I don’t care if JD is upset.
I care if American Lefties can grab an opportunity when it’s there.
The height of liberal politics is defeatist bullshit from lefties, makes lefties no threat at all.
Stomping your feet and screaming might be more productive than “Yes Ms Pelosi, of course Ms Pelosi, three money bags full Ms Pelosi”.
Especially when you campaign to get the 80% who support M4A to stomp their feet and scream with you.
Now is the time to stomp your feet and scream.
Alas, all I can do is cheer you on from the other side of the world.
I agree. You will never get Medicare For All if you never fight for it. Is that meaningless?
A war can be fought on multiple fronts.
A first vote loss would not be the end. It need not damage other efforts.
And if I said sure, you’re right - then all would be well.
Those arduous efforts to develop M4A policy and devise transition and calculate costings and design ways to massage public acceptance - given that many ‘good’ jobs will be lost in healthcare insurance companies in swing states - I applaud all that work.
I just don’t see how it somehow is destroyed by forcing a vote on the house floor.
I see how well expressed is your exasperation.
I feel the same way about you.
It is only theater. Sure, I think demsocs in office should push harder for shit that will help people and not be trying to endear themselves to Pelosi and co, but all of this drama is completely rhetorical and more about creating an arbitrary line to signal how "left" somebody is.
No. It creates an opportunity to campaign and overwhelm every rep with constituents’ demands for M4A.
Make every rep shit their pants!
the rest retreated into lame doomed crap as though it’s only theatre.
It is.
Fuck that! Make Pelosi sweat!
It won't.
Just a reminder that popular support is irrelevant to it passing.
That is the problem. Even in a national health crisis - and the US is doing worst in the world by far - the left won’t even try to exert pressure.
If they did, Pelosi would sweat blood. And I’d cheer the sight.
Lmao, why the fuck would Pelosi "sweat blood," that's absurd. Where are you even getting that idea? She'd let the vote happen, the vote would fail, libs would say, "See, this is why being radical doesn't work and you have to compromise" and literally nothing would change. Not only is it pure theater with zero chance of passing, but it's also not even good theater.
Pelosi is so fucking vain she’ll sweat blood if her ascension to Speaker is anything less than ceremonial.
Real "Trump is such a narcissist, having an impeachment vote will totally own him 😁" energy.
Real “ I’m too defeated to consider action so I’ll just be snarky” energy.
I'm not crying, I'm just acknowledging reality. If you're pushing this as though it has some possibility of success, then you're just going to look bad when it fails (which it 100% will).
If you're pushing it while acknowledging that it has zero chance of success then I don't know how you expect to organize or anything around it. Might as well try to sell people on pushing a boulder up a hill and watching it roll down.
It's better to organize around something that has a nonzero chance of working.
Listening to your betters say “now is not the time” has a zero chance of success.
Cool so exactly the chance of success that this vote would have.
It has 100% chance of failure if you don’t challenge the likes of Pelosi.
It has a 100% chance of failure if you do challenge the likes of Pelosi too.
American lefties are so defeated after Sanders. I get it. You knocked on doors and phonebanked and donated and posted till you were saw, and all I could do was cheer you on.
I want to cheer you in a fight for one of many first steps to get M4A - ie basic civilisation.
A first vote loss would not be a failure. It would be one of many first steps. M4A will never happen if those first steps aren’t taken.
Also, I want to see Pelosi sweat blood. (I’m not trying to be fucking Jesus dammit). That won’t happen if she is never challenged.
American lefties are so defeated after Sanders.
It's not about being psychologically defeated, it's about acknowledging the reality of the political situation.
A first vote loss would not be a failure. It would be one of many first steps. M4A will never happen if those first steps aren’t taken.
If it happens it'll be because we have a vote on it at a time when it can actually pass. Doing it now accomplishes nothing, and ss I said, it's not even good optics.
Also, I want to see Pelosi sweat blood. (I’m not trying to be fucking Jesus dammit). That won’t happen if she is never challenged.
We all want Pelosi to sweat blood. But this isn't going to make that happen. She could hold agree to hold a vote and then kick back in a recliner and not watch the news for a week, confident that it will fail.
