GUYS: Here's PROOF that avalanching your reps with calls/emails/activism - WORKS.

[calimary]

From "Elle" magazine of all places. I'm glad to see this is spreading so far, and in so many unconventional places, too!

One of my own samples: Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota - Not my Senator but I DID send her campaign donations when she was trying to win a Senate seat in 2012. Which means she's up for reelection in the next cycle (2018).

Of the 1,400 people who've contacted Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) to share their opinions on Betsy DeVos, the woman President Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Education despite her curious lack of professional experience, approximately 1,330 of them opposed her confirmation. Don't ask DeVos to calculate it, but that's 95 percent.

Sen. Heitkamp has heard their voices. Earlier this morning, she announced that she could not support DeVos and would vote against her confirmation. She shared three statements on Twitter from three women in North Dakota, expressing their concern over DeVos' apparent "disregard for students with disabilities" and "half-hearted approach" to understanding how public education works nationwide: "We expect and request better for our children."

The fact that Heitkamp linked her decision to the number of constituents who called or wrote in proves that at least some of our elected officials are still responsive to the people they represent.

In other words, call like our democratic process depends on it. Because turns out, it does.


keep-calling-your-representatives-heidi-heitkamp-betsy-devos

I talked about it (and her) more, here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028553284

[SammyWinstonJack]

1. K & R

[ffr]

2. Caveat. It works on representatives.

Republicans are not representatives. Unfortunate mistake by any voter to assume that.

[calimary]

4. Well, in their case, you do it to make them uncomfortable.

As we're hearing they are from various reports about what's shared candidly during behind-closed-doors meetings when they think nobody's listening. We've seen those reports here. We've seen how nervous and upset they are because what they presumed would be an easy kill with "Obamacare" turns out to have been a red hot poker in the eye with their own constituents.

Make 'em uncomfortable! Make them uneasy. MY ideal goal is to make them reflexively reach for the Maalox bottle on the night stand, FIRST THING, before they even get out of bed in the morning. I've been in that exact position myself - where I started keeping a bottle of Maalox chewable on my bedside table. It was while I was working at a radio station where there'd been a management change and a format change and freshly severed heads were rolling down the hall (figuratively speaking of course) on a maddeningly frequent basis. There came one day, fairly swiftly, where my alarm went off and just reflexively, without even thinking, I reached for the Maalox bottle. I wasn't even fully awake yet, and that was my automatic response! Well - lemme tellya - when you get to THAT point, it finally dawns on you that MAN-OH-MAN YOU NEED CHANGE!!! And ASAP!!! In my case, that meant: find another job, PRONTO, and get the hell outta there!!!

In the case of a CON "representative", you want to make them extremely uncomfortable. You want to MAKE SURE they know how big the opposition is - on their own home turf. You want them destabilized! You want them worried. You want them unsettled. You want them nervous and mumbling to each other about "shit, all the people out there crowding my office" or as one hapless asshole put it (paraphrasing slightly) - "all these women up in my grill." You want them rendered unable to get away from it, unable to get any relief from it, surrounded and avalanched by it, you want the message sent that - "um - shit, this opposition is REALLY starting to give me heartburn..." You want them on edge, worried as never before that their reelection is coming up and they had no idea how much opposition there is out there, all of a sudden.

You want them uncomfortable and nervous as hell about towing the party line when they know THEIR OWN NECKS are on the block in the upcoming midterms - in 2018, folks!

Destabilize the enemy. They're definitely not used to it. And it knocks them off their stride, out of their complacency, and DEFINITELY out of their comfort zones. They've been sitting fat 'n' sassy and smug as can be, for far too long. They're ABSOLUTELY not used to this. And that's GOOD. You want them to feel like they're on shaky ground now. You don't want them to get a decent night's sleep - for quite some time. And you want them instinctively, reflexively, without even thinking, to be reaching for the Maalox bottle that will find its way into permanent residence on their bedside tables.

[moonscape]

3. If this is true, why isn't it in reliable mainstream news media? It would

be huge news, the vote that sinks DeVos since they need just one more.

Only places I could find this were Elle and Washington Times.

[calimary]

5. Hell, it took a few days before ANYBODY in the news media started bringing up

the very recent outrage that Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus had been admitted to the inner sanctum of intelligence briefings, DISPLACING the Director of National Intelligence AND the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That news broke over last weekend. Nobody even brought it up until various interview subjects started mentioning it - WHILE they were being interviewed about other topics, the following Monday. Could also have been because the protests at multiple airports around the country bigfooted the news. But it took at least two days before the story even got covered.

[moonscape]

6. Surely hope it's true. That means with no Dem defections she's out. He'll

nominate someone else awful, but hard to top DeVos in wretchedness.

[fishwax]

7. heitkamp is a dem, so we still need one more GOP vote

[moonscape]

8. Ahhh - thanks! Without knowing I assumed she was Repub! n/t

[Cha]

9. Mahalo, Mary!