I think AOC and her colleagues missed an opportunity
yesterday during their joint press conference, an opportunity to expand their
real institutional influence beyond what their very small numbers have gained
them. They could have started with a
full-throated endorsement of Nancy Pelosi, saying that their policy differences
pale into insignificance beside the vicious racism of Trump. This would have put Pelosi in their debt, and
Pelosi, who is a superb institutional player, would know that and would reward
them with committee assignments or other forms of genuine political power that,
over the long haul, would increase their real importance. It would have been a sophisticated move of
which AOC is, I believe, quite capable.
Oh well.
35 comments:
I don't think that Pelosi is likely to do any favors for AOC and other radical congresswomen, even if they say nice things about her.
There is a struggle over who controls the Democratic Party. Pelosi and AOC are not on the same side and both are smart enough to know that.
Amen, SW.
The gang of four got pretty good committee assignments. A.O.C. is Committee assignments are as follows: Energy and Commerce; Science, Space, and Technology; Education and Labor; Transportation and Infrastructure; Agriculture; Natural Resources; Foreign Affairs; Financial Services; Judiciary; Ways and Means; Oversight and Reform.
Ways and Means is arguably the most important committee in the House, and many of the other assignments are plum jobs. I think what matters the most now is how well they do in committee hearings and if they can get their proposed legislation passed.
Also amen SW. Pelosi needs to find herself in the trashcan of history sooner than later. Siding with Trump against progressives is proof she's not worth working with, Professor Wolff.
Wallerstein, Jacobin is defending your point of view:
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/07/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-aoc-nancy-pelosi-democratic-party
I’m left on policy and pragmatic on politics. The name of the game in politics is to win; if you can’t win, your policy views are irrelevant. If you can’t get 218 other House members to vote for your bill, you can’t it passed. I wish AOC and the other three members of the Squad were more pragmatic because I’d like to see them get something done. The way they’re going, they’ll get nothing done. And the first thing that needs to be done is to defeat Trump.
Maureen Dowd said it well in Sunday’s NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/13/opinion/sunday/scaling-wokeback-mountain.html
Here’s Dowd’s concluding paragraph:
“In the age of Trump, there is no more stupid proposition than that Nancy Pelosi is the problem. If A.O.C. and her Pygmalions and acolytes decide that burning down the House is more important than deposing Trump, they will be left with a racist backward president and the emotional satisfaction of their own purity.”
Fortunately, Trump’s racist and xenophobic tantrum on Sunday morning buried the Squad v. Pelosi fight
As usual, DP comes in with his standard gate keeper liberalism, implying that progressive change is about as impossible as making my chair levitate or my hind quarters sprout wings.
Let's be clear DP, 'the name of the game...is to win', is pure nihilism! Winning for the sake of winning is purely a power move, which makes sense, since you seem attracted to democratic party power, not progressive change or policy change (regardless of party dominance). We know what happens when you use pragmatics to win, you get Obama, or Bill Clinton (or Hillary had she had a term), in which it's not at all clear policy is going to be center left, let alone progressive. It could be pure right wing compromise (e.g., the affordable care act being a heritage foundation and Bob Dole piece of policy). Sure, it's technically 'winning 'pragmatically', but it's not a win for the left in terms of policy. So your political worldview is in direct contradiction to your supposed claims about your policy preferences. [Or hell, just look at the droves of flack Biden is getting for decades of 'pragmatic 'compromising to 'win both power and legislation]. The left needs some principles upon which it will never waiver, otherwise its pure nihilism.
Moreover, we could just take the article I just linked and see how pragmatic democratic compromise to win literally moved us to the right:
"Consider the political backdrop to the current war of words. Pelosi’s “four votes” comment was in reference to a border funding package that Ocasio-Cortez and the squad all voted against, arguing it would provide financing for immigration enforcement more than it would address the humanitarian needs of migrants. The final version of the bill passed by Pelosi included even less aid for migrants than the previous House version, with the few measly concessions secured by the Speaker including a promise from Vice President Mike Pence “that members would be notified within 24 hours of the death of a child in U.S. custody.”
