The Presidential Campaign Is Now Getting Really….Lame

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It’s a brand new week, and Donald Trump is taking it on the chin over his taxes. So how does he respond? Lamely.

First up, we have a new RNC video—shot in grainy black-and white, natch—claiming that Tim Kaine defended horrible BLACK murderers1 back when he was a defense attorney fresh out of law school. Devastating! Or it might be if every political opponent in Kaine’s career hadn’t tried the same attack. Kaine’s answer has always been the same: as a devout Catholic, he’s categorically opposed to the death penalty, and he’s willing to defend even the worst people if it means keeping them off death row. So far he’s batting a thousand with this defense.

Next up, the Drudge Report is bringing up possibly the most ancient attack against Bill Clinton of all time: that he’s the father of a mixed-race child born to a BLACK prostitute he frequented in his Little Rock Days. This story has been part of the Clinton fever swamps for something like 30 years, and even people who don’t like Bill have never given it the time of day. I understand why Drudge is trafficking in this sort of nostalgia—the 90s were good to Matt Drudge—but seriously? Bill Clinton’s “love child” is the best they’ve got?

Any day now, some Trump surrogate somewhere is going to pop up with BRAND NEW EVIDENCE that Bill Clinton ran coke out of Mena airport. I can’t wait. Is this seriously Trump’s campaign strategy?

1Actually, most of them weren’t black. But you could be forgiven for not noticing given the way the ad is shot and the fact that the RNC itself is promoting the video as “Willie Horton style.”

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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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