On Pushing Left & Progressive Bootlicking
Do we need to be polite to politicians, or make them keep their promises to us?
I saw lots of progressive and leftists online this week criticizing Medicare for All activists for demonstrating outside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ community office with a list of demands and calls to actions regarding efforts they wanted a commitment from her to make in order to try and make that policy the law of the land. Some said the activists were being rude, and some said that they shouldn’t be targeting Rep. AOC, because she already supposedly supports implementing a Medicare for All type system.
Instead, they argued, activists should appeal to explicit opponents of it like Speaker Pelosi. Comedian, podcast host, and Medicare for All activist Ron Placone recently gave a great summary of why activists like him targeted Rep. AOC with their demands about advancing the policy instead of the likes of Speaker Pelosi.
“’Why did the Medicare for All activists go to AOC’s office? She supports Medicare for All,’” he began, rhetorically.
“Yeah, that’s why. Because they had a list of demands around Medicare for All. They had a call to action for a politician around Medicare for All. You would go to someone who campaigned on Medicare for All not someone who is against Medicare for All whose base is against Medicare for All. They would say, ‘hey, I’m not for this policy and neither are the people who voted for me, so why would I do anything?’ It’s not personal, it’s political.
“You would want to go to someone who supports the policy and who also has a lot of influence – AOC checks both of those boxes. This is not personal, it’s political. I know some of you, you don’t want to anger the Royals but that’s not how it works. They’re supposed to be public officials who serves the will of We the People. Besides, ‘the Democratic Party doesn’t do anything unless it’s forced.’ Who am I quoting there? AOC.”
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Readers of this newsletter know that we spill a lot of digital ink criticizing politicians who were elected on the strength of their promises to pursue and implement progressive policies. I often criticize brilliant, young, brave politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nina Turner for the multitude of ways in which they’ve shed any demonstrated commitment to improving material conditions for people and instead picked up careerism.
Still, don’t get it twisted – Senator Bernie Sanders’ hackery beats all in this regard. His cultists might argue, as they often do in some form or fashion, ‘Well what have YOU done?!”
It is true – I am not a United States Senator like Sanders. I’ll be the first to admit that.
To my credit, however, I also didn’t help murder half a million Brown women and children in Iraq with sanctions or vote to install the New Jim Crow system like Sanders has. It is also true, as my detractors will doubtless point out, that Sen. Sanders has brought ‘socialism’ into the public’s consciousness in a new way.
I certainly have not done anywhere near as much to bring my own socialism to such a wide audience, it is true. In my defense, my own socialism, as opposed to Sen. Sanders’, doesn’t involve approving of drone murder and military coups.
None of us are perfect. Most of us aren’t war criminals with the blood of millions on our hands, though.
The former can certainly be considered progressive. Folks who meet the latter description, however, cannot.