It’s nearly the end of 2020. A year that’s been described as a shadow year or purgatory. All the pleasures of traveling and connecting with people near and far were completely shut down around the world. We sat by watching our friends and family in the medical field burn out from overworking. We watched our local neighborhoods change as small businesses shuttered all around us. People lost jobs. Jobs tied to their healthcare. Jobs tied to their livelihood, their dreams, and their dignity. We saw a $1200 check in March go out to the American people along with extended unemployment benefits that lasted until August. There were some relief for small businesses but it was insufficient. That is all the government has done for the working people of this country.
In the backdrop of a continued pandemic, a big fight rages online but nobody in the mainstream media is covering it. You can find the fight online on Twitter and Youtube. A few independent journalists are covering it, but the majority of Americans are in the dark. I think everyone should know about this. Why? Because it exposes a fundamental problem. Overall, there’s a distorted breakdown between popular policies the American people support and what their representatives actually choose to vote for in congress. So who’s fighting and why should we learn about #forcethevote? I’ll break it down the best way I can according to information I can find while I write this.
The Plot
With the November election over in 2020, Democratic control of the house has slimmed to a tiny margin. Democrats barely hold onto majority power in the house. Meanwhile, Progressive seats expand – the squad is growing. If banded together, this voting block has potential disruptive power to force votes and policies that align with their constituents. But will they do it? The plot thickens.
The Characters
Nancy Pelosi – Current speaker of the house, 30-year+ congresswoman CA.
Once again, Nancy is nominated for speaker of the house. With the slim majority, Nancy Pelosi must make every vote for her count. She cannot afford to lose any votes to keep her power. Especially with Republicans and Progressives gaining seats this past election.
Jimmy Dore – YouTube comedian and political commentator.
Jimmy Dore, who’s brashness is compared to the drunk uncle that stirs the pot at family gatherings, comes up with the idea to encourage folks to reach out to the progressive wing of the democratic party to withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi in exchange for a floor vote for Medicare for all #M4A. There is no better time to get a floor vote to provide healthcare to the millions of people who lost it during pandemic. The time is now to create real pressure from a new voting block that can have tea party-like influence and move the entire Democratic party left. All of this was done via Twitter. Although Jimmy can get passionately heated and go on wild long-winded rants, nobody presents Twitter posts in their segments like he does. He’s brilliant with finding and promoting various tweets and news articles from journalists and regular folks that supports the issues he spotlights. With his genius Twitter talent, he was able to start a conversation which blew up into the ongoing fight we see today.
Justin Jackson – Running back for the NFL Chargers and activist.
Contrary to what you might believe, Jimmy was not the first person of influence who went after the squad or other progressive directly with #forcethevote. Justin Jackson took what Jimmy said and directly tweeted at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, to endorse #forcethevote.
The words “Power concedes nothing without a demand” got many twitter followers thinking, “Hey, what ARE these Progressives really doing for me? Are they just a bunch of actors with a story I like better than others or will they actually do something for the American people?” The lens of scrutiny lands on all of the self-proclaimed progressives.
What #forcethevote does is gets every house rep in congress on the record to see if they truly believe in medicare for all or if it’s just talk by forcing everyone to vote. Some argue it’s just an acting job and the vote means nothing and is a waste of time, while other progressives say it will create a list of congressmen and women to primary in 2022. Their goal is to sniff out every person who doesn’t want medicare for all.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) – 2nd term congresswomen NY.
AOC responds to Justin Jackson in a series of tweets as to why #forcethevote is the wrong thing to advocate for right now with the following points made:
- Conversations are being made behind closed doors to negotiate for more pressing progressive policies like raising the minimum wage, etc.
- Progressives getting on house committees to steer written policies is time better served.
- This is not the right time to discuss Medicare for all or single payer healthcare.
- There are rules and processes that must be followed in order to be heard.
- There’s already a list of 100+ reps who support medicare for all. No need for a floor vote that everyone knows will not pass.
