I got a call last night from a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It didn't go well.
She began with thanking me for my past generosity, and started her request for an additional donation. I interrupted her spiel, however, saying, as best I can recall, "Yes, I did give what I could. Not much, but frequently. All to get to the 60 senators you said you needed. But until the Democrats - excuse the vulgarity in advance - but until the Democrats grow some balls and start acting like a majority party, you will not get another dime from me." She hung up before I got to the end of the sentence.
By the way, the 'excuse the vulgarity' phrase is literally what I said, because I don't customarily use coarse language with people I don't know. (I guess I save it for my friends and my family!) And I don't think she was so much offended by what I said; I think she realized that the call was not going to yield a donation and she bailed ASAP.
I forgot to add (and would have if she'd stayed on the line) that I helped them get to 60 senators by continuing to donate to Al Franken's campaign when the DSCC and the Democrats in general seemed to be nowhere during that seven month stretch.
I'd love it if we could get this kind of response going to Democratic fundraising efforts; let's put them on notice that they weren't given this majority in both houses to see how many friendship badges they could collect from Republicans. They were given this majority to undo the damage done by Bush/Cheney and to get the people's business done.
MSM has been full of stories about the delays, the watering down, the abandonment of key elements in the health care reform legislation as it makes its way through Congress. Much is being spouted about how senators and representatives will be hearing from their constituents about their opposition to 'socialized medicine'.
How about we start building fires on the other side? I heard a woman from Texas on Thom Hartman's show this morning; she was asking Sen. Bernie Sanders what she could do, since writing to her own senators (Hutchinson/Cornyn) wouldn't be of help. She proposed that we start taking it to the streets, with huge Labor Day rallies in support of health care reform. I for one, would love to see rallies in every city and town in the country to let Congress know we want real reform, and we want it now, in this once-in-a-generation moment.
If we start now, there's six weeks to build. I won't be at Netroots Nation, alas, but if there is something akin this Labor Day idea that starts to build there, please let us know. (I'm in Los Angeles, and the organizational efforts behind a lot of the anti-war marches in this neck of the woods were pretty poor.)
Tonight's edition of Countdown led with a story about how the geniuses behind the tea-bagging movement are set to disrupt town hall meetings across the country when Democratic reps try to meet with their constituents. You know that MSM will be all over that. Let's give them a really big story to cover before Congress heads back after Labor Day.