Here's a thought experiment. I was re-reading some of my past comments tonight and came across this one, attached to Chris' post "Why You Should Help Build the Progressive Block" on July 1. I wrote:
Like you say, it is easier to get the progressive Dems because they are our ideological cohorts. I want to rephrase this in another way, which is that we start every piece of legislation with John Tanner with him being in a "culture of caution" type of mentality, and we have to flip him. With a Keith Ellison, we start from a position that he will likely tend to agree with the position we would like him to take, and need to ask him to withstand pressure.
My question is what kinds of pressure are needed to get members to "stand firm" "hold on" against pressure from the leadership, corporate interests, etc. It seems to require re-learning pressure tactics, with some exceptions like a call to a House office would be phrased likely the same way.
For example, I just saw PCCC's ad on TV last night trashing Snowe, Nelson etc. for taking insurance industry money. What would our ad asking Ellison and Woolsey to maintain their position refusing to vote for a bill without a public option look like? I can see a number of possibilities, including a more generic ad on why the public option is important. But I think the tactics may be different.
I want to think a little bit about the pressure tactics we've used for our own side so far. The successful campaign to raise over $400,000 to thank Progressive Block members was, I think, the first major effort to help support the Progressive Block. It used a carrot rather than a stick. My thought experiment is what would happen if we took the carrot approach to the airwaves. I only see the ads aired on local TV, but so far, they range from ads from organizations like PCCC trashing Ben Nelson to AHIP and other front groups vaguely asking for Congress to slow down/find a bipartisan solution, to conservative groups threatening death panels and cuts to Medicare with images of worried seniors. But the ads are united in one fact- they are universally negative.
What if, as a change of pace, we aired a positive ad. Seabrook has a good start in a reply to my comment. What if we showed a smiling Earl Blumenauer, lauded his commitment to a strong public option that will reduce costs and cover the uninsured, etc., and asked constituents to call and thank him? The theory behind pressuring members to change their position is to incite anger and angry phone calls to the member to get them to flip. Is there any less use behind doing the opposite? Is money raised to give to campaign accounts on ActBlue better used to go on TV and thank Democrats who are most likely to betray the public option? It would obviously cost more than what's been put into most members' accounts, but perhaps it would be more effective to get them to stand firm.
And I believe that constituents eventually get turned off by relentless stream of negative ads, muting the TV, changing the channel. A positive ad might grab attention and make them look at the public option a different way. It could carry over to, say, pressure on Ron Wyden. Perhaps constituents would start asking him why he isn't supporting it like Blumenauer is, if they can be convinced that it's a good thing.
I don't know the answer, but I thought I would put it out there for some thoughts.
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