$270 Million Wasted To Elect Useless Progressives | Fund The Movement Not Politicians
Politicians take your donations and produce no results so fund direct actions and support members of your community instead
Crowdfunding is second only to the internet in terms of game changing modern innovations that empower the working class movement. It’s been used to fund mutual aid for housing to medical emergencies and everything in between. Crowd sourcing is also how we managed to challenge the establishment narrative with independent media sources that are able to bypass the typical filters of corporate news media. But what if we could use crowdfunding to break the backs of the oligarch class?
This isn’t a novel concept. For years the working class movement has tried to use grassroots donations to circumvent corporate capture of our political system by funding politicians who reject big money and promise to fight to implement our policy agenda. That strategy has failed to produce any material results. In fact, these politicians won’t even fight a little to advance the policies they claim to support. It’s time to move to a more direct approach by exclusively funding direct actions and public pressure campaigns.
Bernie’s 2016 campaign broke the mold and showed it was possible to run a formidable campaign while rejecting corporate money. This lead to a new era of grassroots supported candidates becoming fundraising power houses exclusively from the money of regular working class people.
According to data publicly available on opensecrets.org, since 2018 7 Justice Democrats received $62m in donations from leftists across the country while Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign alone received $211m in donations for combined total of $272 million. AOC received $22.7m, Ro Khanna $15.3m, Pramila Jayapal $7.8m, Ilhan Omar $6.8m, Rashida Tlaib $5.6m, Cori Bush $1.4m, Jamaal Bowman $2.8m.
Was this really the best use of the proletariats limited resources? It’s long past time to assess this situation objectively to determine whether our movement is getting a return on our investment.
Getting Rolled On Biden Stimulus
After Joe Biden ran on raising the min wage to $15/hr, he abandoned the inadequate incremental raise immediately even though the democrats control the house and senate and didn’t need a single republican vote to pass it.
How did progressive politicians respond? Did they launch a public pressure campaign to hold Biden to his word? Did they call on the millions of essential workers who would have benefited from this raise to go on strike until democrats kept their promise? No. They sent a letter to Biden beseeching him to keep it in the stimulus bill while making it absolutely clear that that they would vote for it even if he didn’t.
Democrats explicitly told voters in Georgia that if they elected Warnock and Ossoff they would receive one means tested $2k check. This was insulting given the fact that the scale of economic crisis demands that everyone in the country receives at least $3k every month, similar to how most European countries responded to COVID. But to add further insult to this deal, immediately after voters delivered democrats the majority in the senate, Biden invents this gratuitous lie that when they said $2000 checks they actually meant $1400 checks.
Did elected progressives push Biden on this? Absolutely not. Bernie literally wrote the stimulus bill as budget chair. If he wanted to, he could have wrote the provision so that people would get the $2k checks they were promised. Better yet, he could have wrote a provision to actually deal with the crisis such as monthly universal basic income. Instead Bernie aided and abetted this disgusting lie by writing Biden’s bait and switch into the bill with no pushback.
Originally 50 million Americans received the first means tested one time check. According to the CCBP at least 30 million people who needed checks didn’t receive one because they didn’t qualify under the unnecessary neoliberal means testing. In the most recent stimulus bill democrats of their own volition raised the income threshold making it so that 17 million people who received checks under Trump are no longer eligible.
You would think that while we’re in the worst economic crisis in history the alleged champions of the working class and supporters of UBI would draw a line in the sand over this? Of course not. No calls for direct action or at the very least withholding their votes on this bill that could not pass without them. They folded without a fight, agreeing to more gratuitous means testing while millions face eviction and resort to food banks to feed their desperate families.
I can spend this whole article going into detail about every way they rolled over on this recent stimulus bill but I think you get the picture. Democrats have complete control of government. Even worse, the majority is so slim that nothing can be done without the approval of elected progressives and still they refuse to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to advance the agenda of the working class movement that got them elected. Instead they choose to be obedient lapdogs to the corrupt party leadership that they are raising millions pretending to be adversarial towards. Which leads to another chapter of inexplicable subservience, Force the Vote.
Force The Vote
According to Justice democrats co founders Kyle Kulinski and Cenk Uygur, the group was created to do a “hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.” That’s what all the justice democrats ran on. Yet when they were presented with opportunity to remove Nancy Pelosi, the corrupt neoliberal speaker who presided over the worst handling of an emergency in US history, from her leadership position and refuse to seat any alternative unless their policy demands like a floor vote on Medicare For All was met the justice democrats folded.
