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Im skeptical a fair bit of time about those congressional ‘lefties’ but this is true, for the most part they’re doing what they can. What I do like most about them is when they show up outside of a legislative capacity, like showing up at strikes or going to meet unions. I think many people discount how important that boots on the ground work is. Imagine being a franchise owner of something trying to snuff out union efforts knowing you’re gonna have US Lawmakers who agree with your workers physically there with the workers. You better come correctly in that situation.
Just want to point out that they only showed up in support of the current labor movement after immense pressure was put on them after failing to support the historic Amazon JFK8 union drive. AOC and politicians like her still have to pushed, sometimes hard, to do the right thing.
They show an ability to learn from their mistakes, at a minimum. Can’t be said for all.
Sorry man I just fundamentally disagree and feel like you are ignoring/undervaluing the role grassroots organizing plays. This is pure political pressure, not a reevaluation of policy.
I say this specifically because as soon as you give a politician the benefit of doubt and remove that political pressure they stop “learning from their mistakes”.
Oh I agree with you and am biting my tongue to not talk about how disappointed people like them made me when it came to the railroad unions and strike in this thread simply because at the end of the day through mistake or other means nymag got it right that they do indeed do thing that have an impact.
Good. I hope they achieve far more in the future, it would be a net benefit for everyone, even those who dislike them and their politics
The greatest threat to conservatives is other conservatives. Unfortunately, they’re just too stupid to understand why.
Their own party treats them with more disdain than their supposed “opposition party.”
AOC and the other actual left-wing minority making waves in a sea of right-wing neoliberals and righter-wing fascists are amazing. They can’t win, the game is fully rigged and the institutions are fully captured by monied interests with political bribery legalized, but it’s like watching Cap get up to face Thanos’ army alone, it’s inspiring.
Too bad no one, including most Americans, are on their left.
Because were too far into the sunk cost fallacy to reject
“free market”rigged crony capitalism.“We can’t re-examine our core economic beliefs! We already gave the owners all the money, and they promised for half a century to whip their dicks out and urinate prosperity over all of us!.. any day now…”
The article makes an argument exactly against this mentality.
Did you read the article?
I read the article, and I agree with Freddie deBoer. This is just liberal apologetics. This is just the same arguments of things are getting better, just wait, blah, blah, blah. I’m old. It’s tired. Give me healthcare and change my mind.
Well, it is literally liberal apologetics in that it’s an argument that defends the “liberal” position.
So let me ask you then:
Given the political realities laid out quite clearly in the article (essentially, socialism isn’t that popular), what do you think American leftists should be spending their political capital on this cycle in order to get the best policy results in the next presidential term?
So until we get single payer healthcare, you won’t be happy with any other policy wins and you’d rather burn all your political capital fighting us instead of uniting against the literal fascists? Please tell me how that makes sense.
The left, the real socialist left doesn’t have political capital. So there’s nothing to burn. Incremental policy is great to alleviate suffering, but ultimately is masturbatory. Fascism will eventually overcome America. This explains why. Waiting for real, substantial policy changes with climate change happening is denialism. We’re waiting for enough people to realize this so we can organize and fight for the future.
I found that argument very unconvincing.
I think the author’s definition of fascism is nonsensical and ahistorical.
I agree that capitalism has the tendency to concentrate power (like every other social or political system ever in the history of humans), but the idea that we should just abandon the levers of power to the kind of people who want Donald Trump to be president is so insane to me.
The author even concedes that Donald Trump is uniquely bad but then bends over backwards trying to get back to his comfortable “both sides” narrative
I agree that it is insane to concede power to fascism. I have kids and will be voting for Biden for this reason. I’m aware that when full fascism comes, it will not be pretty. But I also understand that capitalism will eventually decay into fascism. So, I am sympathetic to those that want to do something outside the system of just voting. I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m just trying to make people understand the situation we’re in.
Well I’m glad I don’t have to have the Cornel West argument here.
I think we agree that the whole Earth is in a dangerous and precarious situation and far too many people are still not acknowledging this?
Do you disagree that Biden has delivered more policy for the Left as a whole than any president since LBJ?
So … all capitalism is fascism; therefore “both sides are the same”; therefore reject incremental progress as illegitimate?
Incremental progress is not illegitimate. It’s just never going to be enough to solve the problem that is capitalism. If it were, the New Deal would have fixed this system and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Ok…so because the New Deal didn’t… overthrow capitalism forever… therefore working within the system is pointless?