This is where things start to blow up. Twitter followers and independent progressive media start taking sides and breaking down every point made by AOC. Some agree with AOC (including The Young Turks’s Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian) while other independent media figures sided with Jimmy Dore (including Secular Talk’s Kyle Kulinski, The Hill Rising’s Krystal Ball, etc). The in-fighting between progressive media figures continues today. Jimmy fights with Cenk and Ana. He fights with Tim Black who was against the idea, but then came around in support for #forcethevote. Sam Seder, who famously despises Jimmy Dore with a passion, actually agrees with #forcethevote. And Jimmy is on Twitter riling everyone up and responding to all comments at him in his crazy truth-bombing style that both inspires and irks followers alike.
In response to his critics stating he needs to create a movement and organize around it, Jimmy and Justin launches http://www.forcethevote.org – a petition to pressure existing and incoming progressives to endorse #forcethevote. There are 15 progressives who ran on Medicare for All being called out:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Rep. Ayanna Pressley
Rep. Barbara Lee
Rep. Chuy Garcia
Rep. Cori Bush
Rep. Ilhan Omar
Rep. Jamaal Bowman
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Rep. Katie Porter
Rep. Marie Newman
Rep. Mark Pocan
Rep. Pramila Jayapal
Rep. Rashida Tlaib
Rep. Raúl Grijalva
Rep. Ro Khanna
I’m not going to post individual images of each of these folks but you can see them on top of this blog. Each of these folks ran and won their seats promising to bring Medicare for All to a vote while running for office. After winning their seats, we’ve seen one bill from Rep. Pramila Jayapal written but not voted on. She was one of current two reps who said anything about Medicare for All in the recent weeks since the fighting began.
The second one was Ihan Omar.
Although they did not signal their intent to endorse #forcethevote, they did give Twitter followers a hint that they know what is being asked of them.
In an interview on CNN, a reporter asked incoming reps Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman if they would vote for Nancy Pelosi for speakership, and though they did not say they endorse #forcethevote, their answers weren’t what the reporter wanted.
This CNN interview was probably the closest #forcethevote conversation the mainstream media covered so far. When you research #forcethevote on social media, you can find live town halls for #forcethevote being done by Jimmy Dore and growing endorsements picking up steam. Of course, Jimmy can’t help his smart mouth and had to say something.
In addition to online organizing, 2021 will include #forcethevote protests in DC the beginning of January by Briana Joy Gray who is former Bernie campaign manager, Nick Brana from the People’s Party and more.
Ok! Now that I’ve given you the gist of everything I know about the movement so far, this is what I see #forcethevote exposes.
- We need to close the gap between what the people want and what their reps are actually doing in congress. Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare -whatever you want to call it- has a 80% favorability among democrats and a 55% conservatives. It’s been popular for more than 50 years. And yet we still cannot pass anything comprehensive to cover every citizen in America. As someone from the market research and polling industry, nothing annoys me more when we see survey after survey stating this obvious fact and very few reps actually fighting for it on behalf of their constituents.
Although the criticism towards the progressive wing is harsh on both ends, I do think they need to follow through with their word and stay accountable. Anyone who is a public servant should be held accountable by their constituents. Unfortunately, we see it over and over again – give them a little power and all of a sudden they forget why people voted for them in the first place and suddenly we are being given empty platitudes and gestures that do nothing. The only thing they are willing to budge on is polarizing identity politics – which is important but is mostly handled in the courts. Hillary Clinton wanted Single payer health care when she was first lady. Nancy Pelosi ran on single payer in the 90s. Countless others have promised the same. When they get to DC, their tune changes. This is where people get frustrated and numb to politics. This is when they stop caring. And this is where monied interests swoop in to captivate the reps.
Things that can close the gap:
- Term limits – yes I said it. We need to enforce term limits for every house and senate seat being voted on by the people.
- Age limits – Have you seen how old our congress is? We literally have reps with Alzheimer’s disease deciding on the fate of our nation when they should be retired. I don’t know about you but that’s terrifying. Can someone tell Diane Feinstein to retire already?
- Rank-choice voting – creating a way for additional parties to rise and offer better than less-of-two-evil choices for the people to consider.
- Remove super pacs and pac money from politics – To even out the playing field, we have to get money out of politics. Easier said than done. Money is so alluring. And so is power. However, there is no way we can make fundamental changes without removing temptations.
