Obama Utilizing Twitter To Have The People Push Republicans On The American Jobs Act
President Obama said he was going to take the jobs bill to the public and he wasn’t kidding. BarackObama.com launched a new service today called “Tweet for Jobs”.
“A new tool to help you urge your Republican legislators to pass the American Jobs Act.”
The tool locates your Republican representatives and shoots off a tweet to them urging them to get behind the bill.
This is how you use modern technology and social networking to reach the people. I think Obama could have used this tool during the Debt Ceiling negotiations to help him avoid bending while the Republicans held the American people hostage.We won’t know how effective it’s going to be for a while. However, if the statistics show a massive amount of tweets going out to the Republican legislators in support of the American Jobs Act there can be real numbers and people behind just the usual political rhetoric of “this is what the people want”. Also, if an overwhelming amount of constituents of these politicians public urge them to vote for the bill and they still refuse, it will show they aren’t listening to the people they represent.
It’s a tool he should definitely employ for some of the larger changes he wants to propose and especially in his effort to repeal the Bush Tax cuts for the wealthy that is costing the U.S. roughly $2 Trillion.
It’s just a tweet but it’s a way to participate in democracy in a potentially meaningful way. Obama will need all he help he can get in passing this jobs act. Any and every move the President has attempted to make since assuming office has been purposefully stonewalled and blocked by the Republicans, even in cases where he was pushing agendas that they had proposed previously. John Boehner said as much when he rose to his position by explicitly saying there would be no compromises with the President. Obama’s repeated attempts at negotiation in the face of these facts has frustrated supporters and left him at the mercy of Bill Maher’s ridicule. Obama knew when he took office that he was going to need the continued support of the American people if he was going to be able to accomplish the tasks he layed out during the campaign and has said the same many times. I believe had his supporters from the campaign continued to have his back he’d have an easier time in the fight to make the changes happen that people voted for. As it stands now he’s got an understandably impatient and frustrated group of supporters among the people and weaklings in the Democrat stable.
The support of the people is still the best bet to make any change happen.
Additional:
http://www.barackobama.com/tweet-for/jobs
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/09/12/bill_maher_obama_is_the_wrong_color_for_gop.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/10/bill-maher-has-advice-for-obama_n_956894.html
Jaylon Carter is a blogger, social media marketing consultant, former Congressional Campaign Media & Communications Director, national labor union vice block leader, and a Hip Hop artist who performs under the stage name Timid (@timidmc).
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