| It's extremely important. The Republican coalition has had outreach programs for years set up to generate floods of calls; my senator, Dick Durbin, had to shut his phones off because of one such effort to push through pro-Israel legislation. A large number of Democrats have voted to confirm John Kelly, the anti-immigration former general who will now run DHS and enforce Trump's Muslim ban. Almost all of the Democrats supported Mattis for DOJ, because he appears to be the sanest member of the administration's team. A decent sized number even supported Pompeo, a Muslim-alarmist, for CIA. Coming up soon is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for Attorney General. Sessions is by many accounts an unreconstructed white supremacist. But Democrats will support him, because he's also a member of the Senate, and collegiality goes a very long way in the Senate. Unless the Democratic coalition makes it clear to their representatives that we are holding them accountable for their votes to give consent for confirmation votes, and for their actual confirmation votes, the Democrats will act "strategically", holding back resistance until they're absolutely required to offer it. It doesn't help that the Republican party is almost uniformly conservative and extremely white, while the Democratic party is a coalition of interests that leans but is not firmly planted in liberal tradition. Even if you're in a liberal state. You have to call. Social media doesn't count. It's very easy to do and if enough people do it, it does make a difference. It's like voting, except that your calls have more influence than your votes. I cannot recommend highly enough the Indivisible Guide, which is the outcome of a bunch of legislative staffers attempting to reverse-engineer the Tea Party's process from the last 8 years and apply them to Democratic objectives: https://www.indivisibleguide.com/ It's all actionable stuff. |