"We are calling on every member of the incoming 120th Congress to vote against Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker in January 2027 and choose a different candidate."
It depends on what you mean by “effective”. The vote to elect House Speaker is done in a closed door election, so we the people won’t get to see who votes what, so there is no direct connection between a petition and this vote.
However, politicians are reluctant to do unpopular things, so stuff like a big petition or wide scale protests or even lots of people being interviewed saying the same thing can set the stage for politicians to feel comfortable going against the party apparatchiks. Hakeem Jeffries is a deeply political creature who has benefitted in the past from being popular in his area, but with all the hullabaloo being made about his feckless nature, his career is in deep trouble. He doesn’t have much more social capital to spend and if he isn’t careful, the gravy train he’s been enjoying for so long will come to an end.
This is the exact situation he was trying to avoid in the midterms. Because of this blue wave, the Dems have a lot of power they can exert in Congress. However, Jeffries doesn’t actually want to do his job, so he spent a lot of time and effort trying to depress Dem voter turnout during the midterms. He is still trying to dampen enthusiasm to excuse not doing his job in the future.
If Jeffries is smart, he’ll quietly step aside to salvage what remains of his career. If he can read the room, he should see that the petitions and protests and interviews are signs that public sentiment has turned against him. He would have a reduced role, and probably a reduced amount of bribes, but he’d still have a career.
If he’s stupid, he’ll try to continue leading the party to sit on their hands. A delusional man would fight against the wave and, unfortunately, probably do a lot of damage while trying to have his cake and eat it too. There is no way he would be able to thread the needle of, “do just enough to look competent” and “do nothing enough to keep getting bribes” and eventually lose his job.
If he’s a fuckin asshole, he’ll try to sabotage the Dems as much as he can to go out in a final blaze of glory. Shamelessly wreck things while taking money from anyone interested in hurting the Dems and then run away with his ill-gotten gains instead of running for re-election. Probably to Isreal.
If he’s cunning, he might allow a few small progressive measures among swaths of centrist appeasement, so that when people get disappointed and don’t turn out for Dems in 2028 due to their prevailing third-way neoliberalism, he can point to the onesies and twosies of consolatory progressive legislation and blame them for the failures.
But if those consolatory progressive legislations end up being enough to motivate the base for 2028, he’ll frame it as an endorsement of his status quo centrism a.k.a. fiscal conservatism.
But he’ll sabotage any progressive policy so major that its effects on voter turnout in 2028 would be undeniable.
This is why a Jeffries speakership would be fundamentally toxic to the advancement of an agenda that serves the needs and interests of the people instead of the corporations and oligarchs.
If you think voters turning out for progressives and people advocating for new congressional leadership is “doing the same thing over and over” then your opinion is worth about as much to me as a roll of toilet paper that got rained on.
But hey, even if we’re condemned to roll the same boulder up the same hill over and over again, well that’s better than letting it roll down over us. You’re welcome to disagree, but in that case go ahead and show us what it looks like so the rest of us can move on
But hey, even if we’re condemned to roll the same boulder up the same hill over and over again,
We’re not. The planet is running out of time.
Since you’re unwilling to learn from those who have made the same mistakes before you, please just pay attention to what happens next.
People made mistakes in the past, yes. That’s no reason not to try again.
We can give up, and the planet will die.
Or we can keep fighting, we can try something new, and we may save it.
Me, personally, I’ll keep fighting until my dying breath if I have to, or until the battle is won and the planet is saved.
You can give up if you want to. But respectfully, stop encouraging others to give up too. Or else I’ll have no choice but to view you as an enemy. And I already have enough of those as it is.
Why are you framing seeking change outside of the electoral system as “giving up?” If you’re going to fight until your dying breath for change, then why pin it all on a strategy that has never worked, and completely reject what has? Nobody is arguing for giving up.
The “trying something new” isn’t to keep falling for the same Democratic party snare over and over again.
The party exists to prevent you from “trying something new”.
You only hear “give up” because your imagination has been constrained to action within bounds that are acceptable to the ruling class. When people tell you “this isn’t going far enough” you somehow hear “do nothing”.
Or we can take the democratic party from within and accomplish the goal through political means.
We already saw maga do it to the republican party. They just happened to be fascists.
The same thing can happen on the left. Left-wing populism can overcome the corpo-establishment centrism in the party. I’ve already been seeing calls for a leftwing teaparty.
Why are you so thirsty for violence that you don’t even want people to try to achieve this without open conflict?
Will this be effective?
No. You have to have a candidate in mind who is willing to stage a direct challenge. You can’t just say “pick someone else”.
There’s only one way to find out. But you know what won’t be effective? Doing nothing.
Yeah I signed, I’m just wondering if it helps.
We all are, bud
It depends on what you mean by “effective”. The vote to elect House Speaker is done in a closed door election, so we the people won’t get to see who votes what, so there is no direct connection between a petition and this vote.
