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You are here: Home / Open Threads / One More Thought

One More Thought

by Tim F|  March 17, 20103:11 pm| 27 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Most people either don’t realize that anyone can get printed in their local newspaper’s opinion section, or if so they don’t realize that Letters to the Editor can have a big impact when targeted right. Every elected official keeps a box of LTEs that mention his or her name, and the more local the official’s turf the more they care about each letter. Senators care a little, State Senators care a lot.

If you’re looking for something else to do about HCR, try putting figurative pen to paper and write your local papers today. The ideal LTE is passionate, informed, articulate and about as long as a one-paragraph blog comment; you guys should be able to rattle these off in your sleep. Equally important, this is yet one more area where assorted wingnuts are absolutely kicking our ass. Pittsburgh might well be the most Democratic city in America and yet the letters page in the Post-Gazette, our centrist paper (Murdoch Scaife also has a local rag), often reads like the NRO. If any of you get printed, let me know and I’ll post a link.

One other tip: when you call conservative Dems, try to mix some carrots in with the threats. A lot of these guys are legitimately worried that their local GOP majority will rise up and slaughter them in November. Threaten to stay at home if you want, but also think about promising to put in some volunteer time for the campaign if they come through on this vote.

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Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    El Cid

    March 17, 2010 at 3:16 pm

    Recently listed letters to editors about the health care bill being shoved / rammed down our / America’s throat. And so forth. They write it, they say it, they obsess over it. Obama’s huge package, and whatnot.

  2. 2.

    ruemara

    March 17, 2010 at 3:19 pm

    Hey! I write articles and such! Perhaps I could write something useful. I’ll do what I can Tim, it’s not quite wingnut country where I am, but it is…insular.

  3. 3.

    Violet

    March 17, 2010 at 3:19 pm

    How healthcare reform will impact your district. Good info for sending those letters to the editor, talking to folks, etc.

    (Found via GOS.)

  4. 4.

    geg6

    March 17, 2010 at 3:20 pm

    Tim, just a little quibble here. The Trib is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, not Murdoch.

    Not that that makes any difference at all, really.

  5. 5.

    soonergrunt

    March 17, 2010 at 3:24 pm

    Threaten to stay at home if you want, but also think about promising to put in some volunteer time for the campaign if they come through on this vote.

    If you’re going to do this, you really do need to actually follow through or it’s going to be a one shot deal.

  6. 6.

    flounder

    March 17, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    Some of live in places where liberal letters aren’t run, unless they are really poorly written. One of the effects of newspaper consolidation is large swaths of the newspaper industry are run by out of state teabaggers who have sent the orders down from high.

  7. 7.

    Tim F.

    March 17, 2010 at 3:27 pm

    @soonergrunt: I took it for granted that people would follow through on a promise, but yeah.

  8. 8.

    John

    March 17, 2010 at 3:30 pm

    Pittsburgh might well be the most Democratic city in America

    I’m rather certain it is not.

  9. 9.

    flukebucket

    March 17, 2010 at 3:40 pm

    @Violet:

    Good link. Thanks Violet.

  10. 10.

    geg6

    March 17, 2010 at 3:40 pm

    @John:

    Well, if it isn’t, it certainly is one of the most Democratic cities. We haven’t had a Republican as mayor since 1933. And we don’t even wanna discuss City Council.

  11. 11.

    soonergrunt

    March 17, 2010 at 3:41 pm

    Talking Points Memo has been doing journeymen’s work on a whip count for some time now.
    According their latest, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA-08) says he’s still deciding whether or not to vote for the bill, and Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL-12) may have flipped from yes to no.

    If one of these men is your congressman, you know what you need to do.

    I’ve called my congressman here in OK-4, Tom Cole (R) and the staff member who took my call was very polite* but it doesn’t mean anything. Hell, the Chief of his Nation has come out for HCR, as well as the minister of his church, but that doesn’t mean anything.

    *He was polite about the same way he’d be polite to an axe murderer or European head of state, if you get my drift.

  12. 12.

    mr. whipple

    March 17, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    Another member of Stu-Pac leaves him high and dry!

    Key Anti-Abortion Dem: Passing Senate Bill Would Be “Pro Life”

    Rep Dale Kildee of Michigan, a key pro-life Dem who was thought to be part of the Stupak bloc, released a statement today confirming that he will vote for the Senate bill.

    But what’s really got Democrats psyched today is the language he used — his strong endorsement, in religious terms, of the Senate bill, which Dems think will prove persuasive to what remains of the Stupak bloc:

  13. 13.

    Tim F.

    March 17, 2010 at 3:46 pm

    @geg6: Unless I was lied to, my Pittsburgh voting precinct is the highest %D in America.

  14. 14.

    Pam C./femlaw

    March 17, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Some OFA tools for your letter-writing

    1. Handy downloadable (tweet-able, share-able) fact sheets

    2. An online LTE tool that lets you find and write to your local/regional papers.

  15. 15.

    Tom Hilton

    March 17, 2010 at 3:49 pm

    And here’s an editorial for any Representatives who are worried about the worst-case scenario, written by a Representative who lost her seat after voting for Clinton’s budget. Couple excerpts I loved:

    I am your worst-case scenario. And I’d do it all again….
    Simply put, you could be Margolies-Mezvinskied whether you vote with or against President Obama. You will be assailed no matter how you vote this week. And this job isn’t supposed to be easy. So cast the vote that you won’t regret in 18 years….
    Yes, there are few jobs as rewarding (mostly) as being a member of Congress, and I was let down after I lost. But I believed then and now that being able to point to something tangible that changed our country for the better was a more powerful motivator than the possible electoral repercussions.

