Open Left

Another option is a variant of the Daily Kos strategy (4.00 / 3)

Progressive pressure groups should pool their resources and conduct independent polls BY DISTRICT on issues on which Blue Dogs seem likely to buckle.  Instead of showing Massa national numbers after the fact, we should be able to show him actual district numbers before the fact.  Hundreds of copies aren't necessary -- one copy of a poll that proves his district is unhappy with his vote should be enough.

ProgressiveHistorians: History For Our Future

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by: Nonpartisan @ Mon Jul 06, 2009 at 15:32:43 PM CDT

Very expensive (4.00 / 2)

that strategy would be great--if we had an unlimited amount of resources. Unfotunately, we do not, even though the opposition does.

Even if we could poll a few dozen swing districts on every major piece of legislation, the opposition could do so as well. And they could skew the polling questitons enough to make the result favorable to them.

No--we need to start discrediting contiuent phone calls themselves. this is a game we fundamentally can not win. As such, we need to start shutting the game down.

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by: Chris Bowers @ Mon Jul 06, 2009 at 15:40:16 PM CDT

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I heard that Congresspeople who care about phone calls (0.00 / 0)

Are called "Bedwetters" by their peers.

My instinct is that Massa is being disingenuous.  You're not saying anything that all of D.C. doesn't already know; that's why the lowest-paid staffer in the Congressional office handles the calls.

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by: TValley @ Mon Jul 06, 2009 at 20:22:04 PM CDT

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Not undoable (0.00 / 0)

Given all the money spent on issue ads, for example, it would actually be far more cost effective to do polls to accompany those ads -- as I'm sure many of these organizations actually do. (You wouldn't run an ad in a district where the issue was actually unpopular, after all.) These orgs may not poll at district levels (many of the ads focus on Senators, not Congresspeople), but I still don't think it would be unreasonable to do polling in 15-20 districts on issues like health care. Keep the questions to a minimum and the polls won't be too expensive... and could be very powerful.  

~Ryan

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by: RyansTake @ Tue Jul 07, 2009 at 12:21:58 PM CDT

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