You've heard of money bombs. The candidate requests that everybody donate what they can on one given day. The goal is to have everyone pitching in together and putting up incredible numbers. The reward for taking an your donation, large or small, is that you get to see the results in real time, as the money rolls in.
Right now, however, health-care reform can be better served by a massive phone effort. The various progressive websites I visit are urging to pick up the phone and call my representative or senator. Well, I always ask myself, is my single call really going to make a difference? Probably not, I end up thinking. Who's going to know the difference? So I do nothing.
[Disclaimer: if this idea has already been put out there and I haven't been paying attention, sorry!]
What would be really helpful, is a call meter, similar to the money meters used for fundraising online. I don't pretend to know how that would work, technically. I think one way we could do this, in the coming days, which are going to be so vital to us as a nation would be to have a diary requesting our calls, and at the bottom would be a poll asking how many congressional offices you were able to reach that day. It would be the responsibility of the diarist to tally the votes every so often (maybe on the hour) and retitle the post to include the latest total.
What's the difference? Home-field advantage. 60,000 screaming fans in a stadium can make a difference in any contest. If I see everybody else making those calls, damned if I won't want to join in. And I think is so will many more of you out there.
Look at what we're up against. The corporations have the money advantage. Fox News is relentlessly whipping its audience into a paranoid frenzy. The rest of the media pretend to be objective and report both sides, without much effort to ascertain whether one side is lying or not.
Meanwhile, we have Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow ranting about issues I am already quite familiar with. I'm familiar with them because I come to this site. That's why we all come here -- to learn, to discuss, to inspire.
Our strength is in numbers. Making that phone call is a ridiculously simple thing to do, but without any feedback mechanism, you feel like a drop in the bucket. The solution is simple. Show me the bucket!
The Internet is growing up and discovering its own power. In the last presidential election, the Internet made it possible for a relatively unknown candidate named Barack Obama to beat the well-funded and thoroughly connected Hillary Clinton. The Internet also enabled Obama to outspend John McCain. It's a fact -- the Internet was the game changer.
Although I believe that those who frequent the Internet regularly tend to be more progressive than the population at large, as a force, they remain mostly distracted and isolated. Well it's time to tap into power by giving us a scoreboard to follow.
When your team wins, you feel like you own a piece of that victory because you cheered and rooted for them, even though it might have been all by your self in front of the TV.
Now I know that the White House does a similar thing by counting the phone calls made through its site. But much as I admire and respect our president, I would rather cheer him on from the stands, with the general public.
Instead of coming to this site and watching the latest fight between the pragmatists and the principled, I would like to see one giant roar in the direction of our corporate-donation-dependent representatives. Wouldn't that be nice for a change?
And let's not forget that there may be an even bigger payoff down the road. If greater numbers of individuals can be mobilized to make phone calls by simply making them feel good about it, how much more likely is that these same individuals are going to be there when it's time to organize on the street and get the votes out in November?
I am sick and tired of hearing that the Republican base, or the tea party members, or the conservative evangelicals and their ilk are more fired up than we are. Sick of it. People, we need to get together, and to do that we have to be able to measure our strength. And if we do become strong, then we'll give those wavering "centrists" something to think about. Something better than a check to pay for the TV ads. TV is on the way out! The Internet is on the way up. Go team!!!
Oh, and in case you're wondering, I've never made a call before. But at 9 am, I'll do it.
The House and Senate switchboard can be reached at (202) 224-3121.
Here's a quick poll. Let's fight the good fight together.
UPDATE: Did it. Reached my congresswoman. That was pretty painless.