October 19, 2011

The Harrowing Politics of Mortgage Relief

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Last night I briefly noted that among the Republican candidates at Tuesday’s debate, “Nobody even pretended to have anything to say about housing.” If you want to know what I was talking about, Dave Weigel rounds up the responses under the headline, “The GOP Candidates on Foreclosures: A Study in Mush.” That’s about right. And that’s true for both fringe candidates and front runners alike. Tim Murphy has more on Mitt “Let It Hit Bottom” Romney here.

In fairness, President Obama hasn’t exactly been a profile in courage on this issue either. But the Republican responses are a grim reminder of just how bad the politics of housing are. Voters may say they hate bailing out the banks — and they do! — but they hate bailing out the profligate next-door neighbors even more. No politician in America seriously wants to risk voter wrath by doing that.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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