They probably mean something of that scale. Working people have only been losing protections, rights, and safetynets for 50 years, not gaining them, all, to lower the taxes of the sliver of the population that already wanted for nothing and got rich thanks to the system they then wanted to avoid paying back into.
The person you’re replying to is spot on. As our roads and other commons cumble, as our public education system, that provides a pre-literate workforce that profits the oligarchs btw, sits in utter ruin due to lack of funding, as we have more prisoners per capita in the world to enrich the for profit prison industry, as the world burns from companies polluting with abandon for private profit, this rigged system has proven on no uncertain terms that it works against those who lack significant capital to further enrich those who do not. After so long, yeah, it would reasonably take a massive policy change that helps the people in significant way on the backs of against the desires of the owner to get anyone paying attention’s good will back.
Don’t worry though, it won’t happen.
If you want people to have faith in a system that works against them every day and has for their entire lives on the promise of “maybe you’ll kick the ball on try 10,006 Charlie Brown,” you don’t make any sense.
This article said basically nothing about what the “AOC left” has actually accomplished. It’s just a pro-Dem puff piece. Also, the author clearly doesn’t understand who leftists are.
How far did you get in this article?
The article sites examples such as the left dragging the party into supporting:
- a much bigger social safety net during the pandemic
- debt forgiveness
- investing a shitload in transitioning to green tech
I could go on. Read the article.
We’re not transitioning to green tech, we’re doing what was previously known as the “all of the above” plan, which is among the worst possible options. We’re expanding renewables, but we’re also in the midst of one of the largest expansions of Oil and Gas development, and specifically pipelines and drilling on public lands, in the history of the country, if not the largest overall.
We could build a hundred trillion dollars worth of renewable energy, but it literally does nothing but put MORE carbon into the atmosphere via production unless we couple it with drawing down fossil fuel usage.
it literally does nothing but put MORE carbon into the atmosphere via production unless we couple it with drawing down fossil fuel usage.
You are completely incorrect.
This study, among others, not only confirms a reduction in emissions, but estimates more than 40% of a reduction by 2035 based on 2005 numbers.
When I was in college, my goal was to work for a green energy company. I didn’t think that was realistic for a chemical engineer for at least 15 years at best. And now, about 5 years after graduating? I’m working for a company that generates green energy and is also decarbonizing other industries.
I know doomposting has its place, but it should at least be factual.
And how does that jive with record numbers of new oil and gas development leases? Do you not think those will raise emissions? Why are we putting trillions into new fossil fuel pipelines and production if we’re lowering our emissions? Not to mention that our emissions did not fall 2 OR 4% last year, they went UP 1.4%.
The IRA wasn’t passed until more than halfway through the year. I’m not surprised that our emissions didn’t fall, given the bill wasn’t even 6 months old, and all government actions are lagging – i.e, the effects of a given bill aren’t seen immediately, but in the future. This should be a readily apparent observation.
In addition, there’s two other factors you aren’t accounting for here. It’s possible for emissions to go positive for a few years and we still end up with a 40% reduction in 2035. Because of the lagging nature I mentioned, I’d actually expect this to be the case. Development and construction of renewable energy facilities will lead to net increases in emissions at first, but once they power on, they’ll cut our emissions significantly.
Second, it is possible to have increases in emissions from oil and gas and still have an overall reduction in emissions. With oil and gas increasing emissions, we need to more deeply cut emissions somewhere else. If new oil and gas plants add +10% emissions, but renewable energy reduces our total emissions by 30%, we’re still -20% overall.
I have a problem with your final but of analysis there.
If fossil fuels raise our emissions 10%, they’ve raised our emissions 10%. Renewables don’t lower our emissions, they just don’t raise them anymore. If instead of building new O&G infrastructure we were decommissioning facilities, then the added energy output from renewables could be used to replace O&G, which would bring down our emissions not because we built renewable, but because we lessened O&G. However, building more infrastructure will lead to increased emissions, regardless of the amount of renewable infrastructure we build.
I’ll wait and see if your lagging indicator works out, but in the meantime, all available data shows our emissions have risen so far this year, likely due to a combination of said increased infrastructure, and severe heat waves prompting increased use of AC.
Yeah the heat wave isn’t doing us any favors at all, except possibly making it undeniable that climate change is here and action needs to be taken. Even Republicans now are proposing a solution. It starts and ends with planning trees, but baby steps I guess.
You could very well be right that the projected emissions are incorrect and currently overestimate it. We just don’t know. I prefer to be an optimist and look for reasonable explanations for the claim to still be true while addressing the odd situation (here, the rise in emissions).
