March 28, 2008

McCain Ad: Cue the Ugly “American” Campaign

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The American president Americans have been waiting for!

That’s the tag line on John McCain’s new ad, which features a film clip of McCain as a captured POW and a baritone-voice narrator asking, “What must a president believe about us, about America?” He kindly provides the answer: “That she is worth protecting.” Could the implication be that Barack Obama is not quite American and that he is not interested in protecting our country, which the ad describes with the feminine pronoun. In other words, the half-black dude with a funny name–who might be a secret Muslim–can’t protect her. Has Lee Atwater been resurrected? This smacks of the George H.W. Bush smear-tossing campaign against Michael Dukakis in 1988–but also of Hillary Clinton’s claims that Obama is not yet ready to be commander in chief.

By the way, when has America not had an “American president”?

If the Republican campaign is this vulgar and creepy seven months ahead of the election, expect much worse in the fall.

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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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