Remember when the bipartisan bill got voted through, and the squad members voted against it? And how a bunch of people responded, that they’d voted down important programs, that it was just a stunt, etc.? How did that turn out….
And BBB is far from the only one. At the beginning of the year, after Bankrupt Donald’s 4 years, the capitol riots, etc., plus the pattern of the presidential party doing worse in midterms, that dems all the way from politicians through activist/organizer/policy/etc. types to random everyday people would focus on fixing the election system, putting resources into organizations that register new voters (the election/campaign method that seems to have straightforwardly worked well) and would be doing all this from the beginning of the year. Plus, with global warming becoming a “right now” problem, with lots of science about how it would get irreversible very shortly, taking a much bigger crack at this problem.
Instead, well……
Mods hating Progs: An Exhibit
The BBB
Political Campaigns
We all know how the Virginia race went, of course. We also know that people like Warren and squad members and such did campaign in earlier races like the California recall, and most of these earlier races had similar results as the 2020 general election.
Student Loans
The Actual Memo
Global Warming (with some from this very site)
Some Other Stuff
Why on Earth Should I show up in 2022?
Quite a lot of you (politicians, party people, pundits, random everyday people, whatever) insist on acting like stereotypical (usually old) moderates who hate progs/leftish types more than Republicans, act entitled to power and votes no matter the success or failure.
”You can’t ask that question?!!! Republicans Are…..”
It’s not just me writing this:
And those Virginia Elections:
Watching as student loan forgiveness is considered a horrible, horrible thing while, say, SALT deductions or any other playing with taxes barely gets attention, or how building renewables just keeps getting pushed back, or how Manchin and co. just kind of do their thing with no consequences….It’s all just pointless.
Now for some of the arguments you’ll make:
”You don’t care about (insert group here) if Republicans take over!!”
Using other people as a morality pet/hostage/whatever….That’s fucked up.
And if this is important….don’t attack people who’s votes you know you’ll need. This is simple stuff.
”Can’t you count? Manchin...”
If it were just Manchin and co, that would be one thing. It s not just Manchin and co, it is also lying about the BBB as per above, and blaming progressives for anything that goes badly, and seeing the big bulk of democrats not really pushing for passing both bills together, and the weird hostility to loan forgiveness, and slow action on voting rights (Biden in a number of ways just doesn’t seem that strong on any of this), and…...There’s quite a lot obviously, most of which is not about manchin, and most of which is completely pointless or counterproductive.
As for Manchin, Maybe he would be a pain in the ass for even the best possible leadership, but this is questionable. He did work with the COVID relief, playing the game originally expected of being a pain but eventually voting for it, and in the past he has generally supported dems, so the support is there some of the time, and presumably could be there this time also.
”You just don’t want to compromise! you just whine and cry when you don’t get what you want.” (possibly) “Kids these days think they get everything instantly...”
Do I want to compromise? F*ck no, of course not. In a negotiation/purchase/etc., I’m looking for the best deal I can get, that gives the most value for the least cost. In a competition, I’m looking to win. Doing something by myself, I push to do it as well as possible. Politics is no different. And some political goals are about large amounts of money and/or life and death situations, meaning compromise is less valuable.
Of course, in any situation, seeing what other people are asking for is useful. so what are the desires of the people opposing the progs? The politicians say that they are worried about the defic….nope, that’s not it, wasn’t a problem for military, bipartisan bill, and such, plus economic analysis argues against this worry. It could be that undeserving people…..nope, lots of times people get something for questionable reasons. It could be there are minor problems with some proposal, and another program (think health insurance as the best example) should be better….but rarely is there an alternate proposal, the common politics argument is “do very little” not” here’ a bunch of what look like highly effective proposals, but there can only be one.”
It’s clear the demand for compromise is all about not letting the leftier/proggier side win. A lot of you have picked “moderate” as a personal identity (which is nonsense, political positioning is the goals you have and the people/programs you support, something you do, not something fixed that a person is.), and oppose anything leftish as part of that, just like with Republicans, preventing a prog win is the goal in itself, the compromise is with moderate’s desire to force progs to compromise. This we get complaints about not compromising while, say, the BBB gets shrunk over and over again to absolutely nothing.
Would I work with/vote for/support people like that? Take a wild guess.
”Oh, so you think Republicans will be better”
Having watched a good series of election by now: credibly threatening to not show up or vote Republican, is the most rational way to get things done/get attention and support. It works for moderates: I hear over and over again that candidates must tone down what they say/accept iffy position on things like abortion/run generic white guy/rural/southern/etc. candidates or some people will get turned off/vote Republican. I also notice it after elections: After 2016, lots of people putting out proposals (postal banking/medicare for all the big ones) to try and attract the leftier crowd, after the 2020 elections where everyone loyally shows up and we get the year of blame the progs, after the Virginia elections that seems to have faded into the background (I really notice the lack of “South Carolina black voters liked Biden, so who are you to criticize his CDC’s decisions?” type comments after November.)
“So you want democrats to lose”, you’ll notice I’m writing about 10 months out, halfway between the two elections, so there’s time to fix these issues, but when it comes down to it a captive voter/constantly loyal voter has far less power than one who has to be appealed to. “But that makes you a traitor...” A proggy/younger/”dems don’t do enough,I won’t show” voter is effectively the same as stereotypical swing voter who doesn’t show/votes Republican because the word socialist or bipartisanship or crime or such: they aren’t happy at something dems did, so didn’t vote for them. but the proggy/young/”do more” voter “wants’ to vote dem, and will naturally go that way, the other type of swing voter wants to go Republican, so the first type is more worth appealing to.
