Republicans Once Again Reaping What They’ve Sown

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Politico reports on the strained relations between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell:

In recent months, their relationship has broken down over a sheer lack of trust, stemming from McConnell’s suspicion of Reid’s involvement in his 2014 campaign and intensifying as the Nevada Democrat has threatened to change filibuster rules despite McConnell’s furious objections.

McConnell believes Reid is breaching protocol between Senate leaders by getting directly involved in his reelection bid, while Reid thinks McConnell is simply using the spat to bolster his own reelection chances by running against Washington Democrats.

Wow! One party leader is campaigning against another party leader? That’s unprecedented! Or, you know, maybe not. Let’s rewind the wayback machine to 2004 and set the spacetime coordinates for South Dakota. I know we’d never trust the lamestream media to report this correctly, so let’s allow Fox News to do the honors:

Throwing tradition out the window, Majority Leader Bill Frist took the unprecedented step last weekend of openly stumping to unseat his Democratic counterpart Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

….Frist is doing his best to see Daschle go, traveling to South Dakota to stump for Republican John Thune. Frist said he is merely doing his job of trying to build and protect a slim Republican majority. “One vote matters. Policy matters. Elections matter,” Frist said while on the road last Saturday.

I don’t know whether Reid is involved in the campaign against McConnell or not. But if he is, I think we all know exactly where this charming tradition started.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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