Ferrinus posted:

it never makes sense to compare socialists to tea partiers, or the DSA to the NRA, or whatever, because you're playing by fundamentally different rules when you oppose rather than support capital. actually winning the trust of and getting the goods for a base of by-default-checked-out workers is imperative for a leftist candidate, while a right wing movement can be as decorous or rowdy as it likes because its actual power base is a bunch of vampire lords lurking underground somewhere

Ferrinus posted:

it never makes sense to compare socialists to tea partiers, or the DSA to the NRA, or whatever, because you're playing by fundamentally different rules when you oppose rather than support capital. actually winning the trust of and getting the goods for a base of by-default-checked-out workers is imperative for a leftist candidate, while a right wing movement can be as decorous or rowdy as it likes because its actual power base is a bunch of vampire lords lurking underground somewhere

Ferrinus posted:

actually winning the trust of and getting the goods for a base of by-default-checked-out workers is imperative for a leftist candidate

WorkerThread posted:

what does that have to do with lee being nice to other delegates and lobbyists in the virginia legislature?

Epic High Five posted:

Imagining how contemporary socialists would react to a modern Huey Long is almost as fun as imagining how liberals would. "Populist rabble rousing and big angry gestures won't work because we'll disown anybody who tries that" is a tautology. Nobody knows if it'd work for the left because it's been like 70 years since anybody has tried, nowadays we've got a movement populated with people who will sit back and wring their hands and put the libs in charge just because some traitorous lib is whining about how mean people are being online, usually right after telling someone that what happens online doesn't matter.

Fact is that VA is gonna be lucky enough to be one of the first states to have a socialist gubernatorial candidate in like a century and who does or doesn't vote for them, or tries to derail their campaign in the first place, will be telling. If we are to succeed we must present an outwardly unified front and our issues with one another kept internal and sorted out there. Anybody breaking with this to build clout or whine about process is guilty of liberalism at best or is a wrecker at worst

sexpig by night posted:

I think that 'be friends with everyone in the power class you're in or you're the problem' is dumb but Lee's poo poo with this was really loving stupid. Jumping the line with zero support could only end in failure, there was no way it wouldn't and he thought he could just post through it somehow. You're not a moron for inherently distrusting this kinda rhetoric because it is usually bad but this is less 'guys be friends politics is about being friends with everyone ' and more 'do loving basic elements of legislation if you're trying to solve problems through electoralism'.

Halloween Jack posted:

Exactly. I know y'all are desperate to own the SuKKKlib DemonRats, but posting memes doesn't make Lee Carter a modern-day Huey Long. I would totally support him appealing directly to the people to engage in direct action, but he isn't doing that.

Ferrinus posted:

it's only rabble rousing if you actually, literally rouse the rabble. has that happened in virginia?

Ferrinus posted:

well, if it obstructs his ability to pass legislation, it means that the risk his voter base took in supporting a socialist candidate has amounted to exactly what all the finger-wagging liberals said it would, which is to say a lot of hot air and spirited performance but no real results

comedyblissoption posted:

democrats: we support repealing right to work

carter: ok lets actually vote on it

libsdemocratic SOCIALISTS: how loving dare you you have to go through the proper channels and the right committees and gladhand the beltway and get the right organizers and

comedyblissoption posted:

lee carter was mean to me and jumped the line so i will no longer support repealing right to work

comedyblissoption posted:

why are we blaming lee carter and not the democrats and their institutions for supporting maintaining right to work lmao. he's pointing out they are hypocrites full of poo poo.

now i guess we move onto the phase where we blame lee carter for sabotaging the concept of repealing right to work for why it remains the law of the land for decades now there's just nothing that could be done it's too bad he's poisoned the well

Halloween Jack posted:

Exactly. I know y'all are desperate to own the SuKKKlib DemonRats, but posting memes doesn't make Lee Carter a modern-day Huey Long. I would totally support him appealing directly to the people to engage in direct action, but he isn't doing that.

Epic High Five posted:

It's what should be happening, everybody who actually wants RTW killed should be using this is a cross to nail every one of the fuckers who voted against it to. What's the alternative? The people complaining about Lee can't even go so far as to say it would've passed had everybody just done everything right by doing all the same stuff that failed before AGAIN and that's supposed to be more convincing to me than forcing a vote to prove they're full of poo poo and working forward from there?

Nobody's got any coherent path to getting this passed, not now and not before, but the only person who is expected to act ONLY when everything is already lined up is the socialist and wouldn't you know it lots of so-called leftists are happy to come out of the woodwork to heap poo poo on him for heightening contradictions like we all should be doing with any amount of power we have.

comedyblissoption posted:

right to work repeal would not pass if lee carter was nicer to democrats lmao where do you get these delusions

slicing up eyeballs posted:

my impression was that electoral stuff necessitates either a degree of dealing with decorum bullshit in the service of passing good legislation, or having a strong-enough public movement to bulldoze obstructionist/rightwing freaks like whichever VA dems blocked RTW repeal. If you don't have the latter, and you disregard the former, i don't know what else you'd expect.

