“Oh, shit, guys, we got a new email from Leila Sales.”
“You mean our extremely well-informed constituent who writes to us with her own carefully considered criticism, never just copying language that was provided to her by the ACLU?”
“That’s the one. We can tell by the detail with which she composes her emails that she’s read every single bill before Congress. Every single section of every single bill, in fact. Section? Paragraph? What do you call a part of a bill?”
“I’m sure Leila Sales knows.”
“Just like she knows the meaning of every acronym that she included in her email. When she advised us to pass CEPP, she didn’t have to google whether it was actually CEEP, or whether the E in it stood for energy or electricity or elbow. She just really keeps up on these things.”
“Personally, I think it’s amazing that her understanding of how a bill becomes a law is in no way reliant upon half-remembered information she gleaned from Schoolhouse Rock.”
“You know what else makes her a constituent worth listening to? She always keeps track of where bills are. She would never ask us to vote for a bill that actually came through the Senate three weeks ago, only she didn’t weigh in until now because she decided that rather than doing any actual productive work today, she should instead go through her to-do list, and she came across an item from August that said ‘call Senators re: abortion rights’ and decided that sounded more achievable than doing her literal actual job.”
“She didn’t call us, though.”
“That’s because she’s scared that if we got on the phone, she would state her case, and then we would ask a single pointed question that would reveal she really does not know the nuances of this issue as well as she thinks she does, and then we would laugh at her and ignore her perspective.”
“That’s a reasonable fear. It’s a good thing she emailed, instead.”
“We never ignore emails.”
“We never ignore any of our constituents. Especially not Leila Sales, even though it is very clear from all available demographic information—not to mention her priorities—that she is a Democrat and will not under any circumstances vote for Senator Cruz for anything other than ‘Most Worst Senator,’ regardless of whether he supports the DREAM Act or not.”
“One thing I like to say about our boss Ted Cruz is that he is definitely open to being convinced either way on these issues. And if anyone can do that convincing, it’s Leila Sales, who was many years ago on her high school debate team.”
“She never even makes typos in her emails, which is something we notice and respect.”
“Well, she did make that one typo that one time.”
“But that’s only because she didn’t write that sentence. She copy-pasted it from an email forward from her dad.”
“I thought she never copy-pasted anything because she knows all these issues so well.”
“Good point. She never does. Just that one time. And that was only to make her father happy.”
“Should we send her a form letter to confirm that the Senator received her message and is taking it very seriously?”
“Absolutely. Let’s also add her to our mailing list, since she obviously values frequent, unbiased updates on everything going on in Congress. Once she’s on the mailing list, she can respond to the surveys on which we base all of our policy decisions, like: ‘Do you believe that children in public schools should be taught discriminatory and unproven ideas like Critical Race Theory rather than being taught addition and subtraction?’”
“I wonder how Leila Sales will answer that question.”
“I’m sure she’ll email to let us know.”