I'm not saying "Don't pressure Pelosi," I'm just saying "Don't waste political capital on stupid shit that accomplishes nothing."
Ok. So when would suit you to make those first steps that might not win immediately?
In a few years when the true force of this moment might dissipate?
Now is the moment.
By all means necessary.
These are not the first steps to anything. You're just assuming that this gesture will do something, but I see no reason to think it would.
Like, what the fuck is your strategy? I heard one person suggest a general strike for M4A, which would be very difficult, but at least it was an idea. Nearly everyone who weighs in on your side doesn't seem to have any sort of actual plan beyond forcing the vote and hoping things randomly work out somehow. And btw if we did go with something like a strike, that's something that would not require AOC to do any of this forcing a pointless vote crap.
Y'all always call me a defeatist or a nihilist or whatever but it seems to me like y'all are the defeatists. Like presumably you know as well as I do that this isn't getting past the senate, at the very least, yet you keep pouring energy into it anyway. Why not try a different strategy that might actually work instead of wasting time hoping and begging for ghouls to vote against their interests?
Force a vote then campaign like buggery - especially directed at the offices of those unlikely to support it.
Swarm their offices and their speaking events with sick, broke people needing care.
Make a big fucking deal of it.
Strikes require union leaders, and many of them are now supervising medical funds. Can you swarm their offices too? With people who were once members of their unions and are now sick and broke and need care?
Then fucking do that anyway! If you can leverage the power to get M4A passed by exerting power outside of electoral politics, then it doesn't fucking matter whether AOC negotiates to force a vote! Why the fuck would that whole campaign hinge on what AOC does?
I have not mentioned those three initials here, at all.
This is about me wanting to cheer on you guys in a fight.
I have not mentioned those three initials here, at all.
Ah, I see. So we were talking about whether, I don't know, Ted Cruz should try to pressure Pelosi to hold a M4A vote. And hey, you know, I never actually used the words "Medicare for all" so this whole time I was talking about a program I call "Marshmallows for Albert." There's this guy Albert who I think really deserves some marshmallows, you see.
Yeah, it is pretty silly to play dumb and pretend that you're not talking about something that you clearly are just because you didn't say the words, isn't it?
Alright, so AOC is best placed to gather a group to force a vote. So what?
I think you lost the thread of the discussion.
The point is that if we have the power to apply enough external pressure to get M4A passed, then we can just use that pressure to get it passed regardless of some procedural nonsense.
Suppose, hypothetically, that there was a massive general strike that shut down the country, and politicians were left with no choice but to give in to demands. Or maybe we have a campaign capable of making serious primary challenges to anyone who votes against it. If that were to happen, then it wouldn't matter whether or not AOC had negotiated a floor vote or not, because we could make demands of Pelosi and the Dems directly.
So this stuff about "The vote can succeed, we just have to back it up with a movement" is kind of nonsense because if we could back it up with a movement then we could just do that regardless of whether AOC does what you want. Which is why it's dumb to have all these pointless discussions about a pointless vote instead of discussing actual plans that have more than a 0% chance of working.
Yeh. Living in a country where healthcare provision is mainly for profit, where sick people are bankrupted, and where poor people die - it’s shit and it sucks.
It sucks worse when even the left won’t upset the powers that be to change it.
I’m not a tweeter. I’m not even a fucking American!
I am flabbergasted that the left are not willing to put a rocket up the arses of reps at such a moment, when public support for M4A is peaking.
You get more power by flexing your muscles than by sitting around crying about how it’s all too hard.
By forcing a floor vote and then campaigning so that EVERY rep knows what their constituents demand.
