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And look, as a human being, which is completely irrelevant, I like L.A.. I mean, it's like being in this conversation.

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I think she seems dope, but she raised an awesome daughter, like one of the most courageous individuals in the house who suffered like an absurd amount of hatred for taking a principled stand. Yes. All right, Palestinians.

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So I'm not going to sit here and be like, you know, front fraud squad or like I don't think that she wants to do better. But, like, she's still all of them deserve critique for the complete failure of strategy and or courage like they all are. The posture of like abuse victims. Like, I don't know what Joe Biden said to them, like, I don't know. But the tongue lashing that Nancy Pelosi gave to them backstage.

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But it must have really been something because they're all coming out here like hangdog Stockholm syndrome, me just afraid of their own shadow types. And I don't know where all of these crusaders that we elected two years ago are today.

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Well, it's because, you know, see, the squad is a media invention, isn't it? And, you know, on Omar is she's a person of great integrity whom I admire.

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But, you know, she's not a socialist and she was not elected with I mean, so she's got a daughter.

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She's. No, she's not. No, she's not.

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There are five members of the House of a socialist, really just for her. And she is not one of them.

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So you know this. But regardless, you don't have to be a socialist to fight for a fifteen dollar minimum wage. Oh, absolutely.

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I mean, you have people like like broken and privileged people who are, you know, like they are real, the real progressives, but not socialists.

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But we still look to them for fighting for exactly that.

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I mean, when it comes to and it's just like everything about when it comes to the Socialist Caucus in the US Congress, again, it is small, right?

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It's less than one percent of the US House of Representatives. And that being said, I feel like with an organization like the DSA, it's kind of like the dog that caught the mail truck. Right. They've had relatively a lot of success in winning primaries and winning elections and electing socialists, not just on the national level, but local, state.

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And that's great.

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And over the past four years, I've watched this organization. They've like run races. They'll learn from their failures and then run races again and then win. And in terms of like just an organization that's going to win elections for socialists, it's been pretty damn good. I think we can all agree on that.

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Right, right, right, right. Yeah, that's the thing. They now it's a position where. OK. What is the parliamentary strategy for elected socialists, and there is not the reason that we pushed hard for a strategy like, no, you are supposed to come up with a strategy and then deploy it to get the thing that you want to do. All we heard, sorry, here is the part where 10 more people subscribe. This is what we talked about during force, the vote.

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Sorry, but this is a strategy and of these seamlessness.

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And the whole point was in the here, here's what was happening in January. If people were like, no, actually, here's the plan, I'd be like, cool, whatever. I don't have any particular investment in any plan. I just want to know that somebody is doing a thing. Yeah, go for it. At Virgile and Sam Sanders favorite expression, let a thousand flowers bloom however they would like on the same day.

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Don't forget the things there were like there were like no flowers, there were no flowers, no disrespect.

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But I don't like it if I occupy the same space in your brain last week.

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Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're both fucking cool hot people, but we're different individuals. So I would just a voice. Actors will have that distinction.

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Fair enough. But the whole point was like my stridency, my stridency around force. The vote happened as I talked to more people and asked them, hey, but what's the plan? Hey, what's the plan? Hey, but what's the plan? As they were like, I don't know, like twenty years from I love America, bro. I was like, OK, well, then I'm more and more invested in this thing, which I was going to work out.

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But at least it's a tangible thing. And as we know, because of Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin and the fifteen minimum wage enforceable and everything that these first three months of twenty, twenty, twenty one have taught us is that there is an enormous amount of leverage possible to very small groups of people in Congress right now. And so to hear IL and Omar talking about how, you know, we were pushing for a strategy when there are some obvious strategic moves in front of you right now, like go down the middle, you know, you say that there are things that we are willing to hold up in Congress in order for concessions.

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And the fact that we are enormously popular, beloved women of color is going to insulate us against a lot of the blowback that's going to come our way. And I'm willing to go up against Nancy Pelosi any day of the week in America's press.

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That's exactly. We were talking about those five DNC members in the US Congress, US House of Representatives, and they cannot lose five votes on any piece of party line legislation.

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And it's really a matter of, OK, we elected them.

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We just just like shoot them on to the fucking Congress without any kind of manual or strategy for exactly how a socialist caucus should operate.

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And I think that's at the root of a lot of these disagreements where some people say it's beyond the pale for socialist members of Congress to support someone like Nancy Pelosi for speaker.

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I consider it a tactical question.

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But the thing is, you know, we're not going to answer that question unless there's an actual strategy that we're referring to and we find ourselves in a specific situation.

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I want a unique situation, but it's actually rather rare that the margin of power in the US Congress is so narrow that this tiny little socialist caucus can actually make some big waves. And that's what I mean when I say that this is the victim of his own success.

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Like, I know people who have spent so much time knocking on doors and making calls and setting text to get people like AOC elected. And they did a good job. They did it. We now we have five socialists in the US House of Representatives, but no time has been spent thinking about. All right, well, what the hell should they do when they're there?

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Yeah, there was a story today about how apparently a massive campaign kind of auto sent know if it isn't the best word, but directed five thousand dollars apiece to a bunch of other campaigns, Democratic Party campaigns, on the condition that you download this Yahoo!

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Toolbar. Yeah, you have to download it and just enter your password and get five thousand dollars. Yeah.

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Just click this attachment socialism to the word.

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All right. Well, the point is that all these congresspeople have to raise a certain amount of money and they gave it to the and that goes in people in their primary races or whatever. And there was a big brouhaha because some folks in some districts feel like this is going to be politically disadvantageous to them if they have on their, you know, FEC declaration or what have you, that they've taken money from ÁGÚST because she's not popular in their districts.

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And it's like, oh, this was an unforced error. What is the Democratic Party going to do with tends to what happens, this association with this Bronx Congress? And also one tweet, something along the lines of you worked really hard to elect AOC for her to fundraise from you, disperse money to these people who hate her so much that they are unwilling to associate with her in this kind of really vague context. And, you know, it's a little bit of an oversimplification, but I think that that it captures some of the spirit of how people are feeling right now, which is that we didn't elect asses so that she could use her fame to raise a bunch of money for the Democratic Party.

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We elected her so that she could use that money and we give to her so she can use the money to protect herself while she fights on our behalf.

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To put it another way, we didn't like the AOC so that she could become a political brand and a political operator.

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And like what you're describing is just the way politics works and how you you buy support from others with without the and I hate using this term because it's such a bullshit term, but without the accountability to a democratic organization.

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Accountability is not a bullshit term. If I can. It is.

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I hated everyone. So we were trying to say, like Verdery, you've got to take accountability.

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It's like, no, we're going to hold accountable. Yeah, no, like you over there because they say they don't like you.

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You have to be accountable for what you said to me on the last episode. It's like, shut the fuck up.

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No, I'm never going to be accountable.

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In fact, I'm doing one of the opposite of accountability is I'm not taking any account.

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I'm fucking I'm not even like my accountant is pissed off at me because I'm not even writing down my expenses right now.

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If you'd like to hear more, remember, you can subscribe at Patrón dot com slash Bad Faith podcast for five dollars a month to get our full back catalog of episodes with some sweet, sweet stuff, including this one including including including and especially this one. If you liked it, if you didn't like this. Well there's better to keep the faith. Keep the faith.