Considering that the Tea Party was a billion dollar astroturfing campaign by the Kochs and this AOC/sanders/omar/etc progressive movement (whatever we call it) is a fluke of popular resentment sneaking through the cracks of a sclerotic sheepdog institution, yes the Tea Party was more effective. It’s not about the individual personalities involved but rather why they’re there in the first place.
More directly, the Tea Party did nothing to challenge capital – quite the opposite. There’s no 1:1 comparison between a movement bowing to capital and a movement trying to challenge it.
The Tea Party became the Trump base, and the Trump base managed to kill the TPP and rapidly speed up the economic decoupling from China.
Obviously, this wasn’t a challenge to Capital in general. It was a challenge to neoliberal “globalist” bourgeoisie in favor of the national bourgeoisie.
However, Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal are not a challenge to Capital in general, either. There are factions of the bourgeoisie in support and opposed.
The decision of the DSA-affiliates to prioritize internal Democrat Party politics over popular politics contributes to their effectiveness.
Obviously, this wasn’t a challenge to Capital in general. It was a challenge to neoliberal “globalist” bourgeoisie in favor of the national bourgeoisie.
The neoliberal “globalist” bourgeoisie is “Capital” though. The “national bourgeoisie” are better described as the “lumpen bourgeoisie” or the “former bourgeoisie”. These people, the Trump base, used to have pretty substantial influence, but that went away after other industries were able to combat the falling rate of profit by taking advantage of labor arbitrage with the third world. There’s other factors at play, but the true Trump base are people who would have been bourgeoisie in 1929 or 1959, but fail to make the club today. Their power and influence has been rapidly declining, but the shyster property developer, the oil baron with a big cowboy hat, the guy with slicked back hair who owns 20 truck dealerships, etc. are all seared into the Leftist consciousness as “The Bad Guy” in a way that say, some startup CTO in a flannel shirt or some PR guy wearing J Crew slacks are not.
So yes, for the vast majority of the real leaders of society, shit like Trump is a problem for them because they still rely on offshoring/free trade extensively. They’re desperately looking for new avenues to replace this as the cost of labor goes up in the rest of the world (Industry 4.0 is the next big push to prop up TRoP), but for the current moment, they still need it. Why do you think that you saw every mainstream GOP politician distance themself from Trump/latch onto Biden basically to the extent that their political calculus allowed them to (i.e. somebody like Rick Snyder can outright endorse Biden because he’s out of office, someone like MA governor Charlie Baker can just stay quiet, someone like McConnell has to pretend to support Trump right up until the end)?
However, Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal are not a challenge to Capital in general, either.
Medicare for all is absolutely a threat to Capital for 2 reason. Firstly, it’s nationalizing a huge portion of the economy. Secondly, it massively increases Labor’s negotiating power. Every company on Earth outside of insurance and pharma would benefit from M4A because the taxes would be cheaper than employee premiums. They don’t support it because having the power of life and death is an excellent tool to lord over your workers.
More directly, the Tea Party did nothing to challenge capital
lmfao at the idea that the DSA actually challenges Capital. Do you honestly think that AOC is anti-Capitalism either? Even Omar is questionable. Her staunch anti-imperalist, anti-Israel attitudes are enough for her to be a “good one”, but do you think she’s actually against Capitalism?
Left out the part where the GOP accepted the Tea Party and were willing to allow them to run out the neocons of the establishment.
The DNC has done the absolute opposite of this. You can go back to Occupy Wall Street and the 2014 original BLM movement and see their animosity towards these people. The Democrats have historically had to be dragged, kicking and screaming the entire time to move left.
This is the difference between the parties. The Republican establishment is so much smarter, cause they keep their eyes set on prizes such as the courts, gerrymandering and having control of our surveillance state. More than anything, they pay attention to their voter base and will shift where the wind is blowing. The Dems are the complete opposite of this. They worry about culture bullshit and pushing identity politics while paying lip service to popular ideas and giving empty platitudes. But Biden is a bit of a game changer cause he don’t do any of those things, he’s pretty open about how conservative he is.
