I like seeing activists and bloggers focused and fighting for a cause/candidate. I like seeing passionate people channel their energies into productive action.
What I don't like seeing and what I've seen more and more of lately is ineffective action or promotion of bad tactics.
I understand the impulse to do what you think makes sense or to do something that will get you some immediate gratification. But it's always important to take a step back and think about whether your favored actions will actually make a difference or if it's the most efficient path.
So what works when it comes to influencing members of Congress?
Actually, before I get to that, three things:
- I think we should start with remembering that bloggers are just one cog in the wheel. There are other organizations doing critical work to help get progressive legislation passed. There's some overlap -- some bloggers are also members of various organizations. But it's important for bloggers to understand that they are not necessarily the center of the activist world. Blogosphere triumphalism doesn't do bloggers a lot of good in the long run. Giving the blogosphere more credit than it deserves for moving something forward is something that I've seen major bloggers and commenters do way too often. I'm not saying that the blogosphere shouldn't get some credit -- just that in some cases, despite the claims that you'll sometimes read on blogs, blogosphere impact was negligible or simply overstated. Also, I frequently see things like "but we're the base!" ("we" in this instance, being bloggers). Um, no, bloggers are a part of the base. In fact, some parts of the base are underrepresented in the blogosphere (online but not reading the blogs much) or not online at all. (Think poor minorities or more moderate yellow dog Dems.) If you don't keep this in mind, you're efforts at persuading those around you (as opposed to preaching to the choir) will either be completely ineffective or won't be as efficient as they could be. (For that matter, about 20% of Obama's core supporters were independents or Republicans. I don't know what the breakdown is for the rest of the 80%, but suffice it to say a significant chunk of that is moderate and conservative Democrats.)
- Just because someone is advocating for action that you deem to be "not enough," doesn't mean that person is not progressive enough. There are many political consultants and operatives and legislative staffers who are truly moderate to conservative Democrats, but a majority are strong progressives. Just because someone advocates for a more moderate strategy or different tactics, doesn't mean that the person is 'backing off a position' or is 'selling out' or isn't 'a true progressive.' Sometimes the strategies and tactics that work best are simply not the ones that would be most gratifying to bloggers or are simply not the ones that on the surface seem like they'd work. While the legislation that gets passed and signed into law is often not as progressive as you'd like, it's absolutely the most we could've gotten at that point in time.
- Perspective is key. It seems like things move at a glacial pace for bloggers and activists. You've been working for something for years. An issue and a specific solution has been on your radar for eons, but the issue and proposed legislation may be something that is just starting to capture the attention of the broader public. What is too slow for you is really just right or too quick for everyone else. Don't forget that the heroes of the past often had to make compromises and that change took far longer than is sometimes remembered today. Change is hard. Democrats have been working for decades to pass expanded health care. Even in the blue state of Massachusetts, their "universal" health care plan just got passed and implemented in the last few years. If your suggestion is that someone can just go in and 'knock some heads,' please. That doesn't mean that someone shouldn't knock some heads or whatever -- the point is that it's not that simple.
Alright. So how to influence a member of Congress a.k.a. what you can do for your country...
- Members of Congress hold listening sessions, town halls or coffees for constituents in district/state and sometimes even in D.C. (for constituents who happen to be in town.) Attend them.
- Letters to the editor to local papers are important and can influence members, especially "small" states (states with lower populations) or rural areas. Community newspapers are sometimes read more than the major newspaper (but it never hurts to write to the big papers).
- Contact your member of Congress directly. You can call the member's D.C. office, but remember that calls to district/state offices are in some cases, more influential than calls to the D.C. office.
- Organize fellow residents of your state/district (or get involve with a local activist group -- even Organizing for America) and ask for a meeting with your member of Congress. Sometimes there are in-state and local groups that organize earned media events. Consider joining or helping out with those events. You may end up on your local news protesting Senator X for being against health care reform.
- Members of Congress will want to know how the piece of legislation is good for his/her district/state ("Is this legislation good for my district/state?"). That's why getting local people and their heart wrenching stories of being denied treatment by a health insurance company to members of Congress can have an effect.
One important thing...
You can NEVER go wrong with emphasizing local action. They ALL pay attention to in-state and in-district action, and anything that is generated locally.
What doesn't work.
- Contacting a member that is not yours can actually backfire. This is sometimes the case for more conservative Dems in redder states. The only time I've ever heard of out of state or out of district contacts being influential is if someone is looking to run for higher office or is looking to build a larger network for a leadership position (big donors). Just understand that there are instances where out of state and national campaigns are ignored entirely or in some cases, backfire. In many cases, bloggers are generally not in a position to know exactly which members of Congress will react adversely to out of district/state calls, so the best course of action is to stick to contacting YOUR members of Congress and doing things in YOUR community (see above list). You should do these things even if you are represented by Republicans. (Do conservatives avoid contacting Democrats just because a Democrat is representing them? No. If you need more convincing from me or anyone else to contact your Republican representatives anyway, then, I have no idea why you're on a Democratic activist blog in the first place.)
- Some members just absolutely hate anything (calls, ads, etc.) that looks like it came from a national organization. I've even heard of one member of Congress who even wanted an ad from a national organization praising him taken down. There are stories of members of Congress who threaten to cut off an organization if ads are running against them. The members of Congress who seem to be most disdainful of anything from some national organization that helicopters in, seem to be those from rural areas or small states (ahem, coincidentally often the ones who need the biggest push to support progressive legislation). These members of Congress often reflect the sentiments of their constituents; some parts of the country really, really don't like outsiders coming into their state (one way that progressives have been able to defeat conservative ballot initiatives in purple-to-red states is by aggressively painting the supporters of those measures as out of state busy bodies.) Point is that a national organzation that runs an attack ad or sends robocalls into a district/state can sometimes be unhelpful. (What's also annoying and really ineffective is when a national organization just floods D.C. offices with calls -- especially if the people who answer the phone quickly figure out that the calls were patched through indiscriminately and the person on the other end has no idea that they called the wrong member of Congress.)
Information for the above from my own experiences in politics and campaigns and gathering information from legislative aides on the Hill, current and former chiefs of staff to members of Congress (both progressive and moderate Dems), and political consultants who know members of Congress and how they work and some who have been working from outside the Hill to get progressive legislation to move forward (e.g. building grassroots support in the states where a member of Congress needs a push).