Contrast that dystopian compromise with the stated policy goals of Ocasio-Cortez when it comes to immigration: Repealing laws that criminalize entering the United States without proper documentation, massively increasing US aid to Central America, abolishing ICE — the brutal arm of the US deportation regime that she says “systematically and repeatedly violates human rights” — and even dissolving the Department of Homeland Security, an agency that has been sacrosanct to both the Republican and Democratic parties since its creation after September 11."
-----------------
DP, Trump's racism towards to AOC and the Squad is part and parcel of the criticism the squad is receiving by Pelosi too. The establishment in toto is trying to stop the progressive wave that is percolating across the country: I.e., you're trying to change things too fast too soon, get in your place! Another pragmatic, winning victory for Pelosi, that only emboldens right wing policy.
p.s. I have linked these articles on this blog a half dozen times whenever Pelosi's name comes in for undeserved praise. This is a pure example of pragmatic winning compromise lurching the country drastically towards the right and a big brother state. I ask all of you who believe Pelosi is worth working with to address these articles and her roles in creating a big brother state:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/25/how-nancy-pelosi-saved-the-nsa-surveillance-program/
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/11/nsa-pelosi-democrats-spy-american-section-702/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nancy-pelosi-saves-the-nsa-surveillance-program-again
Chris,
Pelosi’s decision on the border funding package may well have been the wrong one, but that doesn’t make her a racist in a same class with the segregationist Southern Democrats of yore. It was a tough decision--all compromises are, and virtually every law that is enacted by Congress is the result of compromise. Pelosi’s choice was between accepting the Senate version and getting some immediate relief at the border, or rejecting it, going to conference, and hoping to get more out of McConnell. She apparently decided that the chances of getting anything more out of the Senate were slim at best, and with considerable delay. She may have been wrong in her political prognostications, but I doubt it. In any event, I’m glad that choice was hers to make and not mine.
DP,
Your response is all trees, no forest. You're so lost in the minutiae of daily politics and strategy that your ability to step outside of that prism, even for a moment, seems impossible.
Here's something that separates the squad, aoc, Bernie, and I would suggest myself and many other lefties, from your pragmatic world view of winning. Some moral stances cannot be compromised on. Here's one: enslaving people is never okay, period. No amount of compromise, haggling, or bill bloating, would ever let some of us okay slavery, be it momentary or enduring. There is no victory, if slavery is part of the compromise. I hope you agree to that. If you don't, you really are a power hungry nihilist.
If you do agree, can we not tack on other moral principles that ought not to be compromised? How about, siding with mentally deranged, racist, sexist, sexually assaulting, unstable, illiterate, power hungry, and absolutely powerful, world leaders [I'm obviously speaking of Trump], against progressive reformers?
Frankly, Sanders new 'no middle ground' strategy highlights the point I'm trying to make. Some issues are not worth compromising over, so long as you're not a power hungry nihilist. Do you agree? Or are you power hungry?
Chris,
I’m not arguing that moral principles should be compromised. We agree that slavery is immoral and should never be compromised. But Pelosi wasn’t faced with a moral decision--she was faced with a tactical one. Accept less now, or try for more at the cost of at least significant delay and possibly no gain. If that were the result, the people at the border would be worse off than they are as a result of Pelosi’s decision.
Legislation is not the forest; it’s the trees.
Above all, let AOC be herself. She's the most refreshing voice to appear in the U.S. Congress in my lifetime (73 years) and making her play the part of a Pelosian girl scout would be a crime against truth and beauty like obliging Woody Guthrie to sing like Bing Crosby.
"Pelosi wasn’t faced with a moral decision--she was faced with a tactical one."
Uhm, what!? You need to rethink that sentence. Think about how absurd that sounds in basically any other context:
"Stalin wasn’t faced with a moral decision--he was faced with a tactical one."
"Jefferson Davis wasn’t faced with a moral decision--he was faced with a tactical one."
"Rosa Parks wasn’t faced with a moral decision--she was faced with a tactical one."
My very point was that: "Legislation is not the forest; it’s the trees." You're too focused on the strategies of democrats winning power and passing legislation, than you are the forest - meaning the political, economic, and moral landscape - they are (re)producing and creating. Your response to my entire point about your political nihilism was to totally dodge the question and discuss the minutiae of ONE PARTICULAR BILL AND PELOSI'S STRATEGY ABOUT THAT ONE BIT OF LEGISLATION. Hence, you're caught in the trees, not the forest. And you're so caught in it, you can't even see that how one navigates the forest is itself a MORAL enterprise. hence your total nihilism.
