And realise it's not good for me to be this invested in your dumb affairs. Yet here we are.
The "he's embarrassing us in front of the cool kids" contingent: https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1344652899771707393?s=19
https://twitter.com/onesarahjones/status/1344702225675857922?s=19
https://twitter.com/Dan_Arrows/status/1344684216446054403?s=19
The "this isn't how you do politics" division https://twitter.com/nataliesurely/status/1344658566477709313?s=19
The "People should never be yelled at or be angry, especially if it's a white man doing it" battalion https://twitter.com/Vanessa_ABee/status/1344670081436033026?s=19
https://twitter.com/katewillett/status/1344741111563243520?s=19
The "he has an expensive house" partisans https://twitter.com/JaneOst_/status/1344699611689185280?s=19
The Means_TV crew making a prescedant https://twitter.com/ChiJohnnyCash/status/1344663683327283200?s=19
You can probably find more. The question you should ask yourself why is there a vacuum in the conversation for Jimmy to fill in the first place? Why aren't your "progressives" the ones leading?
The only good thing in the quoted thread is this:
https://twitter.com/asankawlk/status/1344644783801655298?s=19
And Dore is right when he says you should treat your politicians like civil servants. They are not you friends.
This #forcethevote thing was going to fail as soon as it began to be a super online thing (I'm super sympathetic in that yeah, we might need to do some theater for now). Also Jimmy Dore is a lib.
He's a lib who has a Book by Lenin. Makes him better than 99.999% of America.
So many people base their views on what other people find "embarrassing" including the chapos.
Guess what. If you actually wanna change stuff you gotta be willing to take the heat... Or yknow just call anything challenging "cringe" and forget it.
This whole episode has been so fucking embarrassing and proven how truly hollow all of Left Twitter is. But it also has me asking:
Who even are some of these fucking people? Who is the doofus saying "Jimmy Dore has a house"? Who is https://twitter.com/KweenInYeIIow, who's been bombarding Brie for weeks over this - what do they actually do?
You can understand that politicians are not your friends while also realizing that #ForceTheVote is a grift and Jimmy Dore makes a living punching left.
How is it a grift exactly? What's the angle?
I have a lot less sympathy with the people who think it's useless to do. That you think that the leftier wing of the Dems shouldn't hold the speakership hostage to get any concessions or that it can't is cowardly. It's time to draw sharp distinctions between the Clintonites and the sane people. Just today the Dem Senet got out-lefted by Ted Cruz by voting all of them to ratify the military budget without getting any concessions vis a vis $2000. With friends like this who needs enemies?
I'm calling it a grift because it's mostly podcasters punching at left-wing politicians to get views on their shows. It's theatrics for the terminally online. When Jimmy Dore says that AOC is a larger problem for the left than Pelosi, you really have to wonder whose side he's really on. The reason Medicare for All is very unlikely to be reality in the next couple years is because there is a massive united liberal/conservative front that opposes it, not because what few socialists in Congress are insufficiently committed to it.
Nobody is saying that Democrats should not get concessions from the leadership. I said forcing the vote on Medicare for All is a stupid concession to go after. The left should get concessions on policy or personnel - "forcing the vote" is neither of those. I'm not interested in using what little political power the left Democrats on theatrics; I prefer concessions such as eliminating PAYGO or removing anti-M4A Democrats from healthcare committees. This is what AOC has said she's working on ( https://twitter.com/jammasterten/status/1341946124165378048?s=20 ) and I think those are much more sensible (and also more radical) goals than a floor vote on M4A that gets blown out. If AOC fails to get those concessions and votes for Pelosi anyway I will jhave no problem critcizing her for it, just as I've had no problem criticizing her for her stances on Palestine or Tara Reade.
To go into details on why I think "forcing the vote" is a stupid concession to go after, it's because it doesn't advance the mission to get M4A at all. It doesn't tell us anything about which Democrats support it and which don't, in fact, it literally gives the anti-Medicare for All Democrats more cover because they could vote for it knowing it will fail. For that reason alone I think forcing the vote is actively harmful to the M4A fight. I also don't buy "Democrats who vote against M4A open themselves up to primary challenges" because we just say Joe Biden thrash Bernie Sanders head-to-head in a Democratic primary earlier this year. The media would frame it as "M4A loses by a giant margin on the House floor" immediately. The left needs to extract real material victories from the House leadership, not symbolic ones.
I do not consider the corporate Democrats who voted to end Bernie's filibuster my friends, so I don't know what you're talking about there.
When Jimmy Dore says that AOC is a larger problem for the left than Pelosi, you really have to wonder whose side he’s really on.
Yeah that's a huge fucking swing and a miss. I know none of us are batting 1.000 out there, but damn, that's a fucking terrible take.
