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The ‘AOC Left’ Has Achieved Plenty
(nymag.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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so most of this article was excuses as to why progressives supposedly cant achieve anything.
They are the ultra minority. I imagine the report points to that.
yeah probably gonna stay that way with them following a non-progressive party
The progressive caucus is 100/213 house Dems, it's the largest Democratic caucus in Congress now. It's been growing steadily.
Eh, it is, but it's not really 100 members strong. It means the word has good branding among Democrats, but members like Hakeem Jeffries aren't going to go to bat to fight against business or do anything that might make the larger party uncomfortable if it doesn't accommodate a progressive demand.
The lack of actual political analysis in this thread is staggering. Thank you for being a reasonable voice.
I have yet to see any realistic paths suggested which would actually achieve all those policies. The most common one I see is to ignore the law and do it anyway and challenge Republicans to question it. Which, for some reason, they don't think Republicans will, despite a decade showing us to the contrary.
Even more ironically, they say that you are the fascist for disagreeing with them -- not, you know, the person actually suggesting they ignore the law to implement their agenda.
I mean, making Republicans publicly block good things is good. Just because the Court is captured and Republicans are reliably awful doesn't mean the best course of action is just quietly accepting their power.
You're acting like the law is a hard and fast rulebook that you turn the crank and find the result. Our legal system is already full of gray areas, split decisions, and laws that are ignored because that's part of the role of the people enforcing it. Student loan forgiveness wasn't definitively illegal, it was only "illegal" because we knew the Republican court would find some way to stop it. They threw away the law to make that happen, and they'll do it again, but the first step in contesting their power is forcing them to wield it against public opinion, the next step is to remind the public of the limits of their power. Simply saying "good game, you got us, the Court gets to do whatever it wants" is just cowardice.
democrats are currently at war with eachother which is most of what's preventing them from achieving anything progressive. Even if things like renewable energy, closing the wealth gap, gun control, healthcare reform are popular amongst democrats, they're far from unanimous. Even shit like ending the filibuster which would have given a democratic congress much more potency, was resisted by the same conservative democrats that poison the efforts of all progressive efforts.
Democratic fundraisers are pumping tons of money into both sides and getting nowhere. The path to achieving progressive policies is electing a progressive party, which does not currently exist.
I think that's way more work than necessary. Look at what's still been accomplished the last several years. Democrats and Progressives have still passed COVID relief, an infrastructure bill, and the biggest climate change bill the US has ever had. Mainstream Democrats all agree we need a $15 minimum wage and national paid sick leave.
Look at the conservative Democrats that are holding up removal of the filibuster and mainstream Democrat policies. There's really just one, Manchin. Maybe Sinema too but I honestly have no fucking idea what's up with her. All we need is another Democrat senator or two, and we can kill the filibuster.
If you look at the composition of the Senate over time, Democrats have only had filibuster proof control of the chamber for 2-3 months of the last few decades. They passed Obamacare in that time -- which was originally going to have a single payer option, but a Manchin figure whose vote was necessary stood in the way.
The filibuster was also a bit less restrictive until recently. It used to be that you had to physically speak on the floor for a filibuster to happen, now you can just say it. The only appetite to really kill the filibuster has come very recently, in light of historic Republican stonewalling. We still have yet to send 50 Democrats who will kill the filibuster to the Senate. I think achieving that is much easier than creating a new progressive party, and it'll also let us get to passing left wing policy sooner.
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