While DailyKos writhes in the midst of yet another food fight, Seneca Doane steps up to the plate and shames them:
As many of you may know, I have been pushing people to make phone calls to NY-20, through this DCCC link, to help Democrat Scott Murphy defeat his opponent, Jim "Jimmy Disco" Tedisco, who chickened out of a debate this week, in the election on March 31 that will choose a member of Congress to replace now-Senator Kirstin Gillibrand.
By and large, you’re not doing it. I know this because I am the #2 caller on that site, and I haven’t done that much.
More after the jump.
Seneca points out that if more Kossacks had been moved to phonebank in the recent LA-04 runoff election -- an election that never made it to the front page of DKos until AFTER it was over* -- our guy would likely have won. Instead, he lost by less than 400 votes. NY-20 looks to be similarly close, and phonebanking would give things a nudge in the proper direction.
One of the things that was brought home to me, in the collapse of the Dean campaign in 2003-4 and the Edwards campaign in 2007-8, was that while the internet can be a powerful tool for change, all too often its potential is lost.
One of the most common ways for it to be lost is in the belief that an internet campaign can replace actually having a physical political base. (Kos pointed out over and over, much to this Edwards' backer's chagrin, that Edwards didn't have a machine behind him the way that Senators Clinton and Obama did. Neither did Dean in 2003-4, though Dean did some signal and pioneering work in using the internet as an organizing tool.) Another way is for people to simply feel that posting a comment or even a diary among people who are generally of the same or similar mindsets as oneself is as effective as phonebanking (or better yet, doorknocking if you live in the area) out among people, many of whom will likely (horrors!) not be in utter agreement with you.
I had been tempted to write a diary that was going to add to the pile of pie-fighting diaries that have piled up this weekend, but Seneca Doane shamed me out of it. Instead, I'm going to try and see if I can get Seneca's diary marching smartly up the Rec List, so more folks can see it and heed it. Won't you join me?
*BarbinMD notes that four FPs were done in November and December on LA-04, but really, that works out to one FP a week. Not exactly carpet bombing, folks.