2. In-fighting among progressives will never result in significant forward progress. First of all, I refuse to put a label on my political affiliations – I consider myself a homeless political junkie that seeks out news that is unbiased and critical of both parties equally. I prefer policy over personality and people over corporate interests. With that said, I believe the establishment, corporations, wealthy elites and their mainstream controlled media count on and expect populist media and progressive journalists to eat their own tail before being able to properly organize. #forcethevote is an important discussion to have, however, the many degrees of beliefs makes it extremely tough for working people to come together on a single issue and demand. Highlighting the word “significant” in my statement above, I will say there will be progress on some issues.However, it will be small and incremental. It will be as pitiful as seeing Senator Hawley and Sander fight for $600 when clearly the people of America need more. “At least they are doing something…” Who else is tired of hearing that line?
3. That whole thing about pushing democrats left once they are in office – yeah well, that’s not gonna happen …unless real pressure is applied. I cannot tell you how many times I saw and heard people, including Bernie Sanders, say they will push Biden left once we get rid of Trump. The guy isn’t even out of office and already we see cabinet picks and quotes already giving us an idea that this incoming administration is interested in going back to their Obama days. Once again, we see Wall Street and military industry execs at the helm of the administration’s policies. No progressives in sight at all. #forcethevote was the first true test to see if pushing left was possible. So far, the results aren’t looking good. People need to know about this. They need to be aware of a movement pushing populist ideas getting squashed quickly among those we believed were for the people. This is why protests will continue into next year. What happened to #defundthepolice after Obama poo’d on the slogan branding issue? Did policies to close private prisons, remove bloated funding, and reform police regulations make it into the administration’s agenda? We were told something did, but what exactly is to be seen. I don’t have my hopes up. Quite frankly, nobody else should either. Accountability includes organizing protests and creating awareness.
4. Mainstream media’s (MSM) radio silence on populist policies and movements will spawn more divisions among Americans – which is what they want to do. It’s all about divide and conquering of the people: the 99%. The more MSM refuse to discuss real policies that affect the working class, the more disenfranchised and radicalized people will become. And not just on the right but on all sides. We cling onto identity politics being discussed in the news but won’t advocate for policies that help both sides. It’s way too easy to stay in our echo chambers and surround ourselves with like-minded folks who don’t challenge our way of thinking. Encouraged by algorithms and censorship on social media platforms. And then they wonder what caused this. Take a look in the mirror!
To combat this, it’s on us, the people, to step out and be open to reading and connecting with people from different walks of life. Much harder to do during a pandemic, but it’s something I’ve been trying to do myself. It’s hard though. In 2016, I was at an HVAC conference for work and Carl Rove, the-war former White House deputy Chief of staff for Bush, was the headliner. He made fun of populist ideas and touted unregulated capitalism as the way to make America great and prosperous. By the end of his speech, I decided I was done being open minded for the year. It was December at the time so there was three weeks to rest until the new year.
5. Every house district and state senator should answer to an unbiased district-ran committee who surveys their constituents regularly to score how aligned their voting and policy record is with the people they represent. Much like an employee review, people need to see as plain as day how their rep spends their time in DC. Afterall, this is our tax dollars paying their salary. If they do not meet the minimum benchmarks set by their constituents, they would be asked to speak at a town hall to answer why they are performing poorly and should create a new agenda and task that will be used for measuring accountability. Sounds rough? Well, in corporate America this is done all the time with employee assessments and reviews. It’s important that both sides have anecdotal and quantitative data to make necessary changes and to be able to track changes over their term.
6. #forcethevote is just the beginning of pushing left. More is on the way. With more young folks leaning towards populist ideas and demanding change, I can easily predict that #forcethevote is a ramp up for more movements. 2020 was the year we saw young folks rise to protest #BLM movements, #defundthepolice, as well as campaigns for #cancelstudentdebt. Civil unrest will no longer just be about identity. It’s about financial and social equality from the bottom up. As Samuel L. Jackson said in Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butt cheeks.” Are you ready for 2021?
It's Polyesther 