We Can Stop Alito This Weekend - Democratic Underground

Triana

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Sat Jan-28-06 10:03 AM
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We Can Stop Alito This Weekend

http://www.democrats.com/we-can-stop-alito

The last two days have been amazing.

Early Thursday afternoon, we broke the news that Senator John Kerry would lead a
filibuster against Judge Sam Alito if he could get 41 Senators to sustain the
filibuster. Three hours later, CNN confirmed our story.

Naturally, the White House freaked out and told Senator Bill Frist to schedule a
cloture vote as quickly as possible - Monday at 4:30 p.m. - to prevent Democrats
from uniting behind Kerry.

Then the White House called its media whores at the NY Times (David Kirkpatrick), AP
(Jesse Holland), Pentagon Post (Charles Babington), CNN (Miles O'Brien), and MSNBC
(Chris Matthews) and told them to trash John Kerry for daring to challenge the will
of Emperor Bush, and to repeat over and over that Democrats did not have enough
votes to stop Alito.

But even as Karl Rove was doing his dirty work, progressive activists like you were
calling your Senators urging them to support John Kerry's filibuster.

And one by one, Democratic Senators began to turn around.

http://democrats.com/alito-48

At the start of the day, only Dick Durbin and Debbie Stabenow supported Kerry and
Kennedy. Just before noon, Hillary Clinton's office called to say she supported us.
Then Harry Reid came on board, along with Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Ron Wyden,
Chris Dodd, and (I think) Chuck Schumer.

Most importantly, we even picked up Dianne Feinstein, who just yesterday said she
opposed a filibuster.

That's 12 votes for a filibuster - and exactly 12 more votes than we had two days ago!

I believe we really can stop Alito by Monday at 4:30 p.m. - but here's what we must do.

1. Ignore the media whores. Karl Rove is feeding them lies as he always does, and
they are swallowing those lies as they always do. The only media that matters is the
media we are creating right here by calling each Senator and getting a YES or NO
statement from them.

2. Keep calling the Senators who are undecided or opposed to a filibuster. You can
call their DC office all weekend and leave polite but firm voicemails urging the
Senators to support Kerry's filibuster. When offices open on Monday 9 a.m. ET, make
another round of calls. Let's shut down the Capitol switchboard on Monday!

http://democrats.com/alito-48

3. Call the DNC (202-863-8000) and the DSCC (202-224-2447) and tell them your 2006
contributions will depend on the success of the Alito filibuster. Tell them they
need to get every Democratic Senator on board.

4. Wake up the sleeping bloggers. Where are the biggest blogs, including
DailyKos.com, TalkingPointsMemo.com, CrooksandLiars.com, and AmericaBlog.com?
(Complaining about how Democrats played last week won't cut it -we're in the Super
Bowl and we can win this damn game if we get Democrats to play their best game on
Monday - and hopefully the rest of this coming week.) Thanks to Agonist, BobGeiger,
BuzzFlash, The Democratic Daily, DemocraticUnderground, Eschaton, Firedoglake,
MakeThemAccountable, Mark Crispin Miller, PoliticalWire, Vichy Democrats and
everyone else who's plugging this.

5. Lend a hand to real-world groups like NOW, People for the American Way, Feminist
Majority, Moveon, Planned Parenthood, and Working Assets Long Distance, which have
worked tirelessly for two months to Stop Alito.

6. Call talk shows like Air America, C-SPAN, etc. and talk about what we're doing on
this blog and how we're killing ourselves to stop Alito - and how we can win if
everyone who cares about the future of our Democracy joins us.

7. Keep hope alive - because American Democracy is worth it!!!

http://democrats.com/alito-48

Bob Fertik

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