Why does this issue get downvoted so much on this site? I legitimately do not understand.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm
We have a group who is angry at the same thing we are. We have a group who wants something that we may not all want (to force a vote on M4A). They ultimately want the same thing we do, for there to be M4A or a nationalization of the healthcare system. Part of gathering support is meeting people where they are, and chasing the anger. The frustration is there, it's up to us to go harness it or just let it fizzle out. We can criticize it, ignore it, and let it die while feeling assured we didn't get owned. Or we can get these angry people together, and push with them on this vote. As long as it's clear what the actual goal is, then we can't actually be owned. If the only demand is that M4A is voted on, and it gets voted on, then the group has won. If people see that a group unified under a single demand won, then they might wonder if they can win too. If these people aren't socialists, then so what? As long as we're in agreement on what the goal is. Now I agree we don't want people thinking this is going to accomplish M4A. Or thinking this will make all the establishment Dems resign. The only thing this can do is give a specific group of angry people something they want through media pressure.
If they do win, then they have a home with other people who want M4A or something more extreme. If they lose, then they're going to be even more upset and we can be there to suggest some other course of action. They would be more amenable to it because they see this group of other people standing with them despite losing.
At the very least we should be able to have a discussion about this without the overwhelming message being "don't talk about electoralism/stuff happening in congress because that's all stupid and useless." Everyone is caught up on the immediate function according to Dore, when that doesn't really matter. Dore is just a guy with the ear of this angry group of people. Yes us all online people know who doesn't like M4A. Yes we can google up a list on the last time it was voted down. But we have a group of angry people who are willing to do something and to spend their time trying to accomplish this thing, so why not help them? The worst that will happen is we gain a few people who will be more sympathetic to our side. The libs will write things on twitter they were writing anyways. A talkshow host might get a listener bump. I really don't think this is going to be attaching ourselves to an anchor and then throwing it overboard. Whatever association between Dore and actual socialists exist is so tenuous that the lib media will just make it up anyways.
Bad take. Literally a -forgive me mods for I must sin- vaush level take.
Lenin is not talking about utilizing the radlib wing of the bougeoise party to seize power through participation of theatrical politics to undermine the ruling class with it's own games, he's talking about workers parties doing so.
Completely separate alltogether. Equivocating that a bunch of radlibs bitching at radlib politicians, that don't owe their allegiance to them, to do stuff is the same as a proletarian party ordering their party members whom were elected to a bougeoise parliament to wield their power to publicly undermine bougeoise democracy is a disgusting twisting of Lenin's message and unequivocally an 11th form of liberalism.
When you define participating in government and electoralism as radlib, then any participation will always be that. Even if we had a worker's party you'd still be calling it radlib. Because liberalism is when you participate in anything other than saying everything is fucked on the internet. Forget Lenin then, I explained myself in other posts. If you or any other one true leftist can't understand basic politics then IDK what to say. We don't have a workers party. But we can't do a workers party because engaging with anyone outside of online leftists is liberalism. If right now there were union-backed workers parties half this site would be bitching the moment a party member suggested voting for something or working with AOC. Don't even pretend that's hyperbole either.
Hey, you know how you get a workers party, by courting angry workers who lost their fucking healthcare during the pandemic. You know how you do that? By meeting them and helping them accomplish something they want. And if it fails you can talk about Lenin's worker party theory to them. You know what else? Having solidarity with those workers rather than accusing them of being radlibs bitching at AOC because some funny memes on reddit talk about electoralism being dead. With vanguards like these who needs a worker's party. You have a group of people primed for your politics and organization right there but you refuse to do anything with it because it won't immediately overturn the US government and install communism.
I've never listened to vaush in my life. Stop framing everything by your consumption of online twitter shit. Deprogram that internet brain shit.
No you dipshit if there was a workers party participating in the theater of the bougeoise, then it'd be conducting itself in an anti-capitalist nature.
And we don't have an empowered workers party because dnc knee-bending radlib losers keep wasting their time crying about how their dnc knee-bending radlib icons aren't begging the rich for a crumb of reform instead of accepting reality and joining a socialist organization.
People are not going to just join a socialist organization. You need to wake the fuck up and realize we're a minority. Regardless of whatever polls say about the popularity of leftist ideas, most people are hesitant to join a socialist org. What's your answer? The DSA? Yeah they just scored a huge electoral victory by participating in the theater of electoralism. Now they will "knee-bend" with the "radlibs" and try to achieve some goal. You're going to form your own socialist org then? Good. You're going to get a bunch of people who already agree with you to stand in one spot and regurgitate the same talking points to one another. That's easy. How are you then going to convince enough normies to join you? You're going to tell them to read books and show them gritty memes? You think if you say "well those other people are radlibs and they're bad and you don't want to be those people right so join us because we're actually good" that will work? That's what Democrats do. I know you're not going to do anything militant so it's not even worth mentioning.
