Want Some Help, Harry? - from Daily Kos - long but worth it

[Pirate Smile]

Want Some Help, Harry?
by paradox

Sun Jan 16th, 2005 at 07:01:12 PST

Cross-posted from The Left Coaster
Some time in the last 30 days Harry Reid (D-NV, Senate Minority Leader) set up his "war room" in the Senate office building to be the human hub of defending Social Security. The internet blogosphere--approximately four million committed liberals who read, comment, and author political blogs and sites--was not invited.

Greatly admiring the crushing win of Barbara Boxer (D-CA) I clicked on the ad she bought over at Kos's place to stop Condi Rice yesterday. At least she knew where to look for help, but after enough clicks to arrive at "get involved" I was offered one option: give money, liberal.

Such silence and cluelessness is greatly disheartening so, if I may, Mr. Reid, I'm going to offer y'all some explanations and scenarios about asking the blogosphere for help, along with an observation about how your "war room" would be different if you had invited us in. I won't waste your time, sir.

The blogosphere--part of which rushed into the Dean campaign and showed its power--only has one item on its agenda: activity. That's it. The only ethos of honor among those chained to the machines dreaming of a real America is that a citizen do something civically. Inviting us in won't mean we take over the party, transform all your employment to us, or assault your ideals.

Please--there is no agenda or leadership of the blogosphere. There is no threat at all from those who pray at the altar of political http organizing, just a recognition that the browser is a great facilitator of classic political organizing and conversation, not some hoary beast that's difficult to understand or harness.

The blogosphere likes to serve. If you know how to ask in the right way and ask for the right things you get nuclear results, like a nobody from VT becoming the Democratic candidate frontrunner and getting endorsed by Al Gore.

The first thing you have to do is talk to us, so set up a blog with a great writer in the war room. That's all a blog does--after reading it enough times we're positive there's real humans in the room just like us who hope and dream and work and think and laugh and most of all, cares like we do. Then we'll trust you.

If you need a blogger, ask. I hope I can explain this to you, sir, but you have to understand that in the blogosphere a Senator is a rock star, a brilliant orb of goodiness in the fevered mind of the political junkie. If you mailed Kos a request for one guest entry to introduce your war room blog it would be one of the high points of his life, a cherished memory of triumph and honor that would throb in his soul forever. In a twinkling forty incredible writers would volunteer, and your umbilical to salvation, presto, would appear.

Your guest entry asks for three goals introducing the war room blog: labor, media generation, and cash.

If a volunteer can show up in DC in five days to work 12 x 7 for 45 days, food and lodging somehow taken care of (local DC Democrats get organized to take them in, hopefully), have a wireless laptop, have campaign experience and always follow orders from a Reid staffer, there are forty labor slots open at the war room. They'd all fill in 5 days, Harry.

Use a media generation strategy that engages the blogosphere with polling. Offer blog readers five different options of a commercial and abide by the will of the readers (this isn't all of your media engagement, okay? Just try it) in the polling results. Carefully read all the comments to get amazed at the incredible wealth of good ideas, and ultimately great commercials, that come out of this easy process.

Volunteers--earnest, often enviably brilliant human souls who are giddy to help just because you asked--saturate the web with still and Flash graphics delivering war-room approved messaging. Your war room has a web messaging and graphic strategy, right, Harry?

Ahem. Then, sir, you ask for money. Please don't come to us like a Tijuana whore and demand cash to get involved. Just be yourself in the screens as you have fun in the browser, it's a blast, I swear, and the money will crash in with just a small donation link at the war room blog.

Still don't believe me, I see. All right; develop a core messaging strategy--say, "what Social Security has personally delivered to my family"--and ask your celebrity Senate buddies to guest entry on all the big liberal political blogs. They tell their story and ask for cash, for whatever is needed at the war room. Prepare to be amazed, that's all I'm going to say.

The software tools to do all this are childishly simple and absurdly cheap. IT infrastructure costs are dirt cheap, especially using ROI. All you need is committed humans at the screens, Mr. Reid, because when I started writing at 0430 today your "war room" was empty and utterly lifeless.

Had your net volunteers been asked in at least five or six would have been up at 0430 on a Sunday, working and engaging the base through the screens, just yap, mostly, but I keep being amazed how just a little plain human contact keeps being discounted as unimportant in this world. It's not, and that's all the blogosphere represents, Mr. Reid, human political contact with thermonuclear potential.

You war room wouldn't be dead, but humming with energy, music, pizza crusts, hope and, in a new and exciting way, an expression of the American experience that will keep our cherished Democratic party ideals alive.

If you still don't believe any of this call me for my resume and I'll prove it to you. That goes for you too, Senator Boxer.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/16/10112/1506

In the comments section someone posts a link to Harry Reid's e-mail for people to contact him and encourage him to do this.

[NVMojo]

1. this is excellent and I hope the staffers are reading this ...most of them

are out of touch with THE PEOPLE! There are a few that are jewels and I'd name them here but I don't want to cause trouble for them but the ones who work in Nevada ...YUCK!!!!

Do this!!!