Hahahaha, beautiful Wallerstein!
Chris,
Might I suggest that anyone who can seriously cite Maureen Dowd--and at her egregious worst, I might add--is perhaps not someone to take too seriously in matters of politics? (I know, I know, you're engaging for the sake of making your excellent larger points, but still, a favorable citing of such an absurd article deserves special mention.)
And can we--PUHLEASE--be spared the usual sermon that "we're all on the same side." No, we're not: progressives and democratic socialists are decidedly not on the same side as centrist Dems like DP. The absurd view that there are "two sides"--i.e., the crazy right-wing and the rest--is precisely part of the problem. There are *three* main positions in American politics: (a) the center-right business party; (b) the center-left business party; and (c) the left--or at least there have been since the New Deal. From the 1950s to 1970s, this basically held steady. From the 1980s on, the left was basically submerged, while the right steadily took over the center. In the last decade we have seen (a) the results of the center's capitulation to the right; and (b) the re-emergence of a real left.
Those of us on the left are NOT interested in being told to forget all this.
Let me also add: it's a red herring to defend Pelosi against the charge that she is a racist. Chris never said or even faintly suggested she was. And more to the point, it's simply irrelevant to the issues at hand, which are about the program represented by her track record and ongoing decisions, which all point virtually unambiguously in one direction: centrist Dem business as usual--i.e., center-right on foreign policy, neoliberal on domestic socio-economic policy, socially liberal on cultural issues and, above all, "don't rock the boat" establishment politics.
Haha, Talha, to be honest, I've never read a single Dowd piece. I haven't read a single essay in the NYTimes op-ed in a decade, except for Michelle Alexander's first piece. I pro-actively try to prevent the establishment thinking for me, or informing my decisions, or shaping my consciousness, so I avoid op-ed sections like the plague.
And you're absolutely correct, we are not all on the same side. I've stated numerous times that DP is not on my side, and to be honest, as I believe I've stated elsewhere, Gary goofball Johnson is more on my side than Pelosi or DP. That's not to say he's literally on my side - I hate capitalism too much - but if I had to be ruled by GJ or NP, I'm taking GJ every time... at least he wants to end the big brother state, instead of embolden it like Pelosi (Something I see DP still hasn't gotten around to addressing).
s wallerstein,
If we mean the same thing by "AOC being herself" then we're on the same page. I'm pretty much with her on everything I've heard about her regarding policy. She's also good in dealing with the trees. I've seen several videos of her on the internet asking questions at hearings, and she was incredibly good. When the cameras are running at hearings, most members take their 5 minutes of fame giving speeches, denouncing the witness or somebody else, and you wonder if there's ever going to a question. AOC has come with a point she wants to nail down, and with well thought-out questions she leads a witness (usually hostile) to exactly where she wants him. She's good. She's smart. But if "being herself" means publicly likening someone like Pelosi to a Southern Democrat, then I'm not with you. That does nothing to help the Democrats defeat Trump. To the contrary, it damages the effort.
" if "being herself" means publicly likening someone like Pelosi to a Southern Democrat," <-- No one has done this
"That does nothing to help the Democrats defeat Trump. To the contrary, it damages the effort." <-- so back to nihilism and power.
Chris,
Some basic facts about our government seem to elude you. It was deliberately designed to prevent abrupt changes in law and policy. It is a republic, not a democracy. Look that distinction up and ponder why the framers of the constitution made that decision.
In any event, if you want to implement a progressive agenda you have to engage in that nihilistic activity of winning. I'll wager I am one of the few experts on 19th and 20th century political and social theory (who had the great fortune to study with Dr. Wolff) who has also worked professionally on, and managed political campaigns. If you want to get to the point that a progressive agenda can be passed then you have to elect enough people to pass it in both houses. To get to that point, you have to elect lots of folks in lower rung elections. So get used to nihilism, and get used to winning. Or, get used to being a polemicist railing about the ineffectiveness of the left in this country. There has been enough of that in my lifetime, I don't want to hear any more of it.