Regarding the oil and gas development itself, I have a theory. I think the idea may be to smoothen the transition by still maintaining plentiful and cheap energy as we bring renewables online. Up front then we’d have higher emissions, but when possible without raising energy price, we’d phase it out. From the perspective of governing the whole country, I can understand that philosophy.
I just hope my charitable interpretation is correct and not being overly generous.
That study is talking about the US, it’s not talking about the world. If the US has done all of this work, and yet climate change is STILL happening and we’re dealing with it right now then the US is not the problem.
But why isn’t it working? Because China is the biggest polluter
https://world101.cfr.org/global-era-issues/climate-change/who-releases-most-greenhouse-gases
The point being, if you think we’re not doing enough now, you should’ve seen how little the DNC was going to do before the left of the party started making a big stink.
Thus why it is inherently impossible for us to make meaningful enough changes to prevent the absolutely worst case scenario under our current systems of governance, which afford far too much power to individuals to diverge from the desires of their constituency with no meaningful avenues for redressing grievance or punishing politicians who refuse the will of their constituency.
If your only solution is to vote in more left democrats, millions of people will suffer and die from climate related catastrophe, and we will not likely leave a habitable planet to our grandchildren.
You * scratches arm * got anymore of that truth?
Thank you. And great name.
I read the article twice, chief.
“The left has won a lot more than “nothing” from engaging with the Democratic Party.”
“The left” in this instance is talking about actual leftists, and I would love anyone to point to me where the Democrats have done ANYTHING that LEFTISTS want. What have they done that fundamentally changes anything? What have they done that hasn’t been and won’t be stricken down by the courts? What have they done for labor organization?
Fuck the democrats.
I would love anyone to point to me where the Democrats have done ANYTHING that LEFTISTS want.
You should read the article then.
February 2023:
https://www.reuters.com/business/white-house-renews-pressure-railroads-over-paid-sick-leave-2023-02-09/“White House renews pressure on railroads over paid sick leave”
June 2023:
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid"After months of negotiations, the IBEW’s Railroad members at four of the largest U.S. freight carriers finally have what they’ve long sought but that many working people take for granted: paid sick days.
Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave.”
Cue leftists: “Yes our stated goals were achieved and objections overcome, but it didn’t arrived perfectly packaged with a bow on top looking like our ideal utopia, therefore all problems with progress are clearly the Democrats fault.”
Seriously, please stop. Progress is never going to occur in exactly the way you think it should. It’s still progress. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Crushing a labor strike so that Dems could negotiate better terms for the owners. Truly a win for the working class. You did it Libs!
Oh come on. Better terms for owners would have been doing absolutely nothing and leaving the rail workers with zero paid sick leave.
Public opinion is a reality whether you like it or not. An unpopular strike that disrupted regular people’s lives might sound like a great idea in your utopia, but here in the real world what it’s likely to accomplish is support for the suppression of strikes. You can’t FORCE class consciousness onto people. You can try, but it’s not going to work.
The union itself is reporting this as a win. How is that not enough for you?
No, that would be the BEST terms for the owners. That wasn’t an option, because that could potentially lead to people in the streets. They made minor concessions to placate the workers and so Dems could say they did something.
Are you seriously saying that the union never would have gotten more than this if the strike hadn’t been crushed? This is as good as it get for the workers, right? The Dems stepping in was of zero benefit to the workers.
As far as the Union saying it’s a win….what the fuck else were they going to say? They had no cards left to play when the strike was crushed. The leaders were basically forced to accept this and say thank you. That’s how shit works under capitalism.
Uh…they could say “this is not what we wanted, this is bullshit, but we’ll take it if we have to” because there’s utterly not one thing stopping them from saying that.
Do you not understand that the initial demands from the union were MORE than they actually wanted to get in the end? Because that’s how negotiations work. What everybody is demanding in the opening round is not what anyone actually expects to get in the end.
The union itself reporting this as a win tells me that this is where they were hoping to end up, or very close to it
Democrats: “Better than nothing” ™
Yes. That’s how politics work in actual reality.
4 sick days, and the ability to sacrifice earned vacation days for 3 more. You really think they would have had to settle for that if they were allowed to strike? It’s not even close to what they asked for, and they had significantly more leverage than the company until the Biden admin stepped in and defanged the union entirely.
Prove it then. You’re moving the goalposts here, so explain why you’re so sure that they can be moved. What evidence is there that the rail companies, who were refusing to give any sick days, would have capitulated to more than what they’ve agreed to now?
