re: #273 iceweasel

I think you’re absolutely correct that a mailed, signed letter from a constituent always carried the most weight. Always.

That’s why the left/progressive organisations have made this a feature for years now— sign up for their “action alert” list, and you’ll get updates all the time for everything, and they completely streamline the process: you can use their prepared text or your own, you can add some to their prepared text if you want, and you can have it sent via fax, email, or letter.

(Obviously emails and faxes are best when there’s a time crunch— and they always encourage everyone to use their own text, or at least add your own opinions to the form letter complaint they’ve prepared)

You don’t even need to know who your representatives or Senators are— all you have to do is input your zipcode, and they’ll address the letter/email/fax to the appropriate people for you.

And you can do all of it within 5 minutes without even leaving your computer.

I’m amazed that the right hasn’t done this. i can think of 5 lefty/prog online activist organisations off the bat that do this as a matter of course— and only one feeble, recently started, widely mocked right organisation that has tried anything similar.

(The righty organisation’s big idea was: send us money, a donation of 5 dollars or up, and we’ll mail a teabag to Congress for you.)

With that kind of ‘help’, it’s no wonder the right has been losing the online battle.

Once again, I completely agree. All the more frustrating, since it was the Right that first established a serious Internet presence in the political realm. Rather than expand it, they’ve turned it over to a gaggle of money grubbing hacks with unworkable business models and a zero-sum attitude that sees every blogger other than themselves as competitors taking dollars out of their pockets rather than as allies working toward a common cause.