Wampum

My morning call was to the campaign office of Tom Allen. I made the following points:

1. Maine is not threatened by workers from Quebec, but Maine does have a history of discrimination against Quebequois, and that discriminatory past is better burried, not remade as current law in some "English language" criteria, and
   
2. the bill is contrary to Catholic Social Teaching, and contrary to the consistent, albeit deeply flawed, goal of family unification that is the current immigration policy.
   

Perhaps Susan won't take the racist pro-family anti-familia bait, but she might. She might gamble that racism will play in Maine because Hispanics and Asians are too far "away" to have local allies, or even have traction in the MDP. If she does, that's an issue with no negatives, no down-side, its just civil rights, and it applies to arabic speaking Somalies and francophone Quebeqois, just as well as it applies to any other immigrant identity.

I left the same message at Susan's Portland constituency offices. No point not giving the best advice.

I didn't leave the more complex message to the staffer-doing-phones -- that Howie, John, Digby, and Jane are all "From Away", and that handing control over when, and how, he goes negative to them, and particularly Jane, personally and venomously negative, is likely to bit him wicked hard on the ass. Here's Howie's copy deceitful rubber stamp Senator Susan Collins, and that's just on the ActBlue bucket for bloggers-as-ATM-drones. I wouldn't dream of using "deceitful rubber stamp" to message, even to Dems behind closed doors -- its not a program, its not vision. The DSCC's negative ad cost Chellie the race in the '02 cycle. And Valerie should know what blackface means.