I have only seen national DSA leadership oppose the idea or turn it into a personality contest with Jimmy Dore.
How is that democratic at all?! They are openly contradicting the democratically-decided party line…
What an absolutely shit organization.
Here's the quote:
2019 presents a unique opportunity for the Democratic Socialists for Medicare for All campaign: to be a key player in pushing HR 1384, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, to a vote in the House of Representatives. DSA is not alone in this work. National Nurses United, along with nearly 30 other national and local unions and progressive organizations are coordinating to take advantage of this moment. Since Bernie Sanders’ presidential run in 2016, single-payer advocates have been successfully turning Medicare for All into a litmus test for politicians. A floor vote in the House will force representatives to finally reveal whether they’re on the side of healthcare profiteers or the side of the working class.
If you look at the entire document, the floor vote comes only as brief aside in the overall establishment of local union based pressure campaigns that can do the necessary work to get the people who don't vote yes out. The section after that vote mention in the introduction explicitly talks about the coalition politics as a prerequisite to a floor vote because only those coalition campaigns can pressure, which is not exactly what is being advocated by #ForceTheVote. The floor vote is a tool that can only be effectively used if coalitions are ready to go. That is why the NPC members who have voiced opposition to the current FTV measures have the opposition they have.
How does one get the effective floor vote mentioned in the introduction, do the organizing work the rest of the document is about (and if that doesn't work, the FTV stuff sure as hell isn't gonna work either).
deleted by creator
The discussion of a floor vote only appears in the introduction, not in any of the following sections. The introduction highlights that it is a tactic which can be used to expose house members in 2019.
It is now 2021. If that is no longer the case, they should explain how their organization has regressed in the past two years. 2019 DSA viewed themselves capable of utilizing a failed M4A floor vote.
Yes it is. There are countless organizations which support M4A, and a (supposedly) a significant portion of Democrats. The force the vote groups I've seen have been working on outreach pretty consistently for the past week.
Sorry, had sections mixed up. The rest of points stand. The floor vote in the context of that document comes as the end result of a huge pressure campaign that has built the necessary coalitions to carry it out. It does not come before. You are looking at this issue completely backwards. There was no regression, rather the coalition based pressure campaigns moving to a 2019 vote did not progress to a reasonable level. They got stuck. Now why was there not sufficient pressure to generate the floor vote? In my opinion the M4A organizers in DSA were far too optimistic about the progress that could be made in one year. I mean the goal of that floor vote was to use as a cudgel in the 2020 primaries but there was not enough pressure, just like there is not enough now. It was and is (as the campaign for M4A is ongoing) up to individual chapters how much resources to put into the M4A campaign, and many chapters chose to devote resources to other campaigns, such as police abolition or rent strikes and other covid issues. Personally I would argue the litmus test floor vote is not useful at all and the coalitions that continue to be built continue to put their focus on gaining co-sponsors and DSA members in the house should not be voting for any house leader at all.
Also you should note that this document is not endorsed by DSA as an organization in a binding sense. The DSA Medicare for All campaign was authorized at the convention to make an overall campaign plan, and the people authorized drafted that document and were given resources to help individual chapters run their section the campaign. It does not represent the opinions of the NPC, who were not even elected when this was drafted. It does not represent the collective beliefs of the chapters, or the at large members.
Okay, they were unable to generate a floor vote in 2019.
There are enough DSA members in the House to generate a floor vote by withholding their vote for Pelosi. They are no longer stuck.
What resources are you talking about? The DSA-affiliates in the House should be carrying out an agreed upon M4A strategy. The total labor invested in this project should only be the negotiation time between DSA-affiliates in the House & Nancy Pelosi.
The DSA M4A campaign strategy - authorized at the DSA national convention - is not binding on DSA members? There's no DSA campaign strategy for M4A. It is all left personal whims. That is astounding.
Cash for signs, flyers, child care for campaign volunteers, organizing training, paying for text banking software etc. Just getting members out pressuring their elected house member and going to every single person in their district and doing the same. Getting local unions to sign on. I'm not talking about just the floor vote here, I'm talking about the overall M4A campaign. Even just on forcing a floor vote, the DSA members in the house don't have the power over Pelosi. Pelosi can just get a few republicans to come over or even just a couple extra dems and all the DSA members in the house can withhold their vote and lose (IMO they should do this anyway, just saying it's not effective for getting a M4A vote without more pressure). For a floor vote to even happen, there needs more pressure in person on dems in the house and that will take more time to organize than there is before the vote, I mean the majority of DSA members are not even aware this debate is happening right now. Furthermore, even if the floor vote happens, where does that leave us? There's no evidence voters would punish their officials in a primary that is two years away when most of the officials that say no already tell their voters that to their faces. All we could do is go back to doing what we are already doing of building coalition campaigns to get more yes votes that are backed by credible primary threats and prepare (which is already happening) for the primary fights to come.
Also just to be more clear, I am not anti-floor vote. I think it basically doesn't matter and the DSA elected members of the house should be voting no on literally every speaker. However, the M4A strategy as laid out by DSA organizers is still imo the best thing to keep on doing.
It's not personal whims, the chapter delegates voted for the creation of the M4A campaign, and agreed to allocate resources for its construction and execution. The fact that local chapters have so much autonomy is not astounding, it's literally the only way a decentralized organization like DSA can run. The chapters have to have large amounts of autonomy. They get to decide what happens to most of their dues, they have to do the work of getting members to go out and campaign, get members into the local unions, etc. There's limits, a chapter can't disparage M4A and not expect to be reprimanded but the power of the campaign in any area lies in the individual chapter because the individual chapter knows how best to organize for their conditions and they organize the bodies that have to go out and do the hard work. DSA is not a top down organization. There's no other way for it to work, I don't know what else you expect. DSA, nor any other left group in the US, is in any position to start enforcing national unity. They have no power to do so, and significant portions of the organization are explicitly against being forced to do so beyond the current measures. DSA national serves to help chapters get a political line, get campaigns to do, get training for those campaigns, and coordinate communication between local chapters but the locals have all the power in allocating their resources.