A messaging plan

Preceding entry: Votes, money, organizing, messaging

[This is posted after Lessig launched phase 2 of the MAYDAY plan. I don't have a link for his speech right now, but when it is available, I will put it here. You should watch the speech in passing judgment on this entry.]

An imperative for doing tweeting campaigns is to have a messaging plan which tweeters will believe in and send tweets for.

This entry is to put something on the table for discussion.

There is ostensibly a stark partisan divide about "campaign finance reform." See Soul searching re: Gov't by People Act. Watch the Lessig speech to decide on whether the tweeting message should be non-partisan. I think it absolutely needs to be.

Lessig says the small sliver of funders effectively controls the policies of the country, that small sliver  has a bias, and the general public interest is ill served in the status quo.

Maybe that should be the central messaging of a tweeting campaign.

I propose a slightly different tack.

I believe, with willful culpablilty or not, the political class in Washington DC profits enormously from the status quo, and it would not profit so much from the campaign finance reform Lessig seeks. The DC political class does not want to change and will oppose change.

Further, the status quo results in poor laws being passed from the perspective of the general public. This is because, as to most matters of governmental action (legislation and regulation), in each niche, the interest of a small number of persons is greatly affected, and they are willing to spend large amounts to protect their interest in that niche, and the interest of the general public, on an individual basis, is affected only a little and that does not get translated into campaign contributions and appropriate Congressional support for the public interest in that niche.

The "money monster" in politics results in all the lawmakers scrambling to show their donors that the lawmakers did their best to look after the donors' particular interests, and this impedes the enactimet of "good" laws that serve the general public interest.

The Washington DC political class, including Congress, has a great aversion to acknowledging the truth of the foregoing. If you ask them a question about it, they won't talk about it.

To see the truth of what I say, please track through this blog entry (and links): Just answer the question, Gary Palmer.

So, here is what I propose for a first step in a campaign to "tweet to defeat" the money monster in politics.

There should be sent to your Senators and Representative in Washington an inquiry in the nature of "Is something fundamentally wrong with Congress?" This could be something along the lines of Open letter to Alabama legislation in Washington.

If you write to a Democrat, and the Democrat says, "I am a supporter of campaign finance reform legislation, and it is my Republican colleagues who are obstructionist," you should reply to your Democrat, "If you are in agreement that Congress has failed the American people, you need to say so expressly, and go into Republican districts to enunciate the same. If you don't do that, I am going to think you are just playing party politics." [Listen to the Lessig speech, and Q&A, related to this.]

On the matter of Democrats, please note that I could not get Democratic Representative Terri Sewell, in the Alabama 7th Congressional district, which is adjacent to my district, to respond to this letter Dear Representative Sewell, and I could not get Professor Mark Lester, the Democratic candidate in my 6th Congressional district, to respond to this Open letter to Professor Mark Lester.

The starting point here is to try to show that the political class in Washington DC cares more about its interests than it cares about the interests of the American people.

What do you think about that for initial messaging in the suggested tweeting campaigns?