I'd say do this. Push the minimum wage solidarity. While you've got their attention, endorse some of the other things that matter, too - like stem cell research. Like things we NEED to implement in VETO-PROOF numbers.
And I'm serious - start softening them up about IMPEACHMENT. Really. Even though it's the Senate we're discussing here in this specific thread. Yes. I know IMPEACHMENT doesn't begin in the Senate. It begins in the House. But it concludes in the Senate with trial and, hopefully, conviction.
You HAVE TO KNOW: None of these people operates in a vacuum. NONE. Even though they work in the Senate chambers, you can be 100% certain that they rub elbows with senior staffers for House members, AND House members themselves. They all visit the same restaurants, gossip at the same parties and Georgetown townhouse receptions, go to the same dry cleaners, share rides to the same airports and hang in the same airport lounges. They see each other in the hallways, the cafeteria, the tunnel underneath Capitol Hill, the men's room, the ladies' room, on the way to ALL those things, and chit-chatting with each other to and from those press gaggles outside where the microphone stand gets set up and the cameras cluster. They see each other ALL OVER the place. Hell, they even live together - witness that NYTimes story about CONGRESSMAN George Miller's Georgetown townhouse that he lives in when he's in Washington - AND RENTS ROOMS TO TWO SENATORS (Schumer and Durbin) and ANOTHER CONGRESSMAN (Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3063216These guys LIVE together. I'm sure there are other versions of this same thing.
My point is - they're NOT by ANY means isolated from each other - the House and the Senate folk. They see each other, get together, break bread, and gossip together all the time. You can BET the day's business comes up for discussion, ALL THE TIME. What they're working on and what they're voting on. What they expect to do TOGETHER in the House/Senate conference committee where differing versions of the same bill (one from the House and one from the Senate) go to be reconciled and blended and remade as one whole.
That's why it's important to soften up the Senate people, so they're more open to talk about IMPEACHMENT that will be initiated by their pals in the House. And it's as important to make sure our House people are BOMBARDED with demands for IMPEACHMENT, so that they can't avoid it, can't get away from it, can't pretend they never heard of it, and can't remain calcified in their momentary opposition to it. If they KEEP getting BOMBARDED, it WILL eventually sink in through their thick skulls, just exactly the same way it did after November 7th, 2006. When the voters spoke loudly and clearly and more powerfully than any Diebold scheme to silence us AGAIN. And, if you'll notice, there's an amazingly large number of them, now, on both sides of the aisle, who repeatedly reference that - that the voters spoke clearly and they're paying attention ('cause they know they HAVE TO).
You plant the seeds.
You cross-pollinate.
You grow something successfully.
You reap the rewards.
Just do it. Keep nagging. Keep calling. Keep throwing in another "Oh, and by the way, as long as I've got you on the phone, can I also put a plug in for Congressmember/Senator So-and-So to seriously consider IMPEACHMENT? TO NOT rule it out? To ask Nancy Pelosi to put it back on the table? I'm not alone in this, either. I really want this. Etc."
What I've also done is try to frame it in ways that will make more sense, or be a little more accessable, to the staffer who's gonna compile the caller statistics and pass along a report to his/her supervisor who then passes it on to the Congressperson/Senator or his/her chief of staff. The objective is to make it memorable enough, or intriguing enough, or catchy enough, that it gets passed along to others. Because these people, too, chit-chat. I once planted the "contradicta" seed that way - just after she'd testified amid much ballyhoo on Capitol Hill - I think to the 9/11 Commission. Got some kid in some Congressional office. I referred to contradicta. He said "Hey, I heard that last week! That's SO funny! Some constituent called that in a week ago! contradicta! I love it!" I replied - "um, that was ME." He responded "Really?" I said "Yeah. I called this office last week and referred to her as contradicta and whoever it was who took my call seemed to like it." "That was YOU? That's SO cool! I love it! contradicta! It's GREAT! It's ALL OVER THE HILL now." I was stunned - "oh REALLY?" "Yeah! EVERYBODY'S talking about it!"
