Some friendly advice to Move On on how to be taken seriously by Congress:

[ddeclue]

I'm a Democratic activist who has been involved in the local Democratic Executive Committee and who has worked heavily on a variety of Democratic campaigns at the local, state and Federal levels here in central Florida in the past five years at both a field volunteer level and a consultant level. I received an invitation the other day to a Move On event for tonight and decided to attend to see what they meant by "Congressional Action Training".

Tonight I went to this Move On meeting, one of hundreds hosted around the country by Move On with the apparent objective of pressuring members of Congress to support Barack Obama's economic stimulus package - an admirable goal but it seemed rather poorly thought through.

I was rather underwhelmed by the presentation and the plan that Move On was putting forward to its members.

It was generic to the point of absurdity - it made no attempt to identify our ACTUAL local members of Congress and their ACTUAL relevant positions and ACTUAL previous votes on the subject or even to look at where pressure needs to be applied in the first place.

Instead it ran through some "scenarios" with various fictitious Congressmen (Representatives) with fictitious profiles, none of which even remotely resembled our local Congressmen on how to talk to them and persuade them in a face to face meeting - skipping of course the all important miraculous part of getting the face to face meeting with them in the first place.

The primary goal of tonight's meeting was to put forth a two step plan whereby Move On petitions would be presented to various Congressmen through their local district offices and then a face to face meeting would (theoretically) be arranged between Move On members and the Congressmen on or about the weekend of January 16-19.

It seemed to me that nobody in the room had any grasp of how things actually work in the real world of politics (to be fair to Move On I often feel this way in Democratic party events as well):

1) The House of Representatives is NOT the problem in getting Obama's agenda passed. With or without the Republican members of the House, Obama's agenda will sail through no problem.

2) The SENATE is the real bottleneck to passing Obama's agenda because Democrats do NOT control a filibuster proof majority there.

3) The Move On people at the meeting at least originally did not seem to understand that in our area we now have three Democratic Representatives and one Republican (as a result of us defeating Keller and Feeney!) and that in fact staffers from two of the three local Democrats as well as campaign volunteers from one of them were present at their meeting.

In short they didn't seem prepared to take "YES" for an answer and thought they would have to "persuade" us to do what we've already agreed to do.

4) The Move On people also seem NOT to understand that they are very unlikely to get face to face meetings with anyone in Congress especially on the weekend before the inauguration when they were hoping to do so.

The weekend of the 16th to the 19th of January is a horrible time to get ANYONE in Washington to pay attention to you.

5) Even then, it is unlikely that Democrats who are already on board with Obama will want to waste time taking a meeting with Move On to tell them YES when they've already told the whole world YES.

6) Move On's overly simplistic theory is that Congressmen will be for, against, or undecided about Obama's stimulus package and that it is the Move On member's job to pressure people to move to the "for" column.

That isn't how it will actually happen however. Democrats will be overwhelming for it and Republicans will be theoretically for it as well at least as far as the public is concerned.

The Republicans (unless they are wanting to commit political suicide) are NOT going to outright oppose an economic stimulus. They can read the polls and they aren't as stupid as we like to pretend.

Instead of a direct assault on it, they will indirectly try to water it down, slow its passage down to allow time for an opposition to build, try to scuff it up, drag it down, and try to tack on "poison pills" designed to kill it in the name of insuring that the money is spent "wisely".

In short the Republican plan, like any good guerilla warfare plan is: attrition, delay, and dilution.

Moreover, Move On doesn't understand that Republicans naturally see Move On as out to get them.

The natural instinct for a Republican Congressman when faced with a confrontational Move On protest or other media event is to turn defensive and fight back and to polarize and harden in their position and NOT to be seen as caving in.

What is needed here is NOT the combative aggressive Move On mode that WAS appropriate when Democrats were in the minority and didn't control the White HOuse but RATHER if Move On wants to win over Republican votes, it needs to find a way to make these Republicans feel relevant and not threatened without giving away the farm to them.

