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.
Comparing the Tea party and the GOP in 2010 to the Squad and the Democrats in 2020 is one of the flat-out stupidest comparisons one can make. It’s completely ahistorical, not to mention completely at odds with a class analysis of politics. It’s a radlib, left-punching position. Let’s look at why.
The Tea Party agreed with all of the establishment GOP’s goals. They didn’t have to “convince” the GOP that repealing Obamacare was good, the GOP already wanted to do that. The Democratic establishment is actively fighting against Medicare for All and the Squad. There is an enormous difference between convincing people who agree with you to play hardball and fighting an establishment that fundamentally is not on your side.
The bizarre line in the sand of forcing a Medicare for All vote makes no sense and the on-the-ground organizers for Medicare for All are not the ones pushing for it. This is nothing like choosing “cautious” tactics, it’s choosing tactics that actually get you closer to passing the bill. AOC is not saying “fuck off, I’m gonna do so much progress behind the scenes”. She said “Removing anti-M4A Democrats from key committees and guaranteeing floor votes on things that will win are more radical steps than forcing a vote on a losing issue”. A floor vote on Medicare for All does nothing. It doesn’t even reveal who the fake cosponsors are. Five dollars a floor vote on M4A will buy you a sandwich. A floor vote is, quite literally, a less radical step than what AOC is fighting for.
The Tea Party was literally funded by the Kochs. The Squad is, uh, not. The Squad challenges capital (if they didn’t, why does capital fund their opponents?). The Tea Party, uh, did not.
The Squad does not decline to fight the party establishment. AOC literally fucking primaried the House leadership, called for Pelosi/Hoyer/Clyburn/Schumer to lose their leadership positions, and secured a promise from Pelosi to resign in two years. They are literally funding operations to primary other Democrats in the House and Senate. This idea that the Squad are Pelosi puppets/AOC has been “captured” requires a selective reading of their public statements not too different from your average QAnon truther.
People mistakenly compare the Tea Party forcing floor votes on repealing Obamacare to the Squad forcing a vote on Medicare for All. First of all, the Tea Party’s floor votes won because the GOP already supported everything the Tea Party wanted. Second, they won those floor votes. They didn’t fight losing battles, they fought winning battles because fighting losing battles is for losers. Also, when the Tea Party finally got power, they literally lost the repeal Obamacare fight.
If you want to dunk on AOC dunk on her for the NYPD photo op or the Tara Reade stuff. This is a stupid fight that only the most terminally online are fighting.
The Tea Party agreed with all of the establishment GOP’s goals. They didn’t have to “convince” the GOP that repealing Obamacare was good, the GOP already wanted to do that.
Worth noting that Romney-cum-Obamacare was the conservative answer to Hillarycare which was itself a neoliberal answer to a National Health System (or, at least, Universal Medicare).
The Tea Party wasn’t on board with the GOP in practice. It was a group that faithfully adopted the tenants of GOP rhetoric in a way that GOP leadership wasn’t really in favor of. We saw this in 2017 when Obamacare repeal failed in large part thanks to the 2008 standard bearer of the party, John McCain, throwing himself to the wolves.
There is legitimate conflict within the Big Tent of the GOP.
The Squad does not decline to fight the party establishment.
I think people put far too much faith in four freshman House Reps. They’re ignoring that Tea Party congresscritters have nine times that number in the Freedom Caucus, and lack the benefit of the Hastert Rule to strong-arm party leadership.
The only reason AOC isn’t completely ignored comes from her high media profile and prodigious fundraising talents. Ilhan Omar was outright censured by her own party. And Rashida Talib has suffered similar disrespect. This isn’t the sign of House Reps who aren’t fighting, it’s a sign of House Reps who are losing that fight.
And the Radlibs on this site - particularly the Dore-pilled variety - aren’t interested in the ideology or the strategy of operating as an insurgent House movement. They’re far more interested in taking glorious Last Stands, losing, then insisting electoralism was never going to work.
Yeah there’s valid critiques of AOC if you think her job should be propagandizing for socialism (even then I think she’s doing an okay job), but the m4a vote shit being used as saying the entire DSA is not radical is ridiculous. TBH from Ames’ past writing I’m not surprised though he’s always kinda been like this.
AOC literally fucking primaried the House leadership, called for Pelosi/Hoyer/Clyburn/Schumer to lose their leadership positions, and secured a promise from Pelosi to resign in two years
This is a lie. She fell inline and moderates got that concession.