BINGO! Please forgive me because I'm not trying to brag here - this was just an example of something I myself experienced. Tons of DUers here have fabulous ideas, catchy buzzphrases, memorable ways to word things, scathingly and wickedly brilliant brainstorms - that deserve to be spread in places where it counts. And they should do it. We should make note of these things and help do the spreading and sharing. These staff people like to talk. They like to gossip. They'll spread it around, themselves, if it hit a nerve or tickled their funny bone or was otherwise juicy or something. They're humans and it's just human nature anyway. So why not make that work for you?
The other day, I called Feinstein's office about some scheduled matter for the Senate - some exhortation from here, I'm sure. WHILE I WAS AT IT, and since the timing seemed favorable, I said I wanted to broach the subject of IMPEACHMENT. I said I look at it like you do in business (since Feinstein is big on business, and was a businesswoman herself at one point, as her husband still is. She speaks fluent business, sometimes too much). I said - "If you run a business, and you have a rogue employee, an employee who loses the company an obscene amount of money, ruins your reputation with your clients, and is repeatedly and wilfully insubordinate, wouldn't you FIRE that employee? Would you keep such an employee on the payroll? Or would you consider him SO damaging and detrimental that it would be better in the long run just to get rid of him?" The young man who took my call suddenly changed a tiny bit in the timbre of his voice. He seemed more receptive. He said - "well, hmmm... yeah. I can see your point." I think I may have just spoken to him in a language he could understand, offering reasons he could not - or wouldn't be inclined to - refute. Perhaps that metaphor will be passed along beyond just that phone call. In the office, and beyond. The MORE, and the WIDER we plant those seeds, the more likely some of 'em are gonna take root. (BTW - I suspect this particular argument would hit a nerve QUITE wickedly with the staffers of Congressmembers and Senators who are free-marketers or pro-business and/or yammer on about the benefits of running government like a business. That's their strength - AND their vulnerability! You can score a very effective hit if you aim there.)
Because this guy will turn around, during lunchtime or a lull in the action, or maybe after hours when they meet in some pub for a beer, and chit-chat with his fellows, his supervisor, etc. May even run into Feinstein herself at some point. The good stuff he hears (whether it's from one of us or anybody else who calls in) will likely get shared, spread around. And those who heard some of that good stuff, when they get a chance, THEY in turn will spread it around farther, also. Just like they share and spread stories of crackpot callers (probably like me, also) or wise-ass constituents or some nut who sends in thirty rolls of toilet paper or some such crazy thing, or the lovelorn constituent who regularly proposes marriage to the legislator, or the soldier's sister who's in tears about her brother's latest letter wondering why he can't come home or why he doesn't have body armor or why his buddy just got blown away, or that lady who called in that day with that insanely sexy voice that every guy in the office hopes someday to get on the other end of the phone, or the straight-laced gal down the hall who got that singing Strip-o-Gram for her birthday. You know. Office stuff. Gossip. Idle chit-chat. Watercooler stuff.
And it could be that either the person you get on the other end of the phone is just hoping he or she can think of a way to frame the argument (because perhaps he or she is pro-IMPEACHMENT but hasn't found an effective argument for it), OR it's someone who was unfavorably predisposed toward IMPEACHMENT, but now hears an argument he/she can't logically or reasonably beat back. MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, you might figure out a way to change this person's mind. And if you score there, that person may turn around and change somebody else's mind about it, too - or at least give them something else to think about.
Hey, it's worth a try. You chip away at the resistance, again and again. Kinda like Chinese water torture. Drip-drip-drip, as many of us here used to post a few years back when we were just beginning to get worked up about the never-ending bush parade of abominations and it seemed like all the decks everywhere were stacked against us. Well, at one time, they were, weren't they? But after all that work we did (and other Dems, all over the country did, and Howard Dean did while all the naysayers were turning their noses up at him, and all the rest of everybody on the Good Guys side), LOOK WHERE WE ARE, NOW?!?!?!?!?!?!?! You lose NOTHING by trying. The only way you lose (and Howard himself said this) is when you give up. Or when you DON'T try.
Sorry this is long. But I KNOW this stuff works. You guys and everybody else who's done this have proven it!
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