Mr Palmeter is not lost in minutia, unless you think the processes of government can be dismissed so cavalierly. Nor is he morally deficient as you seem to want to assert. You should know that Sen. Sanders started off his political career by winning a mayoral election in Burlington, VT by a razor thin margin. As a mayor, he was very pragmatic, and decidedly not the ideologue. He has won every election since. Why, he is effective. He utilizes the system to his advantage, and he knows and exploits the governmental minutia you disdain very effectively for his constituents and for the nation.
If you want to have any effect in the political world, you must be both principled and pragmatic. That is a balance, I humbly suggest, you need to work on.
[Have to make two posts]
Ugh. This is a daunting task I'm not sure I have the patience or time for.
CJM, those facts don't elude me for a second, and to be perfectly blunt, to assume I don't know that we live in a republic, or have some basic knowledge of the American revolution, or that our government has a set of checks and balances, is to assume I'm a fucking idiot, and to assume I'm a fucking idiot, is not the point at which I want to begin talking to you. Does that make sense?
Now there's a distinction between recognizing a fact as a social fact, and understanding that social facts can change, and recognizing a social fact as a 'natural fact', and assuming we are perennially bound to work within a once social, now natural, framework. The latter is where fetishist and ideological dupes, find themselves. That the present political-economic structure has a set of rule does not mean those rules must be played by, otherwise we might as well return to ancient slavery and cease to demand an alternative. Okay, so I hope that addresses your condescending and red-herring first paragraph. (I do have a poli-sci degree, and almost done with my philosophy doctorate btw, so I don't need your school house rock explanations about how a bill becomes a law).
Your second paragraph is a massive maligning of my view. Winning is not necessarily nihilistic, but when one wins for the sake of winning, or wins for the sake of power, it is. I made that point lucidly clear, several times over. But again, you assume I'm a fucking idiot, so you probably didn't bother to register my point. People on the left, AOC, the squad, myself, etc., want victories that engender progress, not just victories. And we will not win battles where progress is lost (like Pelosi will do regarding the NSA, or Obama will do regarding the Affordable Care Act, or Biden will do regarding busing, or every Democrat will do regarding military budgets and war). So clearly this is a totally false disjunct: "So get used to nihilism, and get used to winning. Or, get used to being a polemicist railing about the ineffectiveness of the left in this country." You need to re-read what I wrote instead of turning me into a daft strawman.
People like yourself, and DP, pigeonhole and force lefties like myself into an "ineffective" position, by instantly treating us as idealistic fucking idiots who don't understand how the establishment works, as soon as we advocate for serious reform, serious change, or possibly even revolution (your gate keeper liberals as I made clear in a previous post). The point you miss is that we understanding how your games, institutions, strategies, and establishment enterprises operate, and we reject them in principle, we want to sublimate them, or dismantle them (think Sanders idea of revolution, which is clearly a sublimating process that both understands the establishment and is seeking to reorganize it). Again, the difference is between people who recognize that a social fact can be changed by social action, and someone who is an ideological subject believing we've reached the institutional end of history. [Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's political and social philosophy, and since you're one of the few experts here, I better shut up, since I'm a mere fucking idiot.]
Your third paragraph is again, both wrong headed and treating me like a fucking idiot. Of course I know Sanders history, next to Talha I've been his most vocal advocate on this blog since 2015! Moreover, the reason your third paragraph is wrong headed is that DP's responses to my posts were also red herrings and question dodges, he never addressed any substantive points I made, and pro-actively dodged and ignored the links I put out regarding the RIGHTWARD shift my Pelosi's winning pragmatics. I pressed him to answer direct points regarding the nature of what constitutes a worthy win, versus a win not worth having, and he has been entirely reticent on that important question.
"If you want to have any effect in the political world, you must be both principled and pragmatic. That is a balance, I humbly suggest, you need to work on."
That's LITERALLY what I've been arguing in favor of this whole time. Thanks for talking down to me with my own ideas... Christ.
David Palmeter,
We're a whole, all of us. You can't amputate part of a person's personality without damaging that whole. With time people change and AOC is still young and who knows what she will be like in 30 years.
Anyway, I'd say that the parts of AOC's way of being that you don't like are related to the parts that you do like and that you can't do violence to one side of her without doing violence to the other side.
I'm an AOC fan. The first time in my life that I've been a fan of a U.S. congressperson. Does she ever make mistakes? Of course. We all do.
