As many of you know, early yesterday morning stephdray diaried an Open Letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. It was powerful. It was eloquent. It garnered (at my last count) around 150 "Recommends." A highlight
:
"Senator Reid, to be frank, you must get control of your caucus. There have been three votes in the past four months that have meant a great deal to Democrats in which you got steamrolled. I know you're not going to win every battle--but you need to win one, and you need to do it yesterday."
Our fax campaign, and the Senator's response, below...
As many of you also know, several of us got up a little, impromptu "campaign" to fax steph's Open Letter to Sen. Reid's Washington, DC office, with personal cover letters. For a "spur-of-the-moment" effort, I think it went well, with more than a dozen confirmed faxes, and several confirmed overnight mailings of steph's letter to his office. This began around 11:00 a.m. Eastern, so he was getting one or two faxes of steph's letter into his office (remember, with personal cover letters, too) every hour. And, of course, his staff realized that steph's letter was on the www (a.k.a. "internets") on the ever-popular Daily Kos site and was the "hot item" of the day!
Well, by a little after 3:00 p.m. Eastern, steph's letter on kos and our fax campaign so got the attention of Reid (likely a bright staffer) that he responded, to wit:
A message from Senator Reid (3.62 / 8)
Stephanie and the entire Kos community,
I wanted to write a brief response to your open letter. First let me say I owe everyone on this blog a thank you for your hard work on behalf of Democrats.
Don't lose faith and don't be disheartened. We all won't agree on every issue and we won't always win on the floor, but working together we will succeed. Just a few short months ago conventional wisdom was George Bush's Social Security Privatization plan would easily get through Congress. Now with our caucus united, I can assure you any plan which privatizes Social Security is dead on arrival in the United States Senate.
I encourage to keep writing letters, emailing, signing petitions, faxing, and posting your thoughts on blogs. We are listening and you are making a difference.
- Harry Reid
by Senate Democratic Communications Center on Wed Mar 9th, 2005 at 14:08:03 CDT
Two reactions I think are shared by most of us: First of all, that the Senate Minority Leader would feel compelled (obliged, whatever) to write a response and post it as a comment on steph's diary says something, something, about the organizational power of this website. Keep in mind, our little fax and mail campaign was, as I said, spur-of-the-moment. I think Alohaleezy first suggested it, I and others kind of ran with it, RenaRF volunteered her local-to-DC fax machine to send faxes for those who couldn't (they sent their covers to her as Word docs, and she took it from their -- several took her up on her generous offer!). . . so many pitched in. At any rate, I think this little "test drive" bore fruit and we should REMEMBER this.
Second, while somewhat flattered by the attention from The Hill, Ried's (likely ghostwritten, of course) letter was rather patronizing and lame. What's this "we all won't agree on every issue" crap? Well, duh, of course not, but on the "MBNA Enrichment Bill" and "Gonzales For Torture" campaign it seems, just seems, to me that Democrats should all agree. Good Lord in heaven, if House and Senate Democrats can't be "for the little guy" (and gal) and against the already bloated-with-billions credit card industry, what's the point in having Democrats on the Hill??? Why don't we just sign all of our paychecks over to MBNA, the Rx industry, James Dobson and Halliburton right now, throw ourselves off something tall and call it a day?
Well, I'm not quite ready to do that (the mortgage company would be ticked at the inconvenience if I killed myself), but I am ready to say to Senator Reid:
"Thank you for your efforts. Any effort now beats what seemed to be no effort a year ago (noting that the "Screw the Already Overburned with Crushing Debt Bill" has been defeated over that past half-dozen years -- until now!). That said, there needs to be SOME consensus among the Democratic Caucus over what are and what are not Democratic Values. Screwing the downtrodden to further enrich the credit card industry, in my humble opinion, is NOT a Democratic Value. But, since I haven't read the updated manual, yet, maybe I'm missing something."
So, in closing, kudos to stephdray and all those who wrenched a response from Senator Reid yesterday. They really, really, know we're out hear now! and that can only be good news.
Don't let up.
BenGoshi
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