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On Tuesday, Obama supporters from all over the country made over 300,000 phone calls to Congress. It was an amazing effort that proved we’ve never been more “fired up and ready to go” for health care reform!
Today the FDL Action PAC launches an online phone bank effort to call 40,000 of the most progressive Democrats in Nevada, asking them to contact Harry Reid and let him know they support a public option.
Click here to register and start calling!
Why are we calling Nevada? Because we absolutely have make sure the bill that comes up for a vote on the floor of the Senate has a public option, because according to knowledgeable policy experts and Capitol Hill staffers, it will be virtually impossible to add a public option later.
We have 51 votes in the Senate – a majority – to pass a strong public option, yet Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has been sending mixed signals that he doesn’t have the 60 votes he needs to overcome a Republican filibuster. He won’t even tells us what Democratic Member out of our 60-vote supermajority is threatening to stand with Republican’s to hold the pubic option hostage!
This is unacceptable. We need health care reform – with a strong pubic option – brought to the floor of the Senate for an up or down vote. If there are Democratic Lawmakers in Washington who don’t want to vote for it, make them vote in public! Don’t let them hide behind a filibuster threat so they don’t have to go on the record.
Fortunately for us though, Reid’s up for reelection in 2010 – and the polls show him behind possible Republican challengers. So if we can get enough of his own constituents to call him and tell him they want a public option in the bill, we’re likely to get the kind of traction that outside petitions and calls from out of state can’t.
Register now to phone bank to Nevada for the public option.
We can make those 40,000 calls. YES WE CAN!
TIPS FOR MAKING SUCCESSFUL PHONE CALLS
I ran hundreds of phone banks during the general election last year. Here are a few tips I hope you will find useful.
1) Read the script a couple of times before you start, so that you feel you understand the concept. If you don’t feel comfortable reading off of it verbatim, don’t. Make it your own. Make it conversational. But be sure to ask all the questions on the script.
2) You’ll only reach 15-20% of the people you attempt to call at any one time. Most will not be home. Some numbers will be wrong. Some people will not be supporters. This is normal for every phone bank, and it’s why we ask so many people to make calls, because it usually takes several attempts to reach a voter.
3) If someone is unsure, feel free to tell them why you personally support a public option. You don’t have to site a bunch of facts and figures. For instance, I tell people that I want a public option because my brother in law joined the army 15 years ago because his wife was pregnant and they couldn’t afford insurance. 15 years and 3 kids later he still can’t. He’s about to be sent to Iraq for the third time. No one should have to make that choice.
4) If someone says they don’t know if if they’ll call and you can’t get a definitive answer from them, I would recommend marking them as “not home”. That means someone else will call them later and try and persuade them again.
5) Don’t take rejection personally. Even a “no” is valuable information and will help refine the list down to real supporters.
5 Comments
AS a ruppy rould ray, rots rov ruck.
40,000 darts in the asses of the people in Congress might work, lets hope the calls do.
I have my doubts, because we still don’t get it that they don’t care what we want or think.
They as our deciders will give us what they want to give us, not what we need or want.
Question: Before we make these calls shouldn’t we know what a strong PO is so we can tell Nevadans exactly what we and they should favor? Do you think the PO in HR 3200, the strongest in Congress now, is a strong PO? Do you think the President has told us what he means by “a strong PO?” Has Harry Reid told us what he means by “a strong PO?”
Here’s another alternative suggestion, why not have the 40,000 people call and ask Nevadans to tell Harry Reid to substitute a Senate version of the Conyers/Kucinich HR 676 Medicare for All, single-payer bill for the committee-produced legislation?
Based on my experiences today, I would have to say that only a small percentage of the people you call will understand what you’re talking about if you get into that level of detail. And I’m not sure that that would help.
If they call Senator Reid’s Nevada office and say that they will support him if he brings a strong public health insurance option to the floor of the Senate for an up-or-down vote, it will help send a strong message to him. (If I can in the course of conversation, I point out that there are more than enough Senators who will vote for it so that it will pass, but only if Reid brings it to the floor.)
Some of the people who expressed a willingness to call were uncertain because they were afraid that they wouldn’t be able to debate policy effectively with the person who answers the phone at Reid’s office. I really don’t think that they have to do that at all.
When I called,
Honestly, if I asked whether or not they would support a candidate who would challenge Reid in a primary election, some of the people I called got confused about what a primary is and started talking about not really understanding politics that well.
I’m not saying that the details aren’t important. And I’m definitely not saying that you should use simplification as a way to distort and lie like a Republican. I’m just saying that people don’t have to be able to list off every bill that’s running through committees to know whether or not they generally support a public option, and they don’t have to know all about primaries to know that they will oppose Reid if he fails as a leader.
Hi Knoxville, I think Harry Reid thinks that a strong Po is what is in the Senate HELP bill. Even if the pressure works that’s all we will get from him. In my view that’s not enough. It’s a failure, because its PO will only enroll 10 million Americans over 5 years, jeopardizing the very existence of that PO, and persuading people that Government can’t solve their health insurance problem or any of the other critical problems facing America. Unless the pressure we generate is enough to make the Congress go beyond present PO bills to something like Jacob hacker’s original PO idea, we might as well support the defat of whatever bills come out of the Congress and try again next year with a real “Medicare for All.” The perfect may be the enemy of the good. But the timid is just as much the enemy of the good, and progressive timidity this year in not backing Medicare for All is the reason what we haven’t been able to pass a good bill so far.
In any event, I don’t think the questions I directed at Marta have been answered by her, and as much as I value your opinion on these matters, I’d certainly like to know what her answers are.
(sorry, but I realized that I left out a key phrase in what I wrote above!)
When I called,