christmas boots posted:

I can't help but think the clapping thing would have gone over better if it was sold more on the "let's ASL clap so we don't have to stop every three loving seconds"

Epic High Five posted:

It wasn't pushed for at either time and I can't think of a single reason why it would've been more relevant in 2019 as opposed to right now, when we're in the midst of a pandemic in which tens of millions have lost their employer health insurance and scores of millions more face bankruptcy for long, expensive treatment.

What even is the alternative path forward here? What's the proposed timeline and reasoning that it's impossible now when it's desperately needed but will be possible later when the issue is buried once again by the Democratic establishment

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

lmao dude this is politics not math class, you can’t prove that you’re objectively right and win the thread. there’s no “correct” answer, you can point to historical examples and other people can point to other historical examples and theories can be presented and argued about. the way you post poo poo like “we’ve been over this already” and act like you’re the thread professor who just needs to get everyone to accept the right solution is insanely loving obnoxious and no matter how many pretentiously worded paragraphs you type out you will never prove that your theory of change is the objectively correct one, because that isn’t a thing in politics

Killin_Like_Bronson posted:

I did not realize that history, I just have a kid in a wheelchair so I'm more sensitive to when people say that things needing to be 'normal' in the context of accessibility.

Ferrinus posted:

iirc in 2019 the theoretical leverage didn't really exist to force a floor vote, so while it was down on the m4a strategy as "it would be nice if this happened" i don't think there was an actionable and immediate plan to make it happen

now, in 2021, we've had a much longer and more public fight about m4a, such that the information a floor vote could give us would be redundant compared to what's already come out of the dem primary and corona relief discourse. aoc and others claim that a floor vote could even be bad because it could allow pols to hide their true positions; i just think it's pointless, such that i'd take it if it was free but not actually spend any appreciable time or resources on making it happen

achillesforever6 posted:

It didn't help that blowup was a build up on a lot of other accessibility issues with the venue; like I knew one of our delegates was the chair of the disability working group was telling me how a lot of the members in that group felt like they were being treated like a burden. It also really didn't help that a reso to make chapters fully accessible by 2021 failed which led to walk outs. Also remember that the person who gave me poo poo for passing out infrastructure reports was seen laughing at a comrade with a speech impediment as they spoke in favor of the resolution. It was just such a toxic experience in retrospect that not surprised a ton of people quit the org because of it. I somehow was galvanized by it instead of just checking out completely.

Ferrinus posted:

in left-wing communism, lenin makes a point that at separate times the bolsheviks have seen fit to abstain completely from parliament or to participate in as a bloc, depending on what the balance of forces was at the time and where the needs and attention of the people lay. given that, you should understand why a tactic appropriate at some times might be inappropriate at other times, i.e. why a floor vote might have been more helpful in early 2019 than it would be in early 2021. we've actually been over this in some depth, but everyone likes to pretend not to have read any answer given on the topic so they can feel like they're the first to bring it up

Epic High Five posted:

It is free. M4A was emphatically defeated in the Dem primaries and now AOC and Bernie are talking about expanding access to healthcare. We are emphatically and resoundingly in a weaker position than we were in 2019 despite a plague. If nothing else, FTV would be a rallying point at a time when it is desperately needed.

I have no idea what you are imagining when you type out this rosy sort of assessment. Exactly what more progress do we have now than we did in 2019?

Epic High Five posted:

also lmao at someone in the DSA thread urging taking a back seat to the bourgeois liberals citing ML theory and practice

PhilippAchtel posted:

Yeah, I understand the concept of a tactic's effectiveness changing over time, you pompous twat. I just disagree that anything substantive has changed. If anything, the DSA's stated strategy of playing kingmaker in a divided legislature is stronger now than it is has been in our lifetimes.

Manchin gets it. Sinema gets it. Why don't we?

Ferrinus posted:

while i obviously have definitively settled the issue, i'm not expecting everyone else to believe that i've definitively settled the issue. it'd just be nice to have some kind of back and forth about it instead of like

SOMEONE: why not X?
SOMEONE ELSE: well, because Y

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SOMEONE: why not X, though?

