Open Letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: If You Agree, Please Phone His Office & Tell Him This, As I Just Did
Hello, Majority Leader Schumer. Thanks so much for standing up to Mitch McConnell and refusing to pledge to let him keep the filibuster. Thanks for getting an Organizing Agreement done without making such a pledge. Although I thought you didn’t need an Organizing Agreement, apparently you did, because some Dem Senators are against ending the filibuster.
I have something more to ask of you — that you don’t try to do your very difficult job alone — that you seek support. Please have the other Dem Senators throw you a party to celebrate your getting the Organizing Agreement without bending to Mitch’s will on the filibuster.
Also please seek the support of Dem Senators on the filibuster issue and on every difficult aspect of your job. Those Dem Senators in favor of ending the filibuster, should be pressuring Dems who are not yet willing to vote to end it.
The case for ending it is clear. Dem voters, grassroots Get Out the Vote organizers, Dem donors — all pushed very hard for Dems to get enough votes to be in control of the Senate. We want the Senate races to have consequences — for Democrats to be able to use our 51 Senate votes to enact Democratic party priorities. Just like the GOP did for themselves when they had Senate control.
Those Senators against ending the filibuster are acting in a way that prevents Democrats from being able to act on the control of the Senate that voters have mandated them. The Senators who are against the filibuster need to be told they will be as responsible as McConnell is, if Democrats are blocked from using our Senate majority to enact a Dem agenda.
In addition, please seek support from Democratic voters in the public. Please keep going on TV — even go on more often — and please talk to Democratic voters in AZ, WV and other places with Senators who are against ending the filibuster. Tell the voters that if they want the Dem legislation they voted for, from the Senate, they can only have it if those Senators will change their minds about ending the filibuster. Please ask voters in their states to phone and write their Senators’ offices and tell them their voters want them to change their minds and to end the filibuster — if they want Democrats to REALLY have control of the Senate.
Please ask other Democratic Senators and officials to do that too, to support and help you — and in the process, to support and help Democratic voters, organizers and donors who pushed for Dem Senate control.
Please have your staff, and the staffs of other Democratic officials, call up the Sunday TV shows and ask that you and other Democratic officials be invited on the Sunday TV shows. Tell the people who run the Sunday shows that they invite far too many Republicans on, and too few Democrats, thus giving the public a lop-sided Right Wing biased view of politics. Because that is what’s happening.
If the managers of the Sunday shows won’t have Democrats on more often, then please ask the public to all call the TV stations and demand it, so that the public gets a balanced view of politics.
Democrats really should use repeated talking points in mainstream media, as Republicans do. Views that are repeated, get remembered. At least some of those views should be the Democratic vision for the nation — not just the GOP vision. I wrote an essay about this issue.
How Democrats Can Get Better Media Coverage
Thanks a lot, Chuck. You’re doing a great job. Keep up the good work.