I can’t think of a better way to enact a hostile takeover of the party than to exercise veto power in a race for who gets to run the House of Representatives. More importantly this was the best chance at a floor vote on single payer in my life and it would have come at a time when the country need universal healthcare more than ever. This was a signature issue that they all ran on. Imagine the shock that people who got them elected experienced when those same politicians turned around and used the every sleazy trick in the book to avoid advancing a vote on single payer just like the establishment democrats they claim to oppose.
Most of the elected progressives chose to ignore calls from the online leftists that got them elected. Even when 100,000 attended a virtual town hall that they were invited to to discuss the importance of this vote, not one of them showed up. The only one who chose to engage before the speakers race was AOC who provided a litany of disingenuous excuses. She created a false dichotomy by pretending we had to choose between a floor vote or $15 minimum wage and progressives getting important committee assignments. Ironically AOC and others were denied the committee assignments they were looking to get and the $15 minimum wage was killed by corporate democrats anyway.
The most outrageous excuse to not force the vote was that even though we’re in a pandemic and single payer is need now more than ever, this would be a bad time to hold a floor vote on it. The person who once said the Democratic Party is so right wing they won’t even vote on single payer was now telling people with no healthcare in a public health emergency that if Congress votes on single payer it would be bad for the movement.
For an entire public health emergency democrats had a majority in the house and never once had a vote on single payer. A record number of people can’t afford basic healthcare and the solution is single payer. Pelosi continues to propose blank checks to the private health insurance racket but I’ve never even heard the justice democrats who ran on Medicare For All publicly challenge Pelosi to advance single payer. In fact AOC recently referred to endless subsidies to private health insurance companies as “a great thing.”
This obsession with propping up our gross for profit health insurance system isn’t based in some sort of misinformed ideological commitments. It’s from the rank corruption of democrats serving their donors in the industry. According to opensecrets.org the industry spent a record $615 million on lobbying for both parties and $206 million on legalized bribes to democratic congressional campaigns in 2020 alone.
When presented with a dream scenario to advance their key policy and more than enough votes to be obstructionist until their demands were met they still refused to challenge corrupt party leadership even though that’s exactly what these elected progressives raised nearly $300 million to do.
The CARES Act
Naomi Klein’s timeless analysis of disaster capitalism explains that when ever there’s a crisis, the elites will exploit the situation to financially benefit at the expense of the most immediate victims of the crisis. When we were thrust into the worst emergency in US history with a pandemic and unprecedented economic crisis occurring simultaneously it was the job of these progressives to rebuke the predictable neoliberal corporate heist and present an alternative in which the working class and poor were the primary beneficiaries. Bold legislation which included universal programs like single payer healthcare, universal basic income and covering the operating expenses of all small businesses. An argument could have even been made for nationalizing key sectors of our economy such as agriculture, transportation and even hotels to house the homeless. Yet the politicians who run campaigns on radically transforming our rigged economy applied no pressure to implement these transformative life saving policies in an emergency.
When corrupt politicians in both parties pushed the CARES act through congress while the Fed was pumping trillions of dollars into the stock market they created the most obscene corporate bailout in history. In order to divert attention from the robbery in progress, congress added the insulting provisions like the pathetic means tested one time stimulus checks and unemployment benefits which half the people who applied for were denied.
This bill laid the groundwork for the economic calamity that has unfolded further exacerbating historic wealth inequality. The process was so corrupt that they passed it in the House through a voice vote so that no one would have to go on record for voting yes on this legislation that left their constituents for dead. The only objection to this corporate heist was a lone republican congressman who demanded a recorded vote
Where were the politicians who are suppose to be representing our ideological movement? Pramila Jayapal, chair of the largest caucus in congress defended the bill and didn’t whip a single congress person to withhold their votes until the people got a bailout. AOC did a partisan grandstanding speech that ignored the fact that democrats controlled the house and could have passed any alternative, before she also allowed the bill to pass with no resistance. Bernie voted yes without out getting a single policy concession in the senate.
There was no fight for working class priorities. This is the same level of subservience to corporate power at a defining moment in history that we’d get if their seats were occupied establishment tools like Joe Crowley. The only difference is we wouldn’t have spent $270 million to get a bunch of Joe Crowley’s elected.
