I spent the better part of nine years working with elected officials on architectural projects at the city, county, and state levels, and learned two things in the process: 1) I despise politicians; 2) What really matters to them is getting re-elected.

Calling or writing these people is useless. They just don't listen. Actually, some of them will probably send you back an email asking for a donation.

I think what needs to happen is for a LOT of people to publicly let their reps know that if they, for instance, vote for the tax plan, they will not be voted for at the next election. Terrible grammar there, but, IOW, "You do this, I won't vote for you. You'll be out of a job." This has to be done publicly, en masse, thousands at a time. This is where it hurts. And it reminds them that they represent us, not the other way around.

I tried starting a new discussion about this, but I just joined DU, so don't have enough posts. Maybe one of you can start it?

I live in a blue state and city but my voice is loud and I am angry. What I do to get around they system is that I go to Zillow and get addresses and zip codes for empty places for sale or rent in each of the reps' states and districts. It literally takes two minutes to Google it. Your phone area code doesn't matter any more due to cell phones. I got the idea from someone at an Impeach tRump rally. They take my call and I tell them that "all my co-workers, family, and friends are very, very angry that we will never vote for them again since they have lied to us, his/her constituents". If they ask for my name and address I rattle it off using the Zillow addresses. It may be slightly unethical but I am tired of losing to greedy, cheating un-American reps who expect us to roll over and die while they sell this country to the 1% and the Russians and they stuff more dirty $ into their overstuffed mattress that they sleep soundly on night after night. I am not bringing a butter knife to a gun fight!

Online forums are fine for venting, but venting does not replace action. As someone said, desperate times call for desperate measures, so here’s an idea for actually doing something. It’ll take a lot of work by some very dedicated and committed people, but I think it would get the message across to where it needs to go.

I’m calling it “Operation Pledge:”

1. Draft a simple, one-page document to the effect of “I pledge that I will not vote for my current members of Congress at the next election due to their continued lack of representation of us, the Americans who voted for them.” Something like that.

2. Put the pledge document online where people can download it and sign it. No need to mail it to members of Congress.

3. After several thousand of these have been downloaded, take out a full-page ad in a national newspaper, outlining the pledge and listing the names of everyone who took it. Ideally, there would be so many names that they would need to printed in a very small font.

4. Wait a couple of days for the news outlets to pick up on it.

5. Then, simultaneously, similar full-page ads appear in dozens of newspapers across the U.S., of course with different names.

The idea behind this, of course, is that members of Congress (all politicians, really) want to get re-elected. We can call them, write them, demonstrate, and so forth, but it doesn’t do any good if it doesn’t hit them where it hurts. This would hit them where it hurts.