”Rural Areas feel ignored/offended….”
Rural areas, red areas...we hear over and over how these people are angry, feel ignored, feel offended, etc. If its good enough for them (often based on imaginary things like “city people look down on us”. O.k., self-fulfilling prophecy things.), it’s good enough for anyone, and ignoring important problems dismissively as in earlier in the post...are the people you are talking to supposed to be happy? The comments in BBB alone above are enough for me to go red: It’s a bunch of hardcore democrats celebrating the loss of some very useful, valuable programs, from people who are supposed to support you, simply to feed the ego and power display of a few politicians.
Some of you will argue that dems have done a lot, but this kind of disrespect, resistance, plus the slowness and Manchin crap is completely pointless and is going to piss people off.
About Those 2022 Elections
You want to keep the country working properly, you need young people/proggy people/etc. to show up. Plus you need activist types to do the organizing work of getting other people to show up and vote. Obviously, getting Manchin and co. under control is the big thing, fixing up media would be, but there’s not much a bunch of daily kos readers can do about that. What you can do along with politicians is:
Accountability
The pattern is blindingly obvious right now, the more right wing you are, the more lots of people will let you get away with. Progs get blamed for losing elections, holding up bills, not compromising when pointless compromises were in fact made, etc. Moderates who screw things up (Lieberman and co during Obama, Manchin now) just keep getting elected as normal, criticize and you get asked if progs would be doing better (Yes, in most cases they would), or arguments that you just have to run moderates so there’s nothing to be done. Trumpers/Republicans just kind of do whatever they like, and almost no one quits their support, and the punishment for the capitol attack is a very slow set of prosecutions that may not even reach a lot of people.
This type of accountability...is horsesh*t. It could explain a lot of political culture, why Manchin feels perfectly safe holding things up for the fun of it, why so many people latch so tightly to conservatives, probably means a lot of competent people/leftish people are burning out, as your reward for doing something useful is to get attacked/have more work demanded while someone else gets the actual good stuff. We saw it during the Iraq war (the supporters just kept going, the opponents who got it right not so much), and the problem has just gotten way worse over time. Rage about cancel culture, dem “consultants” just doing the same crap over and over whether it wins or not, angry internet people who just keep going, it’s all part of a piece.
From politicians: accountability for right wing/moderates is in high demand, and would show that dem leaners are actually serious about doing things, in addition to be benefits accountability would already provide. This means actually prosecuting January 6th people and Bannon and such (I’ve heard mixed descriptions on this, maybe it is taking as long as it needs to, but I’ve also seen commentary that “put all efforts into prosecuting these people” does not look like what we’re seeing right now), and hurting filibuster people in some way. On lower levels, angry internet people, pundits, etc. who support moderates with idiotic, obviously wrong comments should be straight up ignored, whether Silver or Yglesias or other twitter hot takes, or comments from random people like I’ve posted here. There’s other political writing out there, or just plain other ways to use time.
A good place to start is to support Cisneros in Texas. You do all the nonsense Cuellar does? Time to get replaced. and get a better congressperson out of it.
Actually compete in elections
I started reading this site intensely in 2017, where there was writing about special elections, organizations to join, etc. Once January 2020 rolled around, I expected something similar: support Abrams style organizations (the one obviously successful way to organize/grab more voters) in lots of other states, who need funding when elections aren’t running, plus the usual description of organizations at work and special elections. 2020 was close, and a lot of problems (midterm slump, Republicans getting more extreme, etc.) meant that every bit of organization is needed ASAP (or maybe after a month or two to calm down) Supporting and describing this sort of work doesn’t take too much time. Instead we got (on here and other internet places) lots of posts about how bad Republicans are or how out of touch progs supposedly are. Elections (anchorage mayor is a big one I remember) slipped by apart from a few specials, while series like this or the brief podcasts like this one get very few responses. I’ve noticed this in day to day life as well, a lot of you out there like to complain, but get resentful when asked to support such organizations.
Want to get actual enthusiasm going? Support these sorts of organizations and actually try to win the election. Describe what you are doing, point out elections and organizations that exist, make actually helping in elections the popular thing to do. Plus these help to win the elections. Here's a recent one.
Dems (including your favorites) will get criticized. Deal with it or get out of the way.
Politicians are human, they will make a lot of problematic decisions. They will get criticized for said decisions. Unless the criticisms are just straight up factually wrong, attacking the criticizers is a terrible idea, telling said criticizers that their desires/problems aren’t important, and the dishonesty is a problem itself. Either help or support the criticism, or stay out of the way.
BBB not being big enough, slowness on voting protections, Biden making some screwed up immigration decisions: people are attacking these for good reason. If these politicians are actually doing all they can: they are big boys, they can handle it. If not, it’s extra pressure to do the job properly, which is the point of all this elections stuff anyway.
Oh yes, and your favorite politicians are not mine. I’m not here to support Biden, or Pelosi, or anyone else you may go for. I’m not a team player: politicians are tools to get things done, easily replaceable.
Some of you out there are probably not going to change, so I hope to see a better 2022.