[Pirate Smile]

2. kick

[bush_is_wacko]

3. Oh for pete's sake. I had to page down forever to try and find the link

To save other's the trouble I'll post it here. I have to say though I'm not sure these Senators even LOOK at email. They do not seem to be very computer savvy. Congress.org has email links to both Boxer and Reid. I have gotten replies back from Boxer using that link. I don't beleive Reid has ever replied back to me, neither has Kennedy, or several other "old time" politicians. Because of that I recommend FAXING. It is the quickest way to get a message to these type of congressional leaders.

I love the idea behind this blog. The message needs to be clear to all our leaders that we are not just endless money suppliers, but we can and will IF and ONLY if they use our BEST skills. Most of us don't have the funds to keep throwing our dollars at them endlessly. We need to be utilized in a way that helps the party far more than $$$!

Harry Reid
528 Hart Senate Building
Washington DC, 20510-2803
phone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]

Barbara Boxer
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington DC, 20510-0505
Phone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]

[Pirate Smile]

4. Look at this link. Do you think they may have actually got the message?

http://democrats.senate.gov/

We will find out.

[Wilms]

5. Good. Kick n/t

[Rhiannon12866]

8. I received this e-mail from Senator Reid, just today. It gave me hope.

I'm sure that it's in response to my having contacted him, among others, in support of their recent allegations of voter fraud in Ohio. Notice the new website that he plans on launching, to increase citizen participation in government. I am certainly willing to give it, and him, a chance.:shrug:


Re: Thank you

Dear Friend,

I wanted to send an email to say thank you for the kind and powerful words you wrote me last week.

History has shown us that the right to vote has always demanded vigilance, responsibility and hard work from citizens and legislators alike. And the sad fact is disenfranchisement continues even today.

Thanks to your support, Senator Boxer and I we were able to use these facts to force the senate into a public debate on voting rights. But that was only the beginning. Now the Senate must act to correct the errors and injustice
of the voting system still visible in the 2004 election. It is a fight that I promise you I will champion as Democratic leader.

Although I was able to help enact landmark reforms in ballot box protection for my home state of Nevada this year, suppression efforts were still made. Calls, which we were unable to trace, told voters that Election Day was
November 3rd, not November 2nd. And our registration process was also tainted by the proven destruction of Democratic voter registration forms.

We know that in Ohio and across the country, precincts with large minority populations had disproportionately long lines because there weren't enough voting machines in those precincts. And blanket challenges to Ohio voters
were merely a thinly veiled effort to suppress the vote.

During the next session of Congress we face many other tough battles including the fight to save Social Security from the Republican plan to phase it out in favor of benefit cuts and private accounts. Social Security
is America's promise of retirement security, but through news reports and White House leaks, we know the President intends to break this promise in order to reward Wall Street with windfalls.

We're up against some very powerful opponents, and to win this fight you and I will need to work side by side, from battles on the Senate floor to debates in cities and towns around this nation. Together we can make sure
the values of fairness, security and opportunity survive the Republican onslaught and remain a part of the American experience.

To help our work together, in the next few weeks I plan on launching Democrats.gov, which will introduce new methods of citizen participation in Government. I will be in touch with you during this time to let you know how
you can get involved and strengthen your voice in government.

Once again thank you for your letters and kind words. They meant more to me than you could ever know.

Sincerely,

Harry Reid

[Amaryllis]

6. Conyers gets it. He used us brilliantly, and thanked us! I went with a

small group to talk to my senator's aide on Jan. 5th, and we had Conyers' 102 page report. The aide said, "Oh, I didn't know that had been released to the public already."

Umm...yes. We probably had it before you did. We get all this stuff immediately because Conyers is one of the few congress people who get how it works.

[onecitizen]

7. For the last 4 years.........

I thought they just didn't "get" it. But in the last 4 WEEKS I've decided, for whatever reason, they don't CARE.

[Bill Bored]

9. While you're at it:

Use the form on this page:
<http://reid.senate.gov/email_form.cfm >
to tell Harry Reid to amend S2437 to include not only a voter-verified paper ballot, but also mandatory random audits to verify the vote. Like this:

>>
Topic: Government

Dear Senator Reid,

Please continue to work for Verified Voting and amend S2437 to include mandatory random audits to verify the vote. The paper ballot alone is not enough. It is only a placebo without statistically significant random auditing of at least 5% of all precincts.

If you do not find Republican support for this, please bring it to the attention of the media as soon as possible by naming names. (I.e., Frist, Lott, McConnell, DeLay, Hastert, Ney or even Ensign!)

Although it need not be politicized, this is an issue that can unite the Deomcratic party better than apple pie and show the People who is really for democracy and who isn't. Please take advantage of this, but more importantly, please get this legislation passed.

Thank you.
>>

[Rhiannon12866]

10. Thanks! n/t

[jdog]

11. Great post. As I listened to Barbara Boxer on CSPAN

the other day I thought the reason she was able to assimilate so much information so clearly was that she had researchers (on DU and elsewhere) all over the country working for her. You can't pay a large enough staff to provide that kind of support!