TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
Then if you show reluctance, it’s the one hour long monotone hectoring by YouTube influencers tipped into your lap.
Post-Trump: Biden President Elect II (Trump tantrums, riots etc)
- Thread starter Sue Pertwee-Tyr
- Start date
- Status
matthewr
spɹɐʍʞɔɐq spɹoɔǝɹ ɹnoʎ sʎɐld
Which is basically what the MinorityReport episode is about both in answering Dore (at best a fool) and looking at the response AOC gave to this question about two months ago when Force the Vote was actually a thing : https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1337619367857713154
Remember that the leverage from the speaker vote was actually very small as there was no scenario in which Pelosi doesn't become speaker because there is no majority for anyone else. AFAICT the Justice Democrat's strategy was to have endless rounds of speaker votes (during which time the Biden administration can literally do nothing outside of the scope of executive orders and reconciliation) and this will somehow magically leads to a public discussion about MFA and a massive popular uprising that forces Democrats hands. I mean it was just obviously all very silly.
I think you can put pressure on the Squad (for which again see Sam Seder and other voices) but it needs to be couched in politically possible terms and not in whatever it is that Jimmy Dore and the likes of BJG, Virgil Texas, etc. are doing. Even Vausch for all his faults has zero time for these fools because he thinks they are getting in the way of the socialist revolution he is working towards and broadly just doing politics badly.
droodzilla
pfm Member
Agree with this, of course, and I have no time for Dore.
Still, I'm not sure your other post addresses my earlier point: what difference is there in principle between a vote on Medicare for all and the vote to impeach? Both have moral force, ad should be supported on principle, even if they are doomed to fail. I don't think AOC's tweet answers the question either - did the left Democrats win concessions on committee seats and mimimum wage?
Who's Vausch?
Last edited:
maxflinn
pfm Member
Give Matthew a break.
matthewr
spɹɐʍʞɔɐq spɹoɔǝɹ ɹnoʎ sʎɐld
Yes I agree impeachment and MFA are similar in many respects, but they do differ from a practical political point of view.
Firstly, the impeachment was a formal censure of a deliberate act of insurrection that, I would argue, demands a response. A MFA vote is more about a challenge to the status quo and has no clear purpose beyond the performative. Like I say, listen to the people arguing for Force the Vote and their argument was that endlessly repeated failed votes for speaker would throw a big spotlight and public debate on MFA which in turn would cause a popular uprising and force the democrats hand.
Again, remember there was never any suggestion that Pelosi would not be elected speaker only that this FTV strategy would disrupt congress and this would somehow lead to support and awareness on MFA though some form of public debate in politics and the media. The promise of exposing the politicians propping up the current healthcare system seems like thin gruel especially as, per AOC, you can already see this from the cosponsor lists.
This despite the fact that we had such a debate around the democratic primaries and mostly what we found is that there isn't yet a popular mandate for MFA, albeit mostly from a position of fear about losing insurance. It's just not clear that this strategy would lead us anywhere and given the opportunity cost of not being able to advance Biden's agenda (COVID relief, minimum wage, climate change, etc) nobody outside of the one branch of the social media based left saw it as worthwhile.
There was also a similar issue of opportunity cost with impeachment of course, but that is exactly why everyone agreed to get it all over with as quickly as possible without weeks of testimony and investigation.
The difference was that the people arguing it was important to impeach, even if it was pointless, (of whom there are many) won that argument whereas the people arguing it was important to have a MFA vote, even if it was pointless, (of whom there are few) lost that argument.
It is a good question, what did AOC, the squad and Bernie gain from their leverage. And the answer is not much although really, I think, this mostly just reinforces the point about how little leverage the progressive caucus had back when this was all being argued about nearly two months ago.
Matthew
PS Vaush is one of the political voices in the new social media based space where all this discussion is happening (TYT, Destiny, Kyle, BTC, Pakman, Dore, the Bread Tubers, etc.) He's an avowed socialist and anti-fascist and quite radical but one of those who manages to annoy both sides (the right view him as a communist revolutionary, the left view him as complicit, centrists view him as flawed for a number of reasons). He basically tryies to reach the young and impressionable in communities like Reddit that otherwise would be drowned in an alt-right soup.
Quite how important all this is is hugely debatable and it does seem very inward looking bubble like. Although it is disruptive of traditional medias does reach people demographics who otherwise would have nothing to do with politics.
PPS Sorry that's all very jumbled. I am very tired.
droodzilla
pfm Member
Not jumbled at all. Very lucid and quite persuasive. I think I'm persuaded, anyway. Respect for following the US political scene so closely - I just don't have the energy for it.
The broader question is where this leaves any progressive politicians in a more conservative large party. As you say, AOC's leverage was limited. Likewise in the UK's PLP there is a Socialist Campaign Group of around thirty MPs but, in my view, their response to Starmer's authoritarianism has been incredibly weak.
Maybe that's the reality: despite some promising developments, the left remains weak in both the US and the UK.
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
maxflinn
pfm Member
Drood, the vast majority of Democrats in the house were blindly behind Pelosi. There was very little chance they'd vote anyone else as speaker. So the Squad just needed to withhold the sufficient number of their votes until she relented and granted a floor vote on Medicare for all in return for their support, which she would have had to do, because she's drunk on power, it just may have took some time and some backbone.