Ferrinus posted:

iirc in 2019 the theoretical leverage didn't really exist to force a floor vote, so while it was down on the m4a strategy as "it would be nice if this happened" i don't think there was an actionable and immediate plan to make it happen

now, in 2021, we've had a much longer and more public fight about m4a, such that the information a floor vote could give us would be redundant compared to what's already come out of the dem primary and corona relief discourse. aoc and others claim that a floor vote could even be bad because it could allow pols to hide their true positions; i just think it's pointless, such that i'd take it if it was free but not actually spend any appreciable time or resources on making it happen

Ferrinus posted:

it is not free - it requires the leverage that exists in withholding votes, and also the organizer-hours for building up a movement of people to credibly claim that they want the squad to do it. the squad can't just demand infinite concessions in exchange for four speaker votes (if they could they'd just force pelosi to create an american NHS), so they have to pick and choose. they picked and chose something besides FTV, which is good, because at this point in history FTV's salutary effects would be entirely redundant with information we've already got (and that we, not c-span, would be responsible for disseminating to the public and otherwise transforming into organizing power)

Ferrinus posted:

it is not free - it requires the leverage that exists in withholding votes, and also the organizer-hours for building up a movement of people to credibly claim that they want the squad to do it

Ferrinus posted:

organizer-hours

Ferrinus posted:

while i obviously have definitively settled the issue, i'm not expecting everyone else to believe that i've definitively settled the issue. it'd just be nice to have some kind of back and forth about it instead of like

christmas boots posted:

*clearly understanding everything*

Floor recognizes floor

Ferrinus posted:

second, insofar as "we" elected her it wasn't purely for the sake of posturing and anti-dem propaganda. she actually should be making political calculations and weighing costs vs benefits in the course of navigating the legislature. even FTV itself pays respect to political expediency, because it's only calling for a vote on m4a, not calling for m4a itself, not calling for a vote on an NHS, or whatever. it's common but not convincing to be like oh i'm just being rational and practical but you're clearly a scheming sellout just because one person's proposal is like 5% less ambitious than another's

Ferrinus posted:

so it should be easy for you to quote me and point out where i've said something wrong or contentless, right?

yeah, that's what i thought

apropos to nothing posted:

read once, post twice

Epic High Five posted:

I'd like to call for a floor vote on the issue of this being settled or not

PhilippAchtel posted:

Then you loving do it! That's the whole reason your organization exists! BJG and West were practically begging you to do it.

Ironically, it would have been good for DSA recruitment as well, which make those of us on the other side even more sus about why no one in the DSA leadership bought in.

DragQueenofAngmar posted:

they are rejecting your answer, not forgetting it. I’m sorry that this upsets you, but since this is, again, not math class, you have not finished the discussion by giving your answer. people aren’t giving their responses in precise debate club language because this is an online forum and it’s obnoxious to bring up procedural style or wording based objections when the intended message is usually pretty clear. the only way you can prove that a particular tactic is the correct one would be to show results, which the american left has failed to produce for decades, and even then, there can and will be debate about whether those results were substantive or meaningful enough to be considered wins. you pointing out that the squad was able to secure a change to paygo rules does not end the debate, because not everyone agrees that getting that change is important, or enough, or proves that the squad deserves support or trust going forward, etc. politics is endless discussion and very few provably correct answers or strategies, unless you’re in a democratic centralist organization and acting as a unified bloc.

PhilippAchtel posted:

Yeah, essentially you're admitting that the DSA and AOC both played the standard Democrat line of "It would be nice if..." only to abandon it once it was actually possible.

And you wonder why so many people immediately became disillusioned with both? It had nothing to do with a potsmoking youtuber.

PhilippAchtel posted:

Then you loving do it! That's the whole reason your organization exists! BJG and West were practically begging you to do it.

Ironically, it would have been good for DSA recruitment as well, which make those of us on the other side even more sus about why no one in the DSA leadership bought in.

Epic High Five posted:

What did they choose instead of doing what they ran on? More awareness raising like it's now some worthless trust fund kid's charity? Because it looks to me like the critical public support to push for FTV is exactly what is being pushed back on in favor of ??????

M4A messaging failed spectacularly, Every Dem running credibly claimed to support it despite only 1 doing so, except for Biden who opposed it but most of his voters still said they thought he supported it. That's success to you? That's a high point we need to start expanding out from instead of continuing to force loud and public concessions?

WorkerThread posted:

political capital for dsa types

Ytlaya posted:

This is quite the exaggeration, since the thing they apparently "demanded" is completely worthless. It isn't "the difference between M4A and even more positive change" - it's "the difference between literally nothing and M4A."