However, politicians are reluctant to do unpopular things, so stuff like a big petition or wide scale protests or even lots of people being interviewed saying the same thing can set the stage for politicians to feel comfortable going against the party apparatchiks. Hakeem Jeffries is a deeply political creature who has benefitted in the past from being popular in his area, but with all the hullabaloo being made about his feckless nature, his career is in deep trouble. He doesn’t have much more social capital to spend and if he isn’t careful, the gravy train he’s been enjoying for so long will come to an end.
This is the exact situation he was trying to avoid in the midterms. Because of this blue wave, the Dems have a lot of power they can exert in Congress. However, Jeffries doesn’t actually want to do his job, so he spent a lot of time and effort trying to depress Dem voter turnout during the midterms. He is still trying to dampen enthusiasm to excuse not doing his job in the future.
If Jeffries is smart, he’ll quietly step aside to salvage what remains of his career. If he can read the room, he should see that the petitions and protests and interviews are signs that public sentiment has turned against him. He would have a reduced role, and probably a reduced amount of bribes, but he’d still have a career.
If he’s stupid, he’ll try to continue leading the party to sit on their hands. A delusional man would fight against the wave and, unfortunately, probably do a lot of damage while trying to have his cake and eat it too. There is no way he would be able to thread the needle of, “do just enough to look competent” and “do nothing enough to keep getting bribes” and eventually lose his job.
If he’s a fuckin asshole, he’ll try to sabotage the Dems as much as he can to go out in a final blaze of glory. Shamelessly wreck things while taking money from anyone interested in hurting the Dems and then run away with his ill-gotten gains instead of running for re-election. Probably to Isreal.
Excellent explanation, thank you!
If he’s cunning, he might allow a few small progressive measures among swaths of centrist appeasement, so that when people get disappointed and don’t turn out for Dems in 2028 due to their prevailing third-way neoliberalism, he can point to the onesies and twosies of consolatory progressive legislation and blame them for the failures.
But if those consolatory progressive legislations end up being enough to motivate the base for 2028, he’ll frame it as an endorsement of his status quo centrism a.k.a. fiscal conservatism.
But he’ll sabotage any progressive policy so major that its effects on voter turnout in 2028 would be undeniable.
This is why a Jeffries speakership would be fundamentally toxic to the advancement of an agenda that serves the needs and interests of the people instead of the corporations and oligarchs.
He’ll try to give himself a soft landing on K street, I don’t think he has any other options aside from stop being such a cunt
Call your reps and senators, is more effective
http://5calls.org/issue/house-senate-leadership/
There’s a script and it’s ez-pz. Takes 5 min to get all 3.
No because change.org is just a wishlist
I think it’ll be the moment a good chunk of people remember realising the Democratic party can’t be reformed, yeah.
Oh you meant-
Not with that attitude.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting bourgeois politicians to represent you.
That said please forge ahead with all your might and make the newest object lesson all the clearer.
If you think voters turning out for progressives and people advocating for new congressional leadership is “doing the same thing over and over” then your opinion is worth about as much to me as a roll of toilet paper that got rained on.
But hey, even if we’re condemned to roll the same boulder up the same hill over and over again, well that’s better than letting it roll down over us. You’re welcome to disagree, but in that case go ahead and show us what it looks like so the rest of us can move on
We’re not. The planet is running out of time.
Since you’re unwilling to learn from those who have made the same mistakes before you, please just pay attention to what happens next.
You’re the one unwilling to learn.
People made mistakes in the past, yes. That’s no reason not to try again.
We can give up, and the planet will die.
Or we can keep fighting, we can try something new, and we may save it.
Me, personally, I’ll keep fighting until my dying breath if I have to, or until the battle is won and the planet is saved.
You can give up if you want to. But respectfully, stop encouraging others to give up too. Or else I’ll have no choice but to view you as an enemy. And I already have enough of those as it is.
Why are you framing seeking change outside of the electoral system as “giving up?” If you’re going to fight until your dying breath for change, then why pin it all on a strategy that has never worked, and completely reject what has? Nobody is arguing for giving up.
Cowbee gonna cowbee, tsk tsk
The “trying something new” isn’t to keep falling for the same Democratic party snare over and over again.
The party exists to prevent you from “trying something new”.
You only hear “give up” because your imagination has been constrained to action within bounds that are acceptable to the ruling class. When people tell you “this isn’t going far enough” you somehow hear “do nothing”.
Your mind is shackled by crimestop.
Building power outside of the Democratic party is one of the barest prerequisites to getting things moving in the right direction.
Or we can take the democratic party from within and accomplish the goal through political means.
We already saw maga do it to the republican party. They just happened to be fascists.
The same thing can happen on the left. Left-wing populism can overcome the corpo-establishment centrism in the party. I’ve already been seeing calls for a leftwing teaparty.
Why are you so thirsty for violence that you don’t even want people to try to achieve this without open conflict?