Still I'm very hesitant to do any violence to the wholeness of her personality. As I said above, to not let her be herself (which includes all sides of her) is like (new comparison) forcing Theodor Adorno to square dance.
I'm sensing a Catch 22 at play here. To be pragmatic, one must compromise. To compromise, one must be pragmatic. The assumption that Chris's proposals urge nothing other than abrupt change seems symptomatic of this dilemma.
Not a Catch-22, Dean, so much as coded nonsense. Whenever a centrist Dem counsels "be pragmatic" what it means is not "be realistic in trying to achieve your aims by recognizing and grappling with existing constraints or obstacles"--i.e., what any rational person who cares about consequences must be. Rather, it means "simply accept that you can only do whatever minutia is possible within the constraints of the present the status quo--which constraints must be accepted as natural facts" (precisely as Chris states).
This latter ideologically-coded "pragmatism"--better labeled "incrementalism" or "centrism"--is, of course, something that the Right has fully rejected for the last 40 odd years, much to their political benefit. But of course centrist Dems never learn--not because they're stupid, but because it's basically constitutive of their political position or program as the center-left business party, namely: to differentiate themselves in a two-party system with modest incremental differences from the Republicans--or even large ones, as on cultural issues--so long as such differences remain acceptable to one-half of capital.
There's no issue here Dean. There's a difference between a compromise that ensures or emboldens a moral principle (medicare for all over cuba's healthcare model, the voting rights act, the new deal), and one that doesn't (Pelosi and the NSA, or nearly all the Obama and Clinton presidencies).
Social Security is one of the lasting benefits of the New Deal, but today’s Social Security is not yesterday’s Social Security. When the program was started, in 1935, most women and African Americans were effectively excluded: women because they worked primarily in the home at that time, and spousal benefits were added only later; African Americans because both agricultural labor and domestic service were not covered, and this disproportionately affected them.
Roosevelt could not have gotten the program through without the votes of Southern Democrats (the Republicans all cried “socialism”!) and things like the exclusion of agricultural labor and domestic service were part of the price for their support. Those were the jobs of blacks in the South. Many desirable aspects of the program-e.g., disability payments, inflation adjustment-were added only later.
Social Security is a text book example of getting what you can when you can and then coming back and getting more. Sometimes it takes decades. Such is life in a modern liberal democratic society of hundreds of millions of people with widely divergent views.
Opinions differ as to the proximate cause of the vote outcome in 1935, e.g., https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v70n4/v70n4p49.html (I have not fully smell tested this account, but it seems well supported.)
Did Roosevelt's compromise implicate, pace Chris, moral principles (racism) or more ordinary motivations (administrative burdens)? If the latter, then Social Security is a bad example to support a claim that one sometimes has to compromise one's principles to effect incremental progress.
I don't understand why we need an example of "coming back and getting more." What does that have to do with this discussion? Nobody is arguing that the legislature should once and for all make the law, be done with it, and stop tinkering.
I am unable to discern a political strategy among the opponents of DP. If there is a strategy, what is the impact of adhering to it and of not adhering to it? Prof Wolff's statements in the past few blog posts appear to me to be sensible and correct.
As Dean accurately points out, another red herring from DP.
Dean,
I stand corrected. The exclusion of farm laborers and domestics is something that I've heard for years, and it made perfect sense to me. I saw no reason to question it. To the contrary, FDR was not particularly progressive on civil rights. He was very conscious of the fact that, for the most part, Southern Democrats controlled Congress, and he was not enthusiastic about many of Eleanor's pro-civil rights activities and proposals. The story about farm laborers and domestics fit very well in this scenario.
Chris,
I regret the tone of condescension in my comments. I don't regret the substance. Frankly, Talha is a better exponent of your case than you are. Your strength is more polemical attack dog style than clear exposition of ideas. I had to laugh reading your comment about Gary Johnson. He's a joke. The only people in New Mexico who have a positive opinion of him are the oil and mining folks. That's progressive politics for ya.
Happy to be Talha's bulldog.
I'm going to give this one to Talha and Chris. Both on the merits and because Dowd.
I'm coming to this late, for which I apologize, but (as much as I like AOC and the Squad) I think that the really interesting dynamic is playing out between Jayapal and Pelosi. Jayapal is progressive to the bone, and she is also a brilliant politician. I watch where she cooperates with Pelosi and where she pushes.
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