People wouldn't be reacting this way if they had actually shown some willingness to openly be in conflict with Democratic leadership. It's not so much that something like forcing the vote would be a big benefit on its own, but more that their actions (and lack thereof) up until this point are extremely damning.

The important question here is "why haven't they been directly demanding these things and directly opposing the rest of the party and broadcasting the party's lack of support for left causes?" The answer seems to be "because then they would lose influence and the ability to do things," but this is complete bullshit. Do you think that they're tricking Democratic leadership into giving them meaningful power? The whole excuse of "we must wait until we have more allies in Congress" depends entirely upon the reasoning that not waiting would carry consequences, but this is nonsense. Not only is there no reason to expect there to be meaningful consequences, but this reasoning is a trap that can be used pretty much forever (and has, in fact, been used constantly in the past). It doesn't really matter whether people like The Squad genuinely believe this, since the outcome is the same.

It's really bizarre that it seems so difficult to understand this. By far the most simple and obvious answer is that The Squad, like most other vaguely progressive politicians who have been elected in the past, have decided that not rocking the boat too much is the best choice. There a zillion personal incentives for them to choose to cooperate with the rest of the party.

Buck Wildman posted:

lol I'm not reading all of that drat

Ferrinus posted:

you can just read the part where i'm responding to your favorite poster

Buck Wildman posted:

lol at thinking you're my favorite

Ferrinus posted:

holy poo poo can NONE of you people read? it says RESPONDING TO! good god!

Ferrinus posted:

it's common but not convincing to be like oh i'm just being rational and practical but you're clearly a scheming sellout just because one person's proposal is like 5% less ambitious than another's

Phi230 posted:

waving your hands around whimsically looks goofy, especially when you prioritize it over other business, and interrupt the convention to yell at others for doing the normal thing of clapping

its not a big issue on its own so much as its' the whole comfortable white performative gesture thing rearing its head and making the left look dumb as poo poo

slicing up eyeballs posted:

The speakers vote happened like last month didn't it? Genuinely asking, what's there even to argue about anymore

indigi posted:

surely there's got to be A Line somewhere

Ferrinus posted:

they are not rejecting my answer but ignoring it - up until this page, anyway, which i appreciate. it actually seems like you've sort of lost the plot here because you're bringing up paygo for some reason, but paygo exemptions aren't the reason that FTV was more attractive in 2019 than 2021 - the reason is that in 2019 there wasn't a copious record of who supports m4a and who doesn't. now there is

Ferrinus posted:

you're being dishonest here by strategically skipping the middle of my post. it wasn't abandoned when it was possible - it was abandoned when it was pointless, and mutually exclusive with something better.

Ferrinus posted:

by ignoring this basic part of the reasoning, you're engaging in conspiratorial thinking that somehow puts the DSA and the democratic establishment on the same side, like secretly we know that FTV is really good and powerful but have to do the lucy's football thing to make sure that you never get it. but actually it just sucks (in the current context). let me answer your second post, here, too:

why would we do it, when it's somewhere between pointless and counterproductive?

it certainly wouldn't be good for DSA recruitment! DSA members largely disagree, "help us make sure c-span airs a losing vote for our issue" isn't the kind of thing that can build excitement or mobilize working class participation among the unorganized, and "those of [you] on the other side" are a vanishingly small minority of people who largely aren't involved in on-the-ground organizing in any event. why would dsa alienate its member base in favor of an MPP publicity stunt? doesn't make strategic sense

Ferrinus posted:

they didn't run on the specific publicity stunt "force the vote". they ran on, among a number of other things, universal health care. they chose to get universal health care exempt from certain congressional financing provisions.

Ferrinus posted:

PhilippAchtel posted:

Why is that? What record is more copious now than in 2019? Walk me through it.

quote:

This is dead wrong. Many, many of the people pushing for FTV were involved with organizing. Many of those people are current DSA members. You have no reason to believe otherwise other than your own smug sense of superiority [which of course turns off no one, eh?].

quote:

They absolutely did not get that. Did you read the paygo exemption? Did you read the conditions and who decides what applies? Are you familiar with the history of how this provision has been applied and removed precisely at the behest of our political opponents?

If you think the paygo statement was anything more than theatre, you are dreaming.