The Hauser Group | Public Relations in the Public Interest

Immigration Reform and the 2010 Mid-Term elections

In Mexico earlier this week, President Obama asserted that comprehensive immigration reform would be addressed legislatively in 2010.  That marker sets the table for a fascinating political gambit that involves two core questions:

1)      How hard, in late 2009, will progressives push the Administration to make immigration reform its top 2010 agenda?

2)      How hard will the right try to make immigration the top issue in key mid-term elections?

In short form, my answers would be 1) I hope so, and 2) Very.

Consider the landscape.  Over the next three months (at least) the battle over health care will be ferocious, bewildering, and all-consuming.  I think there will be a Grand Compromise, exhaustively reached in late Fall, that fudges enough on budget cost, cost containment, and a limited public option that most progressives will claim victory.

And then what?  Will battered progressives pick up the immigration mantle and both privately and publicly demand that the Administration lay down the gauntlet for 2010?  Will the coalition of grassroots activists, Latino advocates, unions, and business leaders be able to not just re-form, but sharpen and expand their political skills beyond the summer of 2007?

Is the money there?  Will the labor movement, stung by this year’s failure on the Employee Free Choice Act, re-double its efforts there rather than on immigration?  Will the business “community” give a half-hearted effort, distracted by its own problems and bruised by the health care debate?

I honestly don’t know.  But what I am fairly certain of is the Obama Administration wouldn’t weep to miss a election-defining bloody battle over immigration.  There are a thousand ways in Washington to avoid a real fight, and only one way to have one.  Advocates of immigration reform need to build their political plans now for full-scale political pressure on the Administration before this calendar year is out.  Reform has a chance only until the next August recess and only if the Administration strongly and constantly identifies it as its top domestic issue for 2010.

Of course, conservatives hope for just that.  As Charlie Cook notes, Americans’ appetite for change is diminishing.  The right-wing would love nothing more than to make 2010 a referendum on “too much, too far, too fast.”

And in 2010, I don’t think “All politics is local.”  I think very little of it will be.  A country that has spun wildly from 2008-2010 will take that moment to plant a flag.  Conservative strategists will build a national argument on amnesty for illegal aliens, socialized medicine, gay marriage, and the specter of more activist Supreme Court judges.

It will be shrill and it will be creepy.  But we have to fight it, not mock it. Aspiration brought us Obama and these opportunities; on immigration reform, only early strategy and political backbone will deliver them.

When the Grassroots Calls

Though this blogpost will often deal with national themes, today I want to take it down to mundane core of progressive communications.

With right-wing zealots self-immolating in town hall meetings, I thought it was a good time to offer progressives some practical advice on how to actually communicate during a congressional recess.

First, grassroots organizing and grassroots communication are very different.  With the former, you are trying to build an activist base.  With the latter, you are trying to use that base to reach a wider audience.  Not surprisingly, the style and tactics of each are different.

Let me focus on just one example (and it is a tactic greatly underutilized by progressives).

It is talk radio.  During the August recess, progressives should be all over their local talk radio shows.  But to do it well, you have to be both smart and thorough.  Here’s a primer:

1)      Build a group of callers.  Without a group of dedicated activists ready to call, numbers 2-9 that follow don’t matter.

2)      Do the research.  Know what shows take calls.  Don’t ignore smaller markets, and don’t bypass conservative radio!

3)      Write a schedule.  Literally.  For a week, make specific assignments for which activist is going to call which show, and when.  Shift assignments for the next week.  Treat this as a job.

4)      Be prepared to get busy with the re-dial button.

5)      Be prepared for far-flung tributaries.  Talk radio flows all over the place, but your activists need to pull it back to your message.  Memorize this line: “what the last caller said was interesting, but the real point is …”

6)      Be prepared to convince the producer who answers the phone that your call is worth putting on the air.

7)      Encourage your activists to speak with more wisdom than zeal.  With more tolerance than rage.  With more persuasion and less confrontation.  With more sincerity and less script.

8)      Use personal stories but make them brief and factual.  You are not calling Dr. Phil.

9)      Harness the power of streaming Internet radio.  Meaning, utilize activists who don’t live in the market to tune in to the web and call-in.

And a final encouragement … as someone who worked on the Hill for 10 years, I know first hand what August recess is like back in the district.  For many Members, it’s driving from one town to the next for an endless parade of meetings.  And believe me, the car radio is on more often than not.  Otherwise, the Member would have to chat with the staffer in the car.

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today …

Enjoy 2009.  Savor every last day on the calendar.

Why?  Because starting January 1, 2010, we will be bombarded for 10 years with an endless parade of 50 year anniversaries of everything 1960’s.  My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

The Kennedys.  The Beatles.  Interesting rock bands.  The moon landing.  Vietnam.  The first Super Bowl.  Medicare.  The Summer of Love.  The Weather Underground.  The Bay of Pigs.  And on and on.  (Also, interestingly, the last decade in which a Bush didn’t run for President.)

See: “mawkish.”

It’ll be the baby boomers’ last hurrah before they retire and realize that Bob Kerrey wasn’t kidding about Social Security.  I don’t think the celebrations will be quiet little affairs.

There’ll be the three-hour network specials, the books, the Facebook groups, the on-location-for-a-week morning shows, the musical tributes.  There’ll be commentary about the commemorations, and billions of blogs about both.

Plus, how might communications change over those ten years?  I don’t think the trend of mind-numbing saturation will reverse itself, leaving us perhaps with cereal boxes programmed to play video tributes to Martin Luther King (brought to you by Cheerios), or pants that, when you try them on at Banana Republic, audibly suggest “a 60’s vintage t-shirt would complete this outfit.”

And to top it off, surely the decade will bring a politician who claims to have a “2020 vision for the future …”