For that matter, I’m not convinced that the public would overall support the striking workers. If towns lost electricity, heating, and/or clean drinking water because of delays caused by the strike, I couldn’t see them standing behind the workers. Even though of course the rail companies are to blame.
Which would a rail company rather do, lose hundreds of millions of dollars a week? Or, negotiate with the union? Why does the public need to support the strike? The public didn’t support the strikes in the 1890s-1930s that won the 40 hour week, overtime, minimum wage, and various other labor benefits. They were too busy being propagandized by the complicit media of their day.
If that logic worked, every strike would instantly win because the company loses out on millions of dollars. Writers have been striking for quite a while now and you don’t see any capitulation. Just losing money isn’t enough.
And this is why the public opinion matters. If the company thinks they can wait out the strike, they’re going to choose that. In that time period, public opinion can either strengthen or weaken their position.
This isn’t the 1890s-1930s. The head of the factory isn’t onsite when the workers decide to go on strike. The head of the factory isn’t unfathomably richer than the workers. Income inequality has escalated to the point that owners aren’t going to feel the hit of a strike immediately. The rich CEOs can afford to wait without their lives being affected. It’s cheaper for them to work towards the end of an unsuccessful strike than to capitulate.
Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I think the solution is actually nationalizing industries, at least partially. Rail service has become too crucial to our way of life to let a private business handle it. We’re seeing how they abuse their position to neglect workers and enrich themselves.
This article is about progressives changing the Democratic parties objectives/policies and does give examples.
Between 2009 and 2020, many left-wing Democrats agitated for their party to embrace a “full employment” macroeconomic policy. AOC was among them. Then, when the COVID crisis hit, Democrats did as these progressives advised.
…
In 2020, congressional Democrats insisted on increasing unemployment benefits to a level that left many laid-off workers with more income than they’d previously earned at their jobs. Under Biden, meanwhile, Democrats enacted a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill on a party-line vote. The party’s decision to pursue stimulus on this scale — after Congress had already appropriated trillions of dollars in relief spending — was explicitly motivated by the left’s critique of Obama. As New York Times reported in 2021:
…
Since Occupy Wall Street, the American left has made student debt forgiveness one of its core policy demands. The Biden administration has taken extraordinary measures to answer that call. The president has successfully canceled a record $116.6 billion in forgiveness for 3.4 million borrowers. He has also attempted to unilaterally cancel at least $10,000 of student debt for virtually every U.S. borrower.
TLDR; The Democratic party is becoming more progressive despite some people on the left thinking it’s not happening fast enough is a betrayal of progressive ideals.
“The left has won a lot more than “nothing” from engaging with the Democratic Party.”
That’s straight from the article. Progressives are democrats. Leftists are not democrats and don’t work with liberals.
Leftists are not democrats and don’t work with liberals.
This is false.
Well, using your terminology, progressives have sure gotten a hell of a lot more left wing policy implemented than leftists, so…
Could that be because the left has been suppressed for the last 100 years and their leaders were jailed or killed by the state? And now here come the pro-corporation pro-war liberals telling us how left they are.
How do you intend to come back from those 100 years if you just insult and attack your closest left wing allies?
Edit: Okay Lemmy’s working again, it cut me off earlier.
I think strikes are ineffective and we need nationalization of some industries instead. I’m no bootlicker. I’m just someone who likes to see and get results. By constantly eschewing your natural allies and rejecting them with purity tests, all you’ve done is extend 10 years since Eugene Debs was imprisoned to 100 years since. And all the while, left wing ideas have been implemented by others.
The others may not be left enough to your taste, nor the policies adequately left enough, but if we’re measuring actual progress, they’ve done more for left wing causes. There may be good reasons why, but it doesn’t change that fact.
Working solo has not been remotely successful for leftists at all. Unless they want to make it 150 years where they’ve done nothing, they need to work with allies.
Liberals are not and have never been allied with leftists. In what world are you living? They’re fundamentally opposed to one another. You should read some books. Books written by leftists, not liberals.
I was moreso thinking progressives and leftists. At the end of the day, a US liberal is still much closer politically to a leftist than they are to a US conservative. That’s doubly true for the leftist.
The leftist wing isn’t strong politically in the US. They’ve gone down their path on their own, and it hasn’t been successful. I’m a progressive, and I’d like to see an alliance that strengthens the left and progressives and mainstream Democrats. We’re natural cousins compared to what Republicans have become. We’ll do a lot better sticking together, and if we do, there’s the possibility we diminish Republicans enough that we could split ourselves, and have the two major parties be Democrats/Progressives and Progressives/Leftists. This is the path that gets the most left wing policies implemented.
