How #ForceTheVote exposed Progressives

It was a simple moment in time and #forceTheVote was a simple idea. What happened?

or some, this moment in time was simply a perfunctory, performative legislative routine that would once again enable Nancy Pelosi to remain as Speaker of the House of Representatives for yet another term.

For others, like Jimmy Dore however – the self-proclaimed, ‘jag-off comedian’ – it was a perfect moment in time: A perfect moment to pressure Pelosi to hold a Medicare For All vote on the House Floor and in the process show the higher-ups in the Democratic Party that the Progressives in Congress can also wield a powerful and purposeful political baton.

The origins of #ForceTheVote …

On November, 27, 2020, Jimmy Dore dropped this video explaining the basic idea of #forceTheVote.

He wasn’t yelling at anyone and in fact, he eloquently reached out for support from everyone on the Progressive-leaning landscape. He understood #forceTheVote was large in scope and that it needed all the support that it could generate: from politicians, Progressive media-types and grass-roots movements alike.

What was #ForceTheVote?…

The premise for the idea of #forceTheVote was pretty simple. A political lay-up, if you will.

Since the Democrats only held a small majority in Congress, the ’15 Progressives’ could withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi for ‘Speaker of The House’ until she promised to hold a house vote on Medicare For All.

With the Covid Pandemic raging through America, millions unemployed and uninsured,  87% of Democratic voters supporting Med4All, and with ALL these so-called Progressives campaigning & raising money under the Medicare For All umbrella, NOW, seemed like the perfect moment in time to get all the other elected officials – especially within the Democratic Party – on the record.

Initially, the support for #forceTheVote came from all corners of the Progressive landscape. It was loud, enthusiastic and immediate.

Key figures like Dr. Cornell West (famed political activist), Justin Jackson (NFL running back & political activist), Briahna Joy Gray (former National Press Secretary for Bernie Sanders), Marianne Williamson (former candidate for President) and Progressive media figures like Graham Elwood, Katie Halper, Krystal Ball, Kyle Kulinski and Max Blumenthal, all backed Jimmy’s strategy.

Even, The Justice Democrats founder and The Young Turks  co-host Cenk Uygur seemed to be backing Jimmy’s idea at first … until the personal mudslinging started to commence.

#theFraudSquad

The turning point – it seems to me – occurred when people started to realize that not only was #forceTheVote a really good, timely idea but that absolutely NOTHING was going to happen about it.

The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party had gone silent.

They definitely saw that #forceTheVote was a trending topic on Twitter.. they definitely saw the thousands of mentions in their Twitter accounts talking about #forceTheVote … they definitely were told about all the phone calls flooding their offices .. but, one and all, they chose to totally ignore this critical moment in time.

They chose to play the career politician game.

So, naturally, people started questioning the motives of AOC and the rest of the high-profile Progressives in Congress, by using the Twitter hashtag, #theFraudSquad.

“Was the squad actually a Progressive wing of the DNC? Were all those Medicare For All rallies & fundraisers just a political ploy? Who did they actually represent in Congress .. the people that helped to get them elected or the affluent donor class that props up the status-quo legacy of the DNC hierarchy?”

These were the type of comments and accusations lobbied at the #fraudSquad though their Twitter accounts and Congressional offices.

For a couple of days, that hashtag, ‘#theFraudSquad‘ was trending world-wide and Jimmy Dore and other Progressive activists like NFL running back, Justin Jackson, were thrust into the political online spotlight.

#blueWaveProgressives

Instead of pressuring the members of Congress that were elected to FIGHT for Medicare For All to push the #forceTheVote strategy, a massive core of online progressives, media pundits and Blue-Check Liberals, chose to rally around the Squad and begin to smear the ppl calling them out.

#forceTheVote led to #theFraudSquad which in turn led to a HUGE divide between Progressives.

Within a few days, the movement had devolved from an actual strategy to force the DNC to listen to their voters and advance the cause of Medicare For All, to a personal, petty and disingenuous attack on Jimmy Dore’s motives and his sometimes combative communication methods.

The first salvo to be fired in this distasteful, distracting and totally unnecessary battle was by The Young Turks co-host, Ana Kasparian.

Ana, was (and still is) the executive producer of The Young Turks when Jimmy Dore worked there and it seemed, to a lot of people at least, that this was personal in nature. The confusing part was the timing of it.

Why now?

Was this nothing more than an ego game and Ana didn’t like the fact that Jimmy was usurping the TYT brand and quickly becoming a powerful voice on Twitter within the online Progressive movement?

Or was it something more?

If someone has a good idea what difference does it make to the idea if the person stating it smelled weird?

That’s always been my philosophical understanding of wisdom – the origin doesn’t matter .. what you do with it does.

The Gaslighting on #forceTheVote …

For a while there, it became a political ping-pong Twitter battle to see which so-called Progressives were attacking Jimmy Dore and which ones were attacking the core idea of #forceTheVote.

It was all so confusing.

The Young Turks co-hosts, Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur + the current staff working there all aligned w/ The Squad and staged vicious attack(s) on Jimmy Dore – mostly through Twitter – and unleashed their built-in echo chambers of fanboys & girls all too eager to attack.

The Majority Report staff (Emma Vigeland & Sam Seder) and its network of pundits (Nomik Konst, Jonathan Dixon) aligned w/ The Squad in a similar vicious attack on Jimmy Dore and Breahna Joy Gray.

It got so ugly in fact, that just to calm everyone down, Sam Seder agreed to have a virtual debate with Breahna Joy Gray on the merits and political perils of #forceTheVote.

It didn’t go too well for Sam.

Almost a decade of subscribing to The Young Turks and listening to progressive media types like Sam Seder and Cenk Uygur YELLING at the top of their lungs about getting rid of the old hierarchy within the DNC – primarily Nancy Pelosi – and NOW, with the perfect moment at hand, they chose to adopt the philosophy of attacking the messenger.

Somehow the idea of #forceTheVote was bad cause Jimmy was bad?

It was all so confusing.

Cul-de-Sac Progressives…

The cynic in me chose to play along just to somewhat comprehend what was really happening.

It seems that the MONEY that all these so-called Progressives were railing against, was the ultimate driving force at play here.

Access to power – real or imagined – and a steady stream of faux outrage Youtube content to create.

Sam Seder proved that all he really cares about is being the so-called ‘Progressive political pundit’ on MSNBC and Cenk Uygur showed that the ‘The Young Turks Venture Capital Investment by Jeffrey Katzenberg – noted ‘DNC Kingmaker’‘, came with a calling: shilling for the DNC.

But .. But Kevin McCarthy!!

The mud-slinging was soon replaced w/ flat-out Gaslighting! .. it seemed like the army of progressive media types online all received the same phone call or email highlighting the same talking point: Kevin McCarthy!!.. scare people into believing that if the Dems withheld their vote for Nancy Pelosi that it would automatically fall into the grubby, little hands of the dreaded Kevin McCarthy.

Even though that was a flat-out lie, they kept repeating it over & over. Like a mantra being repeated by the members of a cult: The Blue MAGA Cult.

Conclusion…

Sadly, like any special moment in time, #forceTheVote didn’t last forever.

The 15 ‘Progressives’ in Congress all enthusiastically voted for Nancy Pelosi and in effect, set the Progressive movement back into its cemented mold of historic inactivity.

Like the famous jagoff comedian once said, ‘The Democratic Party is where Progressives go to Die’.

Yup.

Addendum…

On January 7, 2023, Kevin McCarthy became Speaker of the House of Representatives after a prolonged, heated battle within splinter-groups within the GOP all ‘demanding’ certain things for their vote.

Hmm ..

A few months later, in an ironic yet predictable turn-of-events, the Democrats now seem to be helping Kevin McCarthy keep his seat.

Strange how that works, eh?