Ok. Assuming everyone is disingenuous just because they have a platform and a big left audience can and are confused why the left representatives are ignoring them is acting bad faith imo.
I do not consider the corporate Democrats who voted to end Bernie’s filibuster my friends, so I don’t know what you’re talking about there.
I mean all elected officials, not just the ones you don't like.
not because what few socialists in Congress are insufficiently committed to it.
What are they committed too?
What is the argument for voting for Pelosi? She fucked AOC on that committee seat.
This is what AOC has said she’s working on
behind the scenes, working very hard. just trust her if you let her work for long enough then at some point Pelosi will give her a concession, just you wait!
To go into details on why I think “forcing the vote” is a stupid concession to go after, it’s because it doesn’t advance the mission to get M4A at all. It doesn’t tell us anything about which Democrats support it and which don’t, in fact, it literally gives the anti-Medicare for All Democrats more cover because they could vote for it knowing it will fail. For that reason alone I think forcing the vote is actively harmful to the M4A fight. I also don’t buy “Democrats who vote against M4A open themselves up to primary challenges” because we just say Joe Biden thrash Bernie Sanders head-to-head in a Democratic primary earlier this year. The media would frame it as “M4A loses by a giant margin on the House floor” immediately. The left needs to extract real material victories from the House leadership, not symbolic ones.
it's amazing to me that people are completely unable to see the politics of forcing a vote on universal health care during a pandemic. It's astounding.
I absolutely do see the politics of voting for M4A in a pandemic, which I addressed in the section you quoted. It gives plenty of cover for anti-M4A Democrats to pretend they support it.
If you forced the vote right now, how do you prevent the following scenario from happening: Many Democrats who actually oppose M4A vote for it to prove their leftist bona fides and ward off primary challenges. The vote still fails, but now incumbent Democrats can pretend they supported it when the left tries to primary them.
Except as soon as they get primaried they will still default to attacking it.
Sam Seder brought on a neocon to smear Dore, the real grifters have been revealed thanks to Dores goofy ass
It was west wing thing and Jimmy told the story yesterday, it's horrifying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=5315&v=2fP8JRdVHis&feature=youtu.be
I actually unfollowed a bunch of those accounts already because during the Joe Rogan "endorsement" whining, I just immediately unfollowed anyone stirring up shit about it. No exceptions. And doing so improved my feed quite a bit. Eoin Higgins in particular was a nonstop crybaby shidding and pissing his diapers.
Jimmy Dore passionately makes the case that progressive members of Congress who won't go on his youtube show are "the people standing between us and healthcare."
When it was about showing the progressive caucus had power or getting congresspeople to record their position more formally, ok, I could understand that to a degree.
But this is just pure, uncut nonsense. There is absolutely nothing the progressives in office right now can do to deliver M4A. We don't have the votes. There is zero reason to direct objectively unreasonable tantrums like this at anyone even kind of on our side.
If you're a communist/socialist/anarchist/whatever, then no one in the US democratic party are "kind of on our side".
They are our enemies.
Anyone who's at least willing to seriously criticize capitalism is on our side. Setting the bar any higher is a fast track to One True Leftist territory, and loses sight of the fact that we need to convince tens of millions of people who aren't currently leftists to become leftists if we're going to get anything done. We might as well give up now and just grill if we're calling elected officials pushing M4A and the Green New Deal our enemies.
water down leftism into nothingness and wonder why you can't get anything done.
Who said anything about watering leftism down? This is about who we should consider far enough along to work with, not about what leftism is.
The two most powerful anti-socialist political parties on the planet are the US cons and the US dems. That's just an objective fact.
If you want to believe that one of them are not our enemies because they are ever so slightly to the left of the other one, go right ahead. I'll be over here laughing.
You don't "criticize capitalism".
You're either against capitalism, or you're for capitalism. Socialism or barbarism.
This approach actively frustrates attempts to turn people into socialists. Writing off everyone who's not already 100% in agreement with you is a failing strategy.
People don't just wake up one day and decide they're a socialist. It's a process of seeing the failures of capitalism, hearing some ideas about alternatives, getting some theoretical grounding, working through the century of anticommunist propaganda this country's been subjected to, educating oneself on leftist approaches to all sorts of topics, and so forth. At some point in this pipeline people are willing to criticize capitalism, if not abandon it entirely, and those people are worth working with and pulling closer to us.
Yes, now is the time to push anti-capitalist rheotric.
Not "this is corrupt" not "well more regulation".
Anti-capitalism. Radical fucking leftism.
I'm talking about the "progressive" grifters in the US dem party. Politicians with a position in the system.
Not your friend or family member who's a cashier at the local grocery store, who voted for Biden because it seemed like the right thing to do.