Jesus I couldn’t even finish the article. It was a long winded “but the Democrats are good actually!” Sheepdog bullshit piece.
How is it a pro-Dem puff piece when the first half of the article describes the arguments against progressive headliners like AOC?
It then goes into great detail examining those claims, and provides, as @hypelightfly notes, significant specifics on how those progressives created real policy shifts that directly benefited Americans in a time of crisis.
This is intelligent, in-depth, nuanced opinion piece with well sourced reporting. Either you’re too trapped in your bubble to acknowledge that, or you haven’t learnt how to read and critically think at the same time.
Just as subservience breeds subjugation, so choosing between differing forms of exploitation can only result in continued exploitation. Being asked to choose between capitalism and fascism does not change the direction we are travelling in, it only marginally changes the route we are taking to get there.
subservience breeds subjugation
I like that phrasing, goes well with ‘civility breeds cowardice’.
Can I ask where that quote is from? Or is it your own?
My own, used often in the same context you use yours.
Civility breeds cowardice, when will people learn that their civility has been abused by those with hands on their throats and their wallets.
You have a gift for metaphorical speech 🎤
Excepting the punctuation. 😅
She’s the Obama of millennials, and will probably achieve the same political success. (Once the boomers preventing her ascension all die off.)
…Don’t.
…Don’t give me hope.
👍
It’s not the generation, it’s capitalism.
Isn’t that just the progressive left? As far as I know we don’t worship figureheads like the fascist right with their orange demigod.
America’s “left” is pretty middle of the road if you compare the US to other first world nations.
Things like free affordable / free university education, universal healthcare, consumer protection, and decent unemployment insurance are not controversial elsewhere. But in this US the right wing claims these boring ass ideas, that the rest of the modern world has embraced, are radical.
If left wing idea were hot sauces, the GOP would think mayo was the Last Dab on Hot Ones.
You can still respect and admire a figurehead without worshipping them. The difference is whether you bend definitions and rules to make exceptions of them when they deviate from expectations.
I mean, the article linked is an AOC apologist quite literally bending “definitions and rules to make exceptions” for her after another columnist said she was “just a regular old Democrat now.”
Branding the progressive left the “AOC Left” is also problematic and indicative of some hero worship on the author’s part.
Naming a movement after a figurehead is not worship, it’s just descriptive.
It absolutely is hero worship any time someone is put on a pedestal and their flaws are ignored.
That’s what the author of the linked article has explicitly done. He waves away the fact that she consistently defers to Democratic Party leadership—except for occasional, “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion” that she’s a hard-line leftist—and then holds her up as the face of progressivism.
If that’s not hero worship idk what is.
Edit: spelling
You are treating “differs from leadership” as if it is indisputably a flaw, and assuming that a person having a flaw means we should discount their achievements. Those oversights are just as fallacious as the supposed hero-worship you are accusing others of doing.
You’re misunderstanding (probably because I misspelled “defers” as “differs”).
I’m saying she, as a proclaimed “progressive,” generally isn’t that progressive at all and generally defers to centrist, Democratic Party leaders: she does what they say rather than sticking to her ostensibly much more leftist guns.
Ah I see. I’ll gladly take that over someone incapable of compromise.
Nope, worship people claiming being other sex and making people to call them by a gender they are not. :)
You seem to be confused.
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.
Vote for Excuses/Distractions- 2024. “Make America the Same Again.”
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.
AOC is just another fucking populist. I do not understand how people fall for this shit over and over and over again.
Populist:
a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. “he ran as a populist on an anticorruption platform”
I one hundred percent agree that AOC is a politician who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
The critical difference between AOC and all of the right wing populists, is that she is concerned about people, and the preservation and expansion of human rights.
Right wing populists fire up their base by singling out minorities, and others that wield little to no social or political currency, and picking on them. Besides being morally repugnant at face value, the rhetoric and actual right wing policy never deliver tangible quality of life improvements to their base.
oh my god this is rhe dumbest thought ever. i hear this from “libertarian”(see:morons) side of America all the time and i just have to ask… how the fuck do you come to this conclusion??
because she works to get voters? her policy goals and platform are clear, she represents extremely vocal voting blocks of liberals.
how is any of that a populist?? because she’s trying to get voters? you don’t know what a populist is
Anyone under 40 in American politics is an automatic beloved novelty.
