I have been beating the drum here for years now (as have many others) to get people on this site involved in making phonebanking calls, especially for special elections. It's a pretty thankless job, with lots of diaries scraping along in the low single digits.
Well, yesterday, on the freaking front page, Markos made a pitch for phonebankers for Bill Halter's campaign -- and he got ten comments. WTF? Markos never gets only ten comments! He could write a front page story about clipping his toenails and break forty comments!
His problem is that he ran into the site's resistance to phonebanking! Well, I think I can get more than ten comments on this diary -- and can convince some of you to get onto the phone today as well!
(Oh yeah, as Markos notes and as all phonebanking diaries apparently must note, if you don't want to phonebank, you can donate instead!)
UPDATE: HOW THE HALTER PHONE BANK WORKS:
(Note: that orange part in the line above? That's the link!)
They are doing things in shifts. That means that, when you go to that link up there, you will be asked to indicate your availability for one or more of the following shifts:
Tuesday, May 18, 9am-12pm Central (10am-1pm Eastern)
Tuesday, May 18, 12pm-3pm Central (1pm-4pm Eastern)
Tuesday, May 18, 3pm-5pm Central (4pm-6pm Eastern)
Tuesday, May 18, 5pm-7:30pm Central (6pm-8:30pm Eastern)
The next one starts at noon Central. Do not worry (says I, not them) if you cannot work the entire shift. Just pitch in. Presumably, there is plenty of work. Sign up as early today as you can; they will e-mail you instructions.
UPDATE 2: distraught has links to possible Sestak and Conway national phone banks below, but I haven't had time to verify them. Worth a shot if you're interested in them!
For ye of little faith, remember that it was people on this very site who, through their national phonebanking, helped put Scott Murphy over the top in the NY-20 special election in early 2009, thereby helping enact the health reform bill this year. (Think about it: no Scott Murphy probably means no Bill Owens in NY-23, and we're down two votes right there.) I reviewed some of the arguments about the value of phonebanking the last time I tried pushing it here (the CA-AD-72 election); the main idea is that if we can build a force that takes on targets of opportunity, we can help to counteract the Republican infrastructure that subsidizes people to go out and do the same on their end. In this election, it's /especially] useful, because we can build up in preparation for a runoff election between Halter and Lincoln in a few weeks.
Now why aren't you likely to do it? Two reasons: lack of time and fear.
I can't do much about your lack of time; it's going to keep me sidelined today as well. (I wrote this last night. I do wish that I'd known about this earlier; I could have done it last weekend. At least I can do it next weekend to prepare for the runoff!) But I can do something about your fear.
BE NOT AFRAID, NOVICE PHONEBANKER, BE NOT AFRAID!
You are probably worried -- and if you search the "phonebanking" or "phone banking" tags, or search diaries on the topic, you'll see people like you expressing this worry -- that you're somehow going to make a mistake, that you'll represent the campaign poorly, that you'll be counterproductive.
In order: you probably will, you probably won't, and you almost surely won't be.
Talking to strangers -- which is, after all, what we do here! -- is an amazing experience. I learned as much about what was going on in the country making thousands of calls for the Obama campaign, nationwide, in 2008 as I did from reading the blogs. You get to see what unsophisticated people think -- one think you can't easily get from DKos!
You think that you won't have the message memorized? Good! Frankly, it's endearing. If it weren't a little dishonest, I would recommend that people start out every voter contact by phone with "I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous." Most people are nurturing, given the chance, and this gets them on your side. They'd be nervous if they were calling, too! There's a subliminal message here: a campaign that gets even nervous people onto the phones must be something pretty worthwhile!
So don't worry about memorizing the script, though if they sit still for your reading it, so much the better; you'll be an effective ad. Know a few basic talking points, about who is and isn't a good Democrat, and connect on an individual level and speak from the heart.
I've said it a thousand times: we're not just political observers here, we're political actors. So, yeah, follow that link and get onto the phone. Getting only ten comments for a front page phonebanking pitch wasn't Markos's failure, but ours. Let's step up to the plate and give a good Democrat a hand!