Sunday, July 10, 2016

How tweeting banks should be used

The crux of tweeting banks is to demonstrate widespread, actual citizen support.

As laid out in Template for Congressional districts, the basic idea is "I/we are tweeting to you, with a link to here, and I/we solicit you to join in the tweeting, and we thereby grow our numbers, and tweets."

Tweeting banks are flexible, and the messaging can be tailored to particular objectives of Democracy Spring, MoveToAmend, Represent.Us, Wolfpac, etc.

With the goal being to get messaging out as widely as possible to the general public, the messaging of all the groups, even though slightly different, will be mutually reinforcing because all the messaging will call attention to the problem of the corrupting influence of money in politics and the need of the country to address the problem.

Further there is significant strategic complementation. As Wolfpac points out on its plan webpage, in the following quotation, taking steps to call a constitutional convention can pressure Congress.
Something to keep in mind: 
Near the turn of the 20th century the American people wanted to be able to elect their senators directly, but Congress was the last body of government that was going to change the way they got elected (sound familiar?!). So the states took it upon themselves and started calling for a convention one by one for the sole purpose of the direct election of senators. It took 13 years before they got within a couple states of the necessary 2/3 threshold to force a convention. When it became clear to Congress that the 17th Amendment was going to happen with or without them, they decided to preempt a convention by proposing it themselves. Calling for a convention on a specific issue is the strongest message we can send to Congress, and the most effective way to restore our democracy in the United States.
By the same token, ostensible failure of Congress to act in the face of widespread citizen demand will heighten citizen reaction to the effect of "OK, you Congress refuse to act, and we the citizens are all the more impelled towards the constitutional convention route."

The impetus for tweeting banks is that FightBigMoney does not have funds to pay for TV advertising, mailings, and other forms of widespread paid advertising.    Messaging in a widespread way using social media, starting with Twitter, doesn't require funds, but only volunteers willing to do social media messaging that breaks out of FightBigMoney's "echo chambers" that only "preach to the choir." For further discussion, see Is FightBigMoney a weak force?

I think tweeting banks should use a point of focus and be localized.  As set out in Template for Congressional districts, I think the Congressional elections, candidates and districts are excellent for such purposes.

I think they are also excellent even for groups such as MoveToAmend and Wolfpac, whose focus is on a constitutional amendment, subject to slight message alteration, to wit, emphasizing that Congressional failure to act is all the more reason for voters in the Congressional district to support a constitutional convention.

The usefulness of tweeting banks for Democracy Spring (in its EVFA pledge effort) and whowillfightbigmoney.org (in its "what will you do if elected" campaign) should be obvious. Those organizations are right now, as regards social media messaging to the general public, confined in their "echo chambers" and "preaching to the choir." Their efforts need to break out of that confinement, and starting and promoting tweeting banks is the way to do that. See To tweeters to Congressional candidates.

Democracy Spring should also get tweeting banks going relative to its "call to action" concerning the Democratic convention. See What do to if you are not going to Philly?

To repeat, and conclude, FightBigMoney does not have funds to pay for TV advertising, etc., in order to do its messaging (in competition with political campaigns which have lots of funds to do their messaging), and FightBigMoney may be able to do competitive messaging if its starts and promotes tweeting banks and gets volunteers and supporters to tweet in the tweeting banks.

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