Okay looking it up and I think we’re both wrong. Pelosi made that deal with the moderates but it was before AOC (or any of the Squad) took office.
Comparing the Tea party and the GOP in 2010 to the Squad and the Democrats in 2020 is one of the flat-out stupidest comparisons one can make. The Tea Party agreed with all of the establishment GOP’s goals.
The short version is that Republicans reflect nazis
while Democrats don’t reflect leftists
More generally, the left’s goals are totally different from the right’s.
Even more generally, its because the US is 65% white, but only 10% of any particular POC group.
So the right has to do only one good thing. While the left has to do 20 good things.
And of course white people already own all the money, so white racism is aligned with capital
The Tea Party agreed with all of the establishment GOP’s goals. They didn’t have to “convince” the GOP that repealing Obamacare was good, the GOP already wanted to do that. The Democratic establishment is actively fighting against Medicare for All and the Squad. There is an enormous difference between convincing people who agree with you to play hardball and fighting an establishment that fundamentally is not on your side.
You left out the part where the GOP were smart enough to realize that the Tea Party movement was their best shot at getting back into power after the awful 2006 and 2008 outings for them.
The difference is, the GOP accepted the Tea Party. Go back to Occupy Wall Street in Obama’s first term. The Democrats absolutely refused to accept those people and just demanded they shut up and go home so business could resume as usual (nothing bothers neoliberals more than activists disrupting business). You see the same thing with the first wave of Black Lives Matter protesters and the Ferguson uprising. They tried to label BLM a Russian psyop early on and Obama referred to the Baltimore protesters as ‘thugs’. It’s happening again with them reacting so hostilely towards ‘Defund The Police’.
The Democratic party does not like the squad. They more than anything, wish they could get rid of them. That party has historically always been against change. They have always had to be dragged, kicking and screaming the entire time.
The GOP are much smarter cause they understand power. While the Dem establishment focuses entirely on culture and worries about stupid shit like getting Girl Boss Kamala on the cover of Vanity Fair, you have McConnell and Republicans on the other side who have their eyes on the prize with the courts and gerrymandering. Republicans won nearly every race this year where re-districting was on the map. Trump landed them 3 SCOTUS justices and was able to radically change the federal courts in just 4 years. To them, that’s a successful presidency.
Something else you got wrong - the Tea Party were against the GOP establishment from day one and they were 100% against bipartisanship and working with Obama. Why do you think liberals suddenly fell in love with moderate/centrist Republicans and the old neocons? Their favorite Republicans like McCain and Romney just barely survived the onslaught of the Tea Party in 2010 and 2012. The GOP running Romney in 2012 was the worst decision they made with how unpopular Obama was, cause most of the base was done with the old neocons and wanted something new and crazier. Trump really is not a fluke. He was the endgame result of the Tea Party. They lacked a leader in the previous years but he arose. The Tea Party was meant to not work with Democrats and bully them, which they successfully did as Obama was a weak president and constantly caved to them.
The Squad does not decline to fight the party establishment. AOC literally fucking primaried the House leadership, called for Pelosi/Hoyer/Clyburn/Schumer to lose their leadership positions, and secured a promise from Pelosi to resign in two years. They are literally funding operations to primary other Democrats in the House and Senate. This idea that the Squad are Pelosi puppets/AOC has been “captured” requires a selective reading of their public statements not too different from your average QAnon truther.
You seriously believe this shit? They aren’t doing any of that. They are DemSocs, and when it comes to push and shove, they move with the party leadership and blame Republicans. That’s what they do.
You keep comparing this to the Tea Party and talking about how well funded they are but again - THE GOP ACCEPTED THE TEA PARTY. They realized pretty quickly that they needed to shift their party even further towards extremism and the era of the neocon was coming to an end. The Democratic party absolutely does not see this, cause they would rather become what the GOP was 10 years ago. That party has to be dragged, kicking and screaming to do anything. It’s why they are a graveyard of social movements.
This idea that the Squad are Pelosi puppets/AOC has been “captured” requires a selective reading of their public statements not too different from your average QAnon truther.
QAnon people believe there is some “deep state” as to why Trump could never accomplish their goals. You’re pretty much arguing without basis that the Squad are some how challenging a deep state of Democrats, when they absolutely are not.