Ferrinus posted:

it's what SHOULD be happening... but it isn't. the rabble remain unroused.

it's like common discourse around occupy wall street. why did OWS come to nothing? well, it was brutally repressed by the state. okay, fine, but that still means it failed, because a successful organizational form would have been one that could withstand and adapt to state repression

if all lee's good for is "heightening contradictions", and nothing's even come of that, then it seems like he was a waste of time


that's not what i'm saying or what whoever was quoted on the last page or so said. the point is that carter seems to have delivered us nothing but a performance, and that performance has had no material effects. maybe a performance is literally all he or anyone in his position could ever do, which would tell me that devoting resources to his election at all was a mistake. but insofar as it wasn't, i would expect my elected representative to take their job seriously

Ferrinus posted:

per friendbot2000's post, it sounds like RTW might have always been unavoidable but in the course of protesting it carter sacrificed resources and relationships that might have made him an effective representative of the working class on other legislation

comedyblissoption posted:

it appears your proposal is lee does nothing, hopes for a groundswell of support to magically materialize in spite of doing nothing, or gladhands the beltway

Ferrinus posted:

per friendbot2000's post, it sounds like RTW might have always been unavoidable but in the course of protesting it carter sacrificed resources and relationships that might have made him an effective representative of the working class on other legislation

comedyblissoption posted:

so socialists should not expose democrats as blatant hypocrites in the theory they could convince these same hypocritical democrats to support something else opposed to capital?

comedyblissoption posted:

this thread continues to amaze me how are people allergic to getting votes on campaign promises for superpopular legislation lmao

Ferrinus posted:

per friendbot2000's post, it sounds like RTW might have always been unavoidable but in the course of protesting it carter sacrificed resources and relationships that might have made him an effective representative of the working class on other legislation

quote:

so socialists should not expose democrats as blatant hypocrites in the theory they could convince these same hypocritical democrats to support something else opposed to capital?

slicing up eyeballs posted:

yeah this doesn't sound controversial to me, like if you're going to do the electoral thing then you've got to work with those freaks. if they wanted to feel good about the ~process~ of passing unequivocally good legislation, then part of your job as an elected official is to stroke their egos and play their stupid game, isn't it? Unless you've got the people power to "motivate" them to do the right thing regardless of their precious feelings.


I do agree with this now that the process has played out. This outcome should absolutely be swung around as a reason the democrats in question are petty babies and dogshit legislators and they should be bullied relentlessly until they vote properly, but you could've still done that part if Lee hadn't done whatever procedural sin he's alleged to committed.

slicing up eyeballs posted:

yeah this doesn't sound controversial to me, like if you're going to do the electoral thing then you've got to work with those freaks. if they wanted to feel good about the ~process~ of passing unequivocally good legislation, then part of your job as an elected official is to stroke their egos and play their stupid game, isn't it? Unless you've got the people power to "motivate" them to do the right thing regardless of their precious feelings.


I do agree with this now that the process has played out. This outcome should absolutely be swung around as a reason the democrats in question are petty babies and dogshit legislators and they should be bullied relentlessly until they vote properly, but you could've still done that part if Lee hadn't done whatever procedural sin he's alleged to committed.

comedyblissoption posted:

ok thank you for answering my question socialists should win office and then stroke the egos of elected officials and play their games if they do not have a popular movement behind them

Ferrinus posted:

quote:

With his proposal to repeal Virginia’s right-to-work law bottled up in committee for the third year in a row, Del. Lee Carter tried unsuccessfully to force his Democratic colleagues to bring it to a floor vote Wednesday.

Carter, D-50th, of Manassas is a self-described socialist running an anti-corporate, pro-worker campaign for governor. He asked the Democratic-led House to allow his bill to be released from the House Labor and Commerce Committee and brought to the floor for a vote, initiating a direct confrontation with party leaders who seem content to allow the bill to die another silent death.

“I’ve introduced this bill for the last three years running and its fate in both of the previous years has been to die at crossover without a recorded vote,” Carter said.

Del. Marcus Simon, D-53rd, of Fairfax, offered a competing motion to block Carter’s attempt, calling it a highly unusual departure from the House’s normal procedures and leadership structure.

“We have a process by which we do business here,” said Simon, who handles rules issues for Democratic leadership as the caucus’s parliamentarian.

Simon’s motion to quash Carter’s attempt passed 83-13, with a dozen other progressive Democrats joining Carter to try to bring the bill to the floor.

Right-to-work repeal has become a key dividing line for Virginia Democrats, with more centrist Democrats dismissing it as an ill-advised effort that could hurt the state’s business climate and progressives pushing it as a major step to help workers and strengthen labor unions.

The right-to-work law, which dates back to 1947 in Virginia, prevents unions from forcing workers to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, which effectively weakens organized labor.

Carter is running as a staunch progressive in Democratic gubernatorial field that also includes former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-9th, of Richmond, and former delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy, of Woodbridge.

Simon, a co-sponsor of the legislation to repeal right-to-work, said that even if Carter got his bill onto the House floor it would not pass. He also called his motion to reject the maneuver a “purely procedural vote.”

Carter pointed out that, when Republicans were in the majority, Democrats tried something similar to force a vote on the Equal Rights Amendment, an effort to enshrine gender equality in the U.S. Constitution.

“This is something that we hear quite often whenever the majority party… wishes to avoid the vote on an issue,” Carter said.

WorkerThread posted: