Jimmy Dore came from a conservative, Irish Catholic family with 12 children. His father (and other men in the family) were Chicago police officers. They are (he says) right-wing, anti-union, racist, ranters. Jimmy Dore was also a bricklayer for ten years. Then he became a stand-up comic for twenty years. (I'm thinking there was some overlap with those two careers.)
I'm of the opinion that there was a lot of yelling in the Dore household when he was growing up. And, having worked in construction myself, I know there's a lot of yelling and macho posturing in that line of work. And stand-up comics are known as a (mainly) male-dominated, male-oriented culture that quite often includes heavy drinking, coarse behaviour, lewd comments, trash talking.
Jimmy Dore can be caustic. He yells. He calls people "cock-suckers" as an insult. (He admits that it's sexist, homophobic and stupid. Since he likes having his cock sucked. It's just a habit for him. The same way that even raunchier comedian Doug Stanhope says he'll let a homosexual man fuck him in the ass if he can continue to use the word "faggot" as an insult.) I've written about Jimmy Dore before. The only point that I'm trying to make here is that the man is temperamentally volatile and occasionally offensive.
He also has his heart in the right place on a lot of things and he can also see through the bullshit better than a lot of other lefty pundits. He rightfully condemns Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Chris Hayes, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and other such creeps for the corrupt, murderous sociopaths that they are. He thinks the Democratic Party is hopeless. He's gone from being a Bernie Sanders supporter to condemning him as a "sheep dog" for the Democrats, keeping progressives in the herd and preventing them from breaking-off from the party to form an independent protest movement.
(Sadly, his condemnations of Democratic corruption attract a lot of stupid right-wingers and even Trump supporters. This human garbage pollutes his YouTube comments section with their moronic observations and lies.)
Dore has made enemies of others on the left. Especially Sam Seder. He's gone from being a partner with "The Young Turks" Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, to making a gracious split with them over political differences to condemning them as liars and grifters. And he expresses his anger at what he believes are left-wing sell-outs in his typical earthy fashion. So some of these genteel progressive types really don't like him.
But I have to say that I agreed with his recent (doomed) campaign to get "The Squad" to compel Nancy Pelosi to give them a floor vote on Medicare For All in return for their needed support for her (now successful attempt) at another term as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
With their reduced majority in the HoR, Pelosi needed every vote she could get to remain Speaker. Dore said this was the perfect time for the Progressive Caucus (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC], Ro Khanna, Ilhan Omar, and others) to use their leverage to force Pelosi to give them a floor vote on establishing Medicare For All. When else would they have leverage? What better time than during a pandemic that has crippled the economy, thereby causing unemployment, thereby causing millions of people to lose their employer-paid health insurance?
Dore used AOC's previous rhetoric to argue for this. AOC had said it was better to be a one-term Congressperson than to remain in power by playing the status-quo game. AOC had said we didn't need to wait ten years to accomplish things, but that they could do things today if they had the courage. AOC had said that you didn't get things by being polite and understanding and respectful, but by causing a ruckus. Dore pointed out that all that stirring talk has gone out the window.
Some people tried (occasionally on group podcasts) to argue that AOC and the squad were bargaining behind the scenes for secret concessions and for committee seats for progressives. Dore would yell that this was total bullshit. And it was. Nancy Pelosi deliberately sabotaged AOC's getting on the important House Energy & Commerce Committee that dealt with many issues pertaining to the AOC-championed "Green New Deal." The Squad says that they obtained exemption from Pelosi's ridiculous "Paygo" rules for the Green New Deal and COVID-related healthcare programs. But this is meaningless if Pelosi never allows anything to come to the floor for a vote. And Pelosi obviously has no intention of bringing Medicare4All for a vote. And she has derided the Green New Deal as "the 'Green Dream' or whatever."
But trying to push this initiative to use their leverage to extract a floor vote on M4A (which he called "Force the Vote") has brought Jimmy Dore up against the Left's pathological hatred of ever doing anything besides complaining and compromising. David Sirota came out as for it, but opposed to it at the same time. The Young Turks ran away from it. Sam Seder at first gave his nemesis Dore credit for getting something right "for once" and then proceeded to trash Jimmy Dore for yelling rather than advance the initative. The Intercept ran interference for AOC, accusing Dore of bullying her and committing "violence" against her. True to form, Jeffrey St.Clair of Counterpunch briefly sneered about it before returning to his narcissistic sharing of his latest book reads and music listening. There were articles about how corporate Democrats in the House who would co-sponser M4A bills that would never see the light of day could also vote for it knowing that it would die in the Senate, so what would be the point? It would only be "performative" and "theatre." As if being able to say that the Republican Senate was killing M4A during a crisis such as this wouldn't be anything the Democrats could campaign on. In short, these stupid assholes all came up with moronic excuses for why nothing could be done and never said what the conditions needed to be, or when the moment would be, to ever do anything.
I totally sympathize with Jimmy Dore. Like him, I ask my fellow progressives and fellow radicals: "What's the plan?" only to have to answer myself "There is no plan."
Progressive Democrats, Justice Democrats, ... the corporate Democrats hate you. They abuse you. They blame you for their own failings. They are your enemies and they are the enemies of the US-American people. They don't like you and you shouldn't like them. Your power is based on your outsider reputations. You are going to compromise yourselves into irrelevance.
Electoral leftists, internet activists, ... what's the plan? Super-radicals, street activists, ... what's YOUR plan? The problem is oligarchic capitalism. It can't be "reformed." It has to be killed. What's the plan? What's the big revolutionary project? Seriously: WHAT IS IT??? Is the NDP going to ask for public dental care? Is that it? Are we, the majority of the population, to forever be supplicants to the oligarchic ruling class? To ask for crumbs from them? Super-radicals: Your power is in the streets right? So, are you going to take on the cops? Are you going to cause a ruckus? WHAT'S THE PLAN????
As Jimmy Dore found out through demonstrating the progressive Democrats' failure to practice "Politics 101" the Left is pathologically wedded to inactivity and impotent whining.
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