Saturday nagging

Yesterday you blew away our goal of 6,500 donations for Blue Majority candidates, but since we've got until the end of the month--Monday--to close out the quarter, we set a new goal of 1,000 contributions per candidate, focusing on getting Rick Noriega, Dan Seals, Gary Trauner, Joe Garcia, and Leslie Byrne over the 1,000 contibutor hump.  Last night, we got there with Seals, so now it's time to push the others over.

Demonstrating a broad base of support--garnering a large number of small donors--is almost as important in this quarter as the total amount raised. It sends a strong message to big donors, to the DCCC, and  to the Republicans. It helps scare away Republican opponents, like in the case of Dan Maffei in NY-25, where the Republicans just can't scare up a strong candidate for the open seat. That's what happened this year when Wyoming's Barbara Cubin was scared away from running against Gary Trauner again, because he came so close to beating her in 2006.

Donating now is also a chance to reward candidates stepping out on critical issues. For instance, Leslie Byrne is among the Blue Majority candidates who have endorsed the Responsible Plan for Iraq, an effort that is gaining more and more coverage from the traditional media. Or you have Joe Garcia in FL-2925, taking on the corrupt Center for a Free Cuba.

The other thing that lots of donations from us does is, as Markos has argued, is offset the need for money from those other, less small "d" democratic sources.

So we can let AT&T buy our candidates, or we can have regular Americans "own" them. It's the difference between serving their corporate masters and serving their constituents.

It sounds crass, it sounds ugly, but I see it differently -- it's one way (of several) that we can directly invest in our democracy. Few of us have serious money in our bank accounts, so this is the way we can look for the candidates who most inspire us and reflect our values, hopes, and aspirations.

Every one of these candidates will fulfill our goal of "more and better" Democrats. We won't help just anyone who attaches a "D" to their name anymore, we've shifted focus from the unqualified "more" to the critical "better" part of that equation, and Byrne, Trauner, Garcia, and Noriega fit the bill.

Help get these candidates over the 1,000 donation hurdle, and that much closer to a seat in Congress in 2009.