(Thread) Before the whole #ForceTheVote spectacle disappears in the usual ways that these things do in the Eternal Sunshine of the Very Online Left, something it might be worth taking a beat to think about:

So much of the discourse about this has treated it as a debate between insidery incrementalism and something more outsidery and confrontational--I've seen a few people describe it as a challenge to "electoralism"--but that stops making sense if you think about it for 5 seconds.
I know that some sort of spark to grassroots action was allegedly on the other end of the parliamentary Rube Goldberg machine:
"play hardball" in bargaining about the leadership vote --> get a floor vote that would have been defeated in a landslide making voters take M4A less seriously than ever as a real world possibility --> supposedly somehow get ammunition for this for primary challenges
...but about the most generous thing you can say about that is that it's *extremely* speculative.
I'd go further and say it would likely have the opposite result and make it harder to primary centrists since they could turn around and say,
"Hey, why is my opponent still trying to make this about M4A, which is never going to happen--look at that 3-to-1 defeat in a Dem house--instead of moving forward and talking about incremental health care reforms that might really happen like my [insert centrist bullshit here]?"
But whatever. That debate has happened and happened and happened. So let's just move on and notice this:
The suggested tactic itself was the most insidery kind of parliamentary wonkery.

So why did so many people code it as some sort of outsidery confrontational challenge to electoralism?

There's exactly one reason:
The guy leading the charge had a rhetorical affect--constantly screaming, calling everyone who disagreed a sellout and a corporate shill who was probably getting money from NATO--*felt* like it would go along with an outsidery confrontational challenge to electoralism.
If we're actually going to win M4A ever, never mind roll back the power of capital in any more fundamental ways, we all need to stop just rolling with gut-level impressions like that and actually get used to thinking about this stuff.

More from Politics

All the challenges to Leader Pelosi are coming from her right, in an apparent effort to make the party even more conservative and bent toward corporate interests.

Hard pass. So long as Leader Pelosi remains the most progressive candidate for Speaker, she can count on my support.


I agree that our party should, and must, evolve our leadership.

But changed leadership should reflect an actual, evolved mission; namely, an increased commitment to the middle + working class electorate that put us here.

Otherwise it’s a just new figure with the same problems.

I hope that we can move swiftly to conclude this discussion about party positions, so that we can spend more time discussing party priorities: voting rights, healthcare, wages, climate change, housing, cannabis legalization, good jobs, etc.

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@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 reveals clearly that SARS-CoV-2 is reverting to its original pre-outbreak condition, i.e. adapted to transgenic hACE2 mice (either Baric's BALB/c ones or others used at WIV labs during chimeric bat coronavirus experiments aimed at developing a pan betacoronavirus vaccine)

@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 1. From Day 1, SARS-COV-2 was very well adapted to humans .....and transgenic hACE2 Mice


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 2. High Probability of serial passaging in Transgenic Mice expressing hACE2 in genesis of SARS-COV-2


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 has an unusually large number of genetic changes, ... found to date in mouse-adapted SARS-CoV2 and is also seen in ferret infections.
https://t.co/9Z4oJmkcKj


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad We adapted a clinical isolate of SARS-CoV-2 by serial passaging in the ... Thus, this mouse-adapted strain and associated challenge model should be ... (B) SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA loads in mouse lung homogenates at P0 to P6.
https://t.co/I90OOCJg7o
Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.