  16. 16.

    Zam

    March 17, 2010 at 3:50 pm

    I’ve actually had several things published in papers, and I’m just a worthless lazy kid.

  17. 17.

    gbear

    March 17, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    @Zam:

    I have too, but not since I was a worthless lazy kid. The St. Paul paper did publish a letter in which I called a Cal Thomas column about gay marriage a ‘flatulent piece of pretzel logic’. That was cool of them.

  18. 18.

    FormerSwingVoter

    March 17, 2010 at 4:08 pm

    So, a paragraph-long blog post for a letter to the editor… How long would you guys recommend for a submitted Op-Ed?

  19. 19.

    geg6

    March 17, 2010 at 4:10 pm

    @Tim F.:

    You’re in the Squirrel Hill area, right? If you’re not Dem there, Sophie comes and harasses you at home. And you DO NOT want Sophie screeching at you. ;-)

  20. 20.

    MikeJ

    March 17, 2010 at 4:14 pm

    The ideal LTE is passionate, informed, articulate and about as long as a one-paragraph blog comment;

    What the fuck is going on with bill? Just hurry up and pass the goddamned thing. Now show me a picture of a cat.

    Thank you.
    Floyd R. Turbo,
    American

  21. 21.

    Tim F.

    March 17, 2010 at 4:15 pm

    @FormerSwingVoter: A blog post blog post.

    @geg6: Did you ever hear the Sophie Masloff bungie jump skit on ‘DVE? Awesome sauce.

  22. 22.

    geg6

    March 17, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    @Tim F.:

    Heh. The Sophie bungee jumping off the Smithfield Street Bridge cracks me up every time I hear it. I have the CD of that.

    On the HCR front, Kildee and Oberstar are now on board, if no one has reported that. Stupak’s coalition is crumbling.

    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_03/022910.php

  23. 23.

    Zam

    March 17, 2010 at 4:39 pm

    @FormerSwingVoter: Take a look at your local paper and see how long the average one is. If you get to into detail it will end up being to long so focus on one aspect of a particular issue. If writing about health care perhaps highlight the rate hikes and how this could protect us from that, or how the bill actually reduces the deficit over time. If you try to tackle all the issues you will likely be to vague to make a serious point or you will have something so long they will pass it up without reading it.

  24. 24.

    Joey Maloney

    March 17, 2010 at 6:10 pm

    Just a warning for these crazy times – if you do write a LTE, consider alter ing your name or town, especially if the former is uncommon or the latter, small.

    I have gotten some very scary hate mail sent to my home address as the result of, in one case, disparaging Cal Thomas’ intellectual honesty. And that was fifteen years ago. The wingnuts are ever so much more angrier these days. Be safe.

  25. 25.

    John

    March 17, 2010 at 6:31 pm

    @geg6:

    Well, the city proper seems kind of irrelevant for what LTEs in a newspaper would look like, since the newspaper serves the whole larger region. And, as I understand it, Pittsburgh’s suburbs have a lot of wingnuts in them.

    Even for the city proper, it seems unlikely Pittsburgh is more Democratic than heavily African-American cities like DC, Baltimore, Detroit, Newark, Oakland, and so forth. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and so forth are also very heavily Democratic. It’s hard to get specific results for Pittsburgh proper, but PA-14, which is mostly the city of Pittsburgh, is D+19, which is very heavily Democratic. But DC is D+39; Baltimore is D+33; Chicago is D+32; San Francisco is D+30; Philadelphia is D+29; New York is D+26; Boston is D+25. I assume Pittsburgh proper is somewhat more Democratic than PA-14, since I’d guess the non-Pittsburgh parts would tend to be at least somewhat more Republican than the Pittsburgh parts. But even so it seems like it would be hard for it to do more than get into the NYC/Boston range. Arguably, Pittsburgh isn’t even the most Democratic city in the state of Pennsylvania – historically it and its suburbs were once more Democratic than Philadelphia’s, but that’s not really true any more.

  26. 26.

    Tax Analyst

    March 17, 2010 at 7:15 pm

    Newspapers? Do they still print those? Here in L.A. we have now have the equivalent of a Reader’s Digest version of the Los Angeles Times; condensed to the point of irrelevance by the massive debt Sam Zell took on in acquiring the paper. They still do print Letters to the Editor, but the editors seem to have a heavy preference for angry tea-bagger and anti-government screeds. I guess they figure they fit in well with the Jonah Goldberg columns and all the neo-con rubbish they still see fit to print in their Op-Ed/Opinion section. I used to subscribe to the Times and read it every day. Then I cancelled my subscription but still bought it from a newstand almost every day and Sunday, of course. Of late I have been purchasing the daily editions between zero and one day a week and buy the Sunday edition about 2 out of every 3 or 4 weeks.

    And I don’t feel I’m missing much of anything.

    A shame, because it used to be a pretty darned good paper at one time.

    FYI – In the past I have had letters publish in the L.A. Times (2 occasions). One political and one FYI-type reply to a question another reader had brought up.

  27. 27.

    Nazgul35

    March 17, 2010 at 10:01 pm

    There was a blog…I forget its name now, that use to have a feature called “Flood the Zone Friday.” They would give a how to guide to writing a LTTE and pick a topic with talking points to help folks shape the message.

    It was very effective and using the techniques I almost always got my letters in.

    Sounds like something we could get going around these parts…

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