The Verdict Is In
The number of grievances between the left and elected progressives is astonishing and irreconcilable. I am no longer interested in engaging in debates about their intent. I will not entertain anymore fantasies that maybe one day they will see the light and finally do what they ran on. I’ve seen the choices they’ve made in career defining moments. Not some of the time or half the time or most of the time, EVERY time they’re faced with the decision to go to the mat to advance our agenda or fold for the establishment, they fold.
This strategy of getting left policy priorities through electoral politics has been a decisive failure. If you’re still holding out hope that one day these politicians will suddenly become adversarial to democratic leadership and produce any results I have bridge to sell you.
Fund Direct Actions & Strikes Instead of Politicians
Instead of being a piggy bank for do nothing politicians, we should focus our resources on direct action. The problem with putting the bulk of our resources behind politicians is that it requires a kind of blind faith that they will follow through on their promises to be an unapologetic street fighter for the movement. But when they don’t, it leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just been taken for a ride. Whatever little money you managed to scrape together was just thrown on the heap with all the other fools who’s hard earned money went to funding the career ambitions of self serving politicians and you’re no closer to achieving your goals.
To avoid this, we should focus on funding worthwhile projects that we know will make an impact. Over the last we’ve seen how the generosity of strangers contributing to mutual aid has had a meaningful impact on people who were out of options. Whether it’s for someone in a medical emergency, facing homeless, or people who just need food for their families. Donating any amount to people in need has a noticeable impact on their lives.
But charity can only go so far when the root systemic and policy problems go unaddressed. That’s why I believe the movement will get the most bang for our buck if we also fund the the protests and strikes that are truly our only option to bring about a political revolution.
Steve Grumbine and others have mentioned that one of the reasons why it’s so difficult to get a national strike movement going is because we don’t have fully funded strike funds. Telling 100,000s of wage workers to go on strike sounds nice in theory, but those are real people with real daily expenses and real families to feed. We can wait around for an unlikely time when conditions become so unbearable that enough workers are willing to face the uncertainty of an indefinite strike with no income or we can help them cover their basic expenses so that the decision to go on strike isn’t attached to the fear of homelessness and going hungry.
Labor organizer Jane McAlevey has made the calculation that we may not even need a full general strike to bring business as usual to a halt. All it may take are strikes in key sectors of the economy such as education, logistics and healthcare in a few major cities to force politicians to meet our demands.
According to United Auto Worker’s union website the strike pay for their workers is $275 a week. This is far from enough to live on permanently, but this can help cover basic expenses for workers on strike. At this rate, if we spent $270 million to fund strike funds instead of political campaigns we could pay for 100,000 workers to go on strike for 2 months and still have $50 million leftover for legal fees, technical infrastructure to facilitate payments and additional mutual aid.
Seriously, We Don’t Need These Politicians
Some may ask “well how can we get those policies if we don’t have allies in congress who agree with us?” To that I say it doesn’t matter if they go into congress already agreeing with us. All that matters is a majority of them feel the fear of god over what the reaction from the public will be if they don’t meet our demands. That can be achieved whether or not AOC is in congress.
At no point in our history has major change come about through the strategy of electing a majority of politicians that agree with a specific policy goal. Civil rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, the new deal and environmental policies were all secured through public pressure campaigns and direct actions that gave politicians no choice but meet the demands of the public.
If corporate democrats control congress and the White House or if republicans do the tactic should be the same. Make it so business as usual can’t continue until our demands are met. We’re in an emergency. Millions of lives depend on policies like single payer and UBI. We don’t have the luxury to wait for an unknown amount of election cycles, for and undisclosed amount of progressives to get elected to then fight for those policies. Genocidal levels of death occur every year in this country at the alter of our for profit health insurance system alone. I’m not willing to let this continue for another 15 years unabated. Neither should you.
We should make a party of direct democracy that lets people vote for every single decision in congress/senate and binds representatives to the result.
Progressives need to focus on expanding the support for the solutions to the issues. Yes, I have seen the studies that show that the majority support progressive issues, but then you see how many people end up voting for centrists.
"afraid that people they don’t like will get something good"
"Americans don’t think of climate change as a very high priority." https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-rejection-of-bidenomics
Even people that are having to deal with the ramifications of climate change now want to pretty much ignore it for fear that it will harm their property values.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/762/apocalypse-creep