Earlier this week, Kossacks and Obama supporters raised over $20,000 for Congressman Ben Chandler after the word went out that Clinton supporters were inundating his office with angry phone calls and e-mails. It was a great example of what Obama supporters can do when they are properly motivated and a path of action is clear.
The central theme of Obama's campaign is to respond to negativity and despair with willingness to make changes and embrace hope. His grassroots organization and his fundraising machine are proof that this is possible even in an environment where frustration and disenfranchisement are at the highest levels most of us can remember.
To this end, I want to direct the Kos community to the ActBlue fundraiser page that catalogs Obama's superdelegate and elected official backers who are also running for office, and ask shamelessly for your recommendations so that we can spread the word and spread the wealth as we did for Congressman Chandler.
The link and some more specific suggestions below the fold.
The ActBlue fundraiser for Obama's supporters is here:
Friends of Obama
I had already cross-referenced the list of my state's superdelegates with fundraising pages before this one came to my attention, and had made contributions to each of them. But I encourage people to use the Friends of Obama link (which I did not set up) because it sends a message to the candidates about where the money came from.
So, use good old Ctrl+F to search for your state's abbreviation and plug in the contribution you can manage -- even if it's as little as $10 -- for each of the elected officials who represent you. You can follow up, like I did, with a call to the office of each candidate with a message that I'd donated through ActBlue to say thanks for their support of Obama.
What we did for Ben was great, but let's not just grease the wheel that ran over the biggest bump -- let's show all of them what being "downticket" with Obama really means.