7) In conclusion it is my belief that this whole Move On strategy has been very poorly thought out - it needs to focus on pressuring moderate Republicans in the SENATE to convince them to at least vote for cloture. I think the best approach would be to convince them to vote for cloture and then let them vote against the actual legislation if they felt they had to - this way the bill would still pass on Democratic votes but the Republican filibuster would be taken off the table.

The strategy is also seriously flawed in that it seems to seek out confrontation with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress rather than to try a friendlier approach.

It makes no effort to reach out to Congressional staffers first who have the ear of their boss but naively assumes that a computer generated web based petition process is going to get them a nearly immediate face to face appointment with their member of Congress. That's basically counting to ten like 1,2,10... :eyes:

Near the end of the meeting I WAS able to convince them that the Democratic members of Congress from their local area were ALREADY on board and that in fact there had been staffers in the room tonight listening to them already and that the focus REALLY needed to be on the Senate and in particular, here in Florida on Senator Mel Martinez - that focusing on the Democrats was not taking yes for an answer and that focusing on John Mica (R FL7) was nice but that the bill would pass the House with or without Mica's support.

In the end they accepted that Grayson (D) was already on their side (he hasn't opened his district office yet anyways), and decided that they were still going to go out to Mica (R), Kosmas (D), and Brown (D) and as well to Senators Nelson (D) and Martinez (R). I agreed to go to Nelson's office on Wednesday for them - I felt it would be better to volunteer to do it for them rather than have one of the other people do it from the meeting since I at least helped on his campaign two years ago and know a few people there and I won't approach it as a confrontational kind of thing.

The real pressure here in FL needs to be on Martinez but it will be hard to put any pressure on the man since he isn't running for re-election in 2010 anyways.

8) Finally, Move On will never agree with this point but:

The BEST way to get the ear of your Congressman or Senator is NOT to submit a computer generated petition list which didn't really require any effort on anyone's part involved - but rather to work for his or her election/re-election and get to know him or her -

If you want your Congressman (or state rep or city council person for that matter) to listen to you:

Get INVOLVED in your local Democratic Party and make a difference by getting Democrats elected by WORKING ON CAMPAIGNS.

Better yet, if you don't like the Democratic choices, run for office yourself (but PLEASE don't think you can win a Congressional seat as your first race without ever being involved in the party unless you are a celebrity or super-rich or something PLEASE work your way up from city council or school board.)


Thanks,

Doug De Clue
Democratic Activist
Orlando, FL

P.S. Can someone PLEASE add "Barack" and "Obama" to DU's spell checker? The man is about to be sworn in as President and DU's editor STILL underlines his name in red as a typo.

Thanks..

[WCGreen]

1. I, like you, was heavily involved with the local and state Democratic

Party. My experience with Move On was very mixed. They swept into Cleveland, Ohio and refused to include any local people in how to campaign here in the largest democratic enclave between NYC and Chicago. We knew what to do but of course, the Ivy League activists they sent knew much more than anyone here on the ground...

I walked away from their operation very discouraged with how arrogant they were.

[ddeclue]

2. Nobody tonight seemed "arrogant" just well meaning but very naive about politics.

They were all local Move On activists but they clearly received their marching orders (along with DVD video presentation) from the Washington Move On office and even then how hard would it have been to include some info on the ACTUAL congressmen and Senators instead of the fictitious Congressmen "Waverly", "Hart" and "Crass" :eyes:

The whole exercise seemed very much pointless and I'm rather glad I stayed to try and inject some reality into it and hopefully make them realize that their Democratic Congressmen were ALREADY on their side - I also tried to emphasize that it was pointless to make a big fuss about this in the House when it would pass there no matter what and that the effort was wasted that could have been spent on the SENATE.

Doug D.

[mucifer]

3. The one I went to is working on the house and senate. But, somehow I don't think

we really are going to have too much trouble convincing senator Durbin support the stimulus package. :) And I don't think we will need to remind him to try to convince his buddies on both sides of the aisle to vote for the bill.

As for the Jr. Senator from IL. He got promoted and for now he's not replaced.

[ddeclue]

4. Do you think that the Jr. Senator from Illinois would have supported Barack Obama's plan had he not

resigned?

:rofl:

What was his name again?

:rofl: