I'm asking nicely. By the time you're done with DKos today, I want you to click that link.
If you're on this site today, the chances are good that you have some free time. You'd like to use it to chat with others about politics and policy, about what Democrats should be doing and are (or aren't.)
That's great. I enjoy that as well -- love it, even. But that's not why we're really here.
This isn't, at root, a debate society. It's a community that exists to facilitate action.
We're here to elect more and better Democrats.
I want to ask for thirty minutes of your time -- time that you can leaven with rest breaks while you chat on Daily Kos. Maybe it'll take an hour. If you get hooked on it, you might want to spend more time.
I'm asking you to make twenty calls to NY-20 today. If you want to, consider it paying your DKos dues.
Twenty calls.
That doesn't mean talking to twenty people. There will be wrong numbers, people not home, no-answers, maybe even some quaint busy signals. You will probably be leaving a lot of answering machine messages. Then again, some of the time, you may reach some living human beings who are trying to decide whether they will support Democrat Scott Murphy for now-Senator Kirstin Gillibrand's old seat in NY-20 or whether they'll vote for the name they've more likely heard, carpetbagging Republican leader Jimmy "Disco" Tedisco.
Or they may, like many people, be inclined to support the Democrats but don't even realize that there's a special election coming up on March 31.
Tedisco has more money. The Republican Party was very generous to him. But Murphy -- if people like us do what we can -- has more people. They have to hire people to do what people like us -- if "us" includes you -- will do for free.
The difference in this race -- just like the difference could have been in the LA-04 race last December that we lost by a mere 357 votes (!) -- is virtual phonebanking. People from all over the country decide that, why yes, they would like Senator Gillibrands seat to go to another Democrat, they would like to drive one more nail into the coffin of modern crazy conservatism.
Talk is cheap. Phonebanking is pretty cheap too -- if the people who talk about needing more and better Democrats in Congress act on their professed beliefs.
Once again, I quote mindoca's comment from two days ago:
I'd like folks to know that this district is huge and scattered all over the place (can you say gerrymandered?) and large swaths of it are rural, so...
phonebanking is absolutely critical to our success. In other words, it is not easily canvassed territory, and wouldn't be even if we had months instead of weeks, so please get on the phone!
Get it? This district is too much to reach in a short time by canvassing. If we're going to win, it's going to be by phonebanking.
If you're willing to sign up and phonebank, let us all know in a comment below. We can trade stories and encouragement and by our examples encourage others to join us. If you're willing to pledge a certain number of calls, we'll encourage you to get there.
If you want some more reasons why you should phonebank, please read my diary from yesterday.
Here, once again, is the link you need to make calls. Ready ... aim ... dial!