[jkelsey]

If you live in California and you are at all concerned about this, you must call Sen. Feinstein's offices and tell her staff that you oppose the Senator's vote to confirm Pompeo and will work to support her opposition in the 2018 midterms (she is up for re-election).

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/washington-...?

[ekianjo]

You mean this Feinstein ?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/21/dianne-feinste...

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160408/08381934131/burr-...

[jkelsey]

Yes that Feinstein. Call her office and exert political pressure. All we do is complain on the Internet about it, then wonder why our politicians don't listen to us. Feinstein doesn't read Hacker News.

[mhurron]

> Call her office and exert political pressure

I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad. Call and that's it. Your 'representatives' are not your representatives. There is no pressure that you can place on them.

[ColinDabritz]

They absolutely care if you call, if you show up to town hall meetings. It matters. They are elected officials, and they do ultimately care and worry that if they do unpopular things they will not get re-elected.

There is an excellent write up of how this works and why it works from a former congressional aide: https://qz.com/836737/fomer-congressional-staffer-twitter-ti...

Take action!

Write your senators numbers on a note by your desk, put them in your phone as contacts. Add your house representatives as well. When you hear about an important issue, make a quick call. Ask them to represent you on upcoming issues. Thank them for their position on issues you support, let them know you are disappointed in them for things you oppose.

[mhurron]

> if they do unpopular things they will not get re-elected.

An incumbent has over a 90% chance of being reelected until they decide not to run anymore. They literally do not need to care after they've told whatever lies they needed to tell to get elected the first time.

[swsieber]

Yes - but is that because they respond to calls from people who wouldn't vote for them next time?

That is to say - may it's that high because they respond to people who call in.

[richmarr]

> An incumbent has over a 90% chance...

You're assuming that public officials are automata that don't suffer from risk aversion, don't need to raise money in close races, and don't change their behaviour based on whether they have public opinion behind them. I wouldn't bet on that being true.

[vkou]

You should tell that to all the moderate republican incumbents that lost their jobs to the Tea Party drones in 2010. Overnight, the party transformed from far-right conservative, to bonkers-cut-off-nose-to-spite-your-face lunacy.

[snerbles]

California is effectively a single-party state, Feinstein (and whoever replaces her) is secure enough in her position to not care about most of her constituents.

[vkou]

California may be a single-party state, but she can still be deposed in a primary. And if she's any good at surviving as a politician, that is the prospect that terrifies her.

This mechanism - calling your congressperson, threats to replace them in the next primaries, showing up to townhalls, etc, is precisely how the Tea Party seized power. The republicans they didn't replace fell in line with their agenda.

https://www.indivisibleguide.com/download-the-guide

[jkelsey]

Laugh or cry then, but get out of the way, and know that you did nothing for your country.

[saiya-jin]

the only time any politician cares about voters opinion is elections. after that, the choice was made and that's it.

I mean, I like your enthusiasm, just wondering how come you didn't adjust it with reality of these days.

[rqebmm]

You're right, that's why we have elections every few years to make sure there's an opportunity to make them care about voters, if only for a bit.

[mhurron]

The US is not my country. I just pay taxes here, but that doesn't make me blind.

[BlackjackCF]

The Tea Partiers were actually really effective in their tactics to continue to call their representatives, showing up for every election, and running their candidates for every single position in local government.

Calling and showing up counts.

[dangerbird2]

If you are a voting constituent of Senator Feinstein, you'd better believe she's going to listen to you,lest she put her or her sucessor's political career in Jeopardy. No good politician today is going to make Eric Cantor's mistake of ignoring activists in their own party, only to find themselves out of a job by the general election.

Just don't expect elected officials to pay attention to you if you aren't a part of their voting district.

[vkou]

I have no idea why you're being downvoted. Everything you say is true - politicians fear the primaries, they fear domestic outrage over their policies, and they don't care one whit for someone calling from the other side of the country to complain about them.

[derrickdirge]

Isn't it interesting how only the elderly participate actively in politics in the US, and somehow the US political landscape is completely controlled by the elderly?

What a weird coincidence. Someone should tell them that political activism is pointless.

[DannyBee]

Sure there is.

You call.

You show up everywhere they talk.

You run against them. etc

The amount of apathy in america is impressive.

"Eh, it'll never work" seems to be the rallying cry of today's america.

[mladenkovacevic]

So unless someone dedicates themselves full-time to holding every elected politician accountable they are considered apathetic?

I'm sorry but that's not realistic, people have lives to live and survive through.

[maxerickson]

That's not really fair, the Tea Party (and a broadening coalition of conservatives) did an amazing job of using activism to increase their influence.

[tptacek]

I think he agrees, and that's his point.

[ekianjo]

and when do you do that when you have long working hours and kids at home too?

[ep103]

politicians absolutely pay attention to phone call numbers.

[DannyBee]

Also, are you really saying this after literally someone nobody thought had any chance for years, beat out an entire field of well-established candidates and a large favorite to become president?

[mhurron]

You're going to try to say that Trump was subject to the people when he actually lost the peoples vote.

Trump is president because the US has an idiotic system that reduced the effectiveness of peoples votes for living in popular places.

Besides, we were talking about representatives, the people do not vote for the President, states do.

[mladenkovacevic]

Only way to "exert political pressure" is to get big money out of politics by any means necessary.

[DannyBee]

This is so ridiculously false i don't know where to begin. It's mostly something people who are too lazy to try anything effective tell themselves to make them feel better about doing nothing.

It's not all out of your hands and in the hands of "big money" or whatever boogeyman of the day is.

[mladenkovacevic]

Not just big money but also dark money. We don't even know half of the organizations and individuals that our representatives are beholden to.

But feel free to state your case for why outsized spending on political influence is a good and/or neutral thing for society.

[kabdib]

If you live outside her jurisdiction, her staff's default response is "You can't vote for me, so I'm going to ignore you."

So I write letters that say I'm contributing to her political opponents. You can do this if you live in another state. And money talks louder than votes.

[wang_li]

It's already over, he's confirmed.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senate-confirms-mike-pompe...

[jkelsey]

I'm aware. That why I said "oppose the Senator's vote to confirm Pompeo." She needs to be held accountable. Stop spending time responding to comments on the Internet if you haven't called yet. It takes 5 minutes.

[frozenport]

I'm pretty sure California companies like Google, Palantir, or Cisco will happily provided the technologies for a distopia suvalience state.

[jkelsey]

Well, stop looking to profit-focused corporations to take care of us and start using what democracy we've got left.

[golfer]

I'm surprised to see you lump Google in with Palantir, of all companies. Google has been fighting back against government overreach since the beginning.

They were the first internet company to publish a transparency report, for example [1]. Now copied by all the big players.

I remember them fighting back over a decade ago against government requests for search data, when others simply complied. [2]

[1] https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/?authuser=1

[2] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/response-to-doj-moti...

[ForHackernews]

> Google has been fighting back against government overreach since the beginning.

Hey, no fair! That's our panopticon, not yours!

[snarfy]

For her to lose means a Republican wins. Never gonna happen in California.

[akhilcacharya]

That's not necessarily true given how the jungle primary system works.

Also I have my doubts that she will run for re-election. Garcetti will probably take a shot.

[digikata]

For the CA senate election in 2016, two Democrats ended up running against each other in the general election as the outcome of the open primary. So for Feinstein to lose it doesn't guarantee that at all.