March 12, 2008

Hey, Did You Hear Barack Obama Is Black?

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As you know, Geraldine Ferraro went and expounded on her original comments on race and gender by making them worse. But you may not know that she went on TV this morning, ignoring my advice (“go away!”), and continued her insanity.

Clearly the Clinton campaign hasn’t told Ferraro to stay quiet; to the contrary, it is trotting her out. So, screw it, I’m posting this:

An emailer writes in with an excellent summary of the Ferraro situation:

Seems to me she probably made the original comment off the top of her head, but [the Clinton campaign] made a very cynical short-term political calculation that among the white voters of Pennsylvania painting Obama as a whiny affirmative action case who’s constantly “playing the race card” and is racist against whites(!) is in their best interest. Maybe they’re right! But you know what, after Mississippi yesterday, Obama has a /bigger/ delegate lead (161) than he had before March 4th. Which means in the last week and a half, while HRC has been “winning” the narrative, she’s lost ground in the nomination battle.

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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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