Winning November by acting this week
Achieving any more of the Democratic agenda during the last 2 years of the Biden presidency fairly certainly depends on gaining a net of two more senators this November, and both the future of the Democratic Party and the survival of the Earth’s climate depend less certainly on the passing of that agenda in something near that time frame.
That depends on only a few states which have seated Republican senators who are up for election this year, and some of those states are highly unlikely to vote Democratic. Of those few Republican senators, one is Marco Rubio. He has a probable Democratic opponent who would make an excellent senator and who has a great story. Unfortunately, even with that, Ms. Demings was given fairly low probability of beating Rubio as of Mar. 1.
And then Sen. Rubio was one of the congressmen on a Zoom call with President Zelensky. Ukraine asked that the existence of the call not be revealed until Zelensky was given a chance to leave his location. More than 100 participants honored that request. Rubio and Senator Daines (R MT) did not. Right now, that misbehavior is a matter of frequent discussion and common disapproval.
It is obviously in our interest to keep it in people’s attention as long as possible. (People who live in Montana can concentrate on Daines if the wish, but the rest of us should probably concentrate on Rubio; Daines is not up until 2026.)
Probably the best tool we have is writing Letters To the Editor. If you have Facebook readers in the state, then post on how disgusting his behavior is. Retweeting or commenting on tweets on the subject has something of the same effect. An often-ignored method of keeping a subject in the public consciousness is clicking through on recent stories on the subject listed on Google.
I’ll expand on these methods after the jump.
It is great if your LTE is printed and hundreds or thousands of subscribers read your take on Rubio’s egotistical behavior. If it is not printed, though, it is usually read by at least one reporter or editor dealing with the issue. Then, too, papers trying to be fair are likelier to print another letter taking a similar point of view. The more letters on an issue the paper receives, the likelier they are to print a follow-up story.
Floridians have, by far, he best chance to be quoted in Florida newspapers. A comparable pattern applies to LTEs from the paper’s circulation area.
Here is a list of the newspapers in Florida with the highest circulation.
Google the paper to which you want to send Your LTE and the word, “Letters.” Most papers give explicit directions as to where to send LTEs and their rules about them. Most require strict word limits, that you give your address and phone number, and that the LTE be exclusive to them. Even if that is not explicitly stated, any second LTE should be on a quite different subject, but there are several subjects you can write about, that Rubio’s original post was selfish or stupid, that his excuse was unpersuasive, that his constituents have chosen Zelensky but it looks like he has chosen Putin etc.
Those of us living outside Florida should probably concentrate on national publications or write to publications in our area when they cover the story. When reporters are aware that their state’s senator is getting national attention or national criticism, that is news.
Electronic newsmedia often have comment sections which you can treat much like LTE columns.
When you click on a news story on Google, that keeps the story on top of the available choices. Some news shops also count their clicks on each story to inform their decision about what to follow up. (And even Rubio’s explanations are good for our side; when you’re excusing, you’re losing.
If you’re on either of these platforms, you probably know more about their impact than I do. The more discussion of Rubo’s wrongdoing, the better.