For some ungodly reason you children on this fucking website can't see any of that. You think that one day people will just suddenly regret not being cool and join socialist orgs and then everything will change. You won't have to change anything about yourself, the world will change around you. Some guy who you like on a podcast will suddenly have the perfect strategy. Or a group of your online buddies will read enough theory and perfect way forward will form out of thin air. Then some other people who you like will go apply it and we'll get socialism.
You're going to have to work with people who aren't amenable to your politics. You're going to have to give them a reason to do something other than not being a lib. You're going to have to advocate your ideas in some way other than snark and contempt. You're going to have to have some humility. And unless you're going to pick up a gun (you're not) then you have no place to be calling electoral pressure or participating in bourgeois theater 'knee-bending.' You're not some antifa super soldier. You're not going to be commanding anyone to bend a knee to you anytime in your life. Sorry to burst that bubble of ego champ.
If a group of people who are not socialists are frustrated with the system in the way that you are, then they can be swayed. They may not support socialism as a whole but we don't need them to. We take what is offered. If you're unwilling to hold your nose and work with the audience of some talkshow host, then you don't need to be schooling anyone on anything. You need to go back to listening to your podcast and just share some more guillotine memes. They are people with jobs, hence they are workers, and they are frustrated. You can either appeal to them or Dore or some fascist will. You can't turn your nose up at it and write them off as not worth because they aren't running out to immediately join your ideal socialist organization.
I don't think M4A is the ultimate solution. I don't think this vote would solve everything. I think you could add more demands to it actually. So I don't know who the fuck you're calling a radlib but it sure as fuck ain't me you fucking baby. If you don't think the US primed for a socialist revolution right now then you're a fucking liberal yourself. If all you can do is regurgitate Christman and go "But we don't have a party we need a party!" then fuck off. That's exactly what I'm talking about doing. You can start by uniting a group of people under something and either get it done or use that failure to roll into something else. To form a party you need someone who can rile people up and get them pointed in a direction enough for the real organizers to step in and aim.
People don't join socialist parties because the radlibs are too busy rehabilitating Crapitalism with their dogshit capitalist takes like "socialism is when the government does stuff" and undermining the socialist movement of helping the people learn about the power they wield and how to use it.
Instead of burning your braincells over crying "why won't my socdem heroes make everything better for me" why don't you log off and join an organization to actually make a material change in reality.
I don't have socdem heroes. You're just refusing to fucking read what I'm saying because you have no real rebuttal other than to call everything lib/radlib/socdem/succdem/whatever cutesy twitter insult your internet-addled brain clings to.
Yes truck drivers from Utah aren't joining the vanguard because AOC said socialism is when the government does stuff. What a great take that's totally based in reality and not just you trying to fit more meme references in your posts to prove how not terminally online you are.
There's nothing worth responding to in your comments. That is all.
Log off and go join an org.
Yet you keep responding. I already am part of an org. The trick isn't to get socialists to join socialist orgs. The trick is to get normal people to do it, as I've been saying and you've been ignoring.
I'm not logging off you infant. I'll post when I want to.
The terminally online pot says to the terminally online kettle
I didn't say anything about your leftist credentials, you were the one calling everyone a lib/radlib/vaush/etc. And then you tried this dumb ass "log off right now and create socialism for me or you're wrong" shtick when you couldn't come up with a reply. If you're going to question my leftism don't get pissy when it's thrown back at you.
I don't have to do something right now because you demand it dork. If I spend the rest of the day tugging on my balls while replying to you it has no bearing on the leftist project.
As long as you don't nut and uphold the volcel pledge then it does.
Yeh. My flabber is gasted at the sight of lefties disdaining parliamentary processes like they think they are above or beyond it.
They are right that parliamentary process is fucked up. This is a way to fuck it up farther and harder and maybe make it work better.