It was a unique moment in time when the support of these people, despised by Pelosi and the rest of the right-wing corporate shills within the Party, was necessary.
It would have succeeded, but the Squad, who were elected specifically to fight for mainly that one issue, did not fight, amidst a pandemic making the lives of their constituents even more difficult than normal.
The floor vote would have exposed just which elected representatives of their constituents were prepared to shaft them, and which were prepared to fight for them, and those who would not have fought for their constituents would have been likely finished, and replaced next time around with people pledging to fight for Medicare for all, a policy the majority of Americans want.
I think you'll agree that this would have been far more than performative. It would have been very informative, and possibly set in motion a chain of events that would culminate in Medicare for all.
Progressives have zero chance of achieving MFA unless they fight when opportunies like this means fighting can achieve something. They are simply drowned out by the Party hierarchy. They're useless to those who elected them unless under circumstances like the house speaker vote.
They had a chance. They did not fight. They renaged on their stated promises to do so.
It was a unique moment in time when the support of these people, despised by Pelosi and the rest of the right-wing corporate shills within the Party, was necessary.
It would have succeeded, but the Squad, who were elected specifically to fight for mainly that one issue, did not fight, amidst a pandemic making the lives of their constituents even more difficult than normal.
The floor vote would have exposed just which elected representatives of their constituents were prepared to shaft them, and which were prepared to fight for them, and those who would not have fought for their constituents would have been likely finished, and replaced next time around with people pledging to fight for Medicare for all, a policy the majority of Americans want.
I think you'll agree that this would have been far more than performative. It would have been very informative, and possibly set in motion a chain of events that would culminate in Medicare for all.
Progressives have zero chance of achieving MFA unless they fight when opportunies like this means fighting can achieve something. They are simply drowned out by the Party hierarchy. They're useless to those who elected them unless under circumstances like the house speaker vote.
They had a chance. They did not fight. They renaged on their stated promises to do so.
Tumeni Notes
pfm Member
Why are you railing against the Dems, when clearly it's the Repubs who want to sustain their corporate friends, and leave the poor and downtrodden to suffer?
In the last year of the last Repub presidency, with a Repub majority in the Senate, how much financial support went out to those affected by Covid? I recall a single payment of $600. What do you recall?
Did you see any sign that the outgoing administration offered any meaningful transitional help as the new administration came in? If so, what form did this take?
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
Lock 'em up!
DonQuixote99
pfm Member
No...poison them!
Tony L
Administrator
To recap: MF vanished entirely from view after supporting Trump over Clinton at the last US election via the medium of fly-tipping RT videos and regurgitating Trump rally chants. He briefly returned to shovel a load more RT pro-Putin/Assad propaganda, even defending the barrel bombing of Aleppo etc, but refused to engage at all on Trump who turned out to be exactly what we had argued all along. Now Trump is gone he’s back to bash the Democrats again. One doesn’t need to be Adam Curtis to spot a pattern here...
maxflinn
pfm Member
Both parties want to sustain their corporate friends, and leave the poor and downtrodden to suffer. The Democrats are not quite as bad in terms of leaving the downtrodden suffer, but they're still servants of the elites, not their voter base. Why should they not be criticised just like the Republicans?
I also recall just $600.
I seen no such signs.
Do you think the Democratic Party, led by a cretin who co-penned the 1994 Crime Bill - legislation that essentially gave authorities the power to jail young mostly black males indefinitely for minor drug offences - will help to solve the deep problems Americans face in society?
Why would anyone when it's clear that, just like the Republican Party they serve the banks, giant corporations, big oil, big pharma, the military industrial complex, foreign countries etc, not the people who vote for them.
All his talk of bringing the country together is bollocks, the same as it was when Trump said it, when Obama said it, and so on....
These people are figureheads. They make big announcements about crumbs they throw the people as they ingratiate themselves to power, making big changes that benefit the banks - the biggest made by Clinton, changes which led to the 2008 global recession - the giant corporations, big pharma etc.
The secret is two-fold. Firstly to keep people divided between red and blue, seeing the others as the enemy.
The second is to ensure people have just enough to make them less likely to revolt.
On and on it goes. In four years Americans will be less well off, and new promises and pledges will be made, the stars and stripes everywhere, people more divided than ever, and a big election will take place, putting into power one of the two parties that serve the same interests.
It's a ruse called democracy.
maxflinn
pfm Member
I spot a pattern of behaviour.
Tumeni Notes
pfm Member
Why not criticise the worse party, then - i.e. the Republicans, rather than the one you just agreed is better?
... and Biden is trying to get more than this in terms of relief to the public. Better than the Repubs. So why not take the Repubs to task over their lack of help for the people?
... yet Obama took great pains to make the transition easy for the incoming Repubs ... who promptly ignored much of what had been done for them, and Trump then installed a bunch of folk patently unsuited for their offices (see Michael Lewis; The Fifth Risk). To the outside observer, it looked as though Trump and his cronies just packed up and left. There was certainly no public announcement of a transition plan. They all just seemed to melt into the shadows. Trump sent the Whitehouse staff home on the morning of Biden's inauguration, so there was nobody there to even open the door for them.[/QUOTE]
- Status