Iraq War vet Jim Mowrer, competitive in his race against execrable Iowa Rep. Steve King. Should he be people powered or Wall Street powered? Answer is obvious.
We are in the stretch run for the 2014 elections, thus it's prime fundraising time. I've got some variation of this push-back in my last two posts, one
yesterday and the other
this morning:
Stop asking me for money! I'm getting a million emails from people asking me for money!
I get it. It's annoying seeing your email inbox clogged with fundraising appeals, then coming to Daily Kos and getting hit up with more appeals.
Here's the thing though—those fundraising appeals are the price we pay for building a people-powered Democratic Party. Here are the facts:
1) If regular Americans don't finance the Democrats, then rich Wall Street fucks will.
2) If rich Wall Street fucks finance the Democratic Party, they own it. See the GOP for proof.
3) That's horrible! It's bad enough we have Lieberdems and Corporate Dems to deal with. At least we have a solid core of new populist Dems to build around, people like Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley and Al Franken and Sherrod Brown. And their numbers are growing by the cycle (Gary Peters in Michigan will be a great addition to that core). Our job is to identify those candidates and build on our successes. We don't do that if we cede candidate fundraising to Wall Street fucks.
4) Having a people-powered, small-dollar funded party means our good candidates have to ask for money from people like you.
Yes, that gets annoying. And yes, it would be nice to not have to deal with it. But what's more annoying? A Mitch McConnell-run Senate, a Senate dominated by Leiberdem corporatist assholes, or getting asked for money via email? I certainly know what's least annoying.
If you don't like fundraising emails, delete them, unsubscribe, filter them out. There are options. And while all that is more annoying than not getting those emails in the first place, it's not as annoying as losing the election because we were too prickly to put up with a little discomfort.
We're trying to win elections and change our country, people. Activism isn't supposed to be comfortable or easy, particularly when the "discomfort" we're talking about is a genuine first-world problem (too much email!). That should be the lowest hurdle you need to cross if you want to be an activist working for change.
In any case, if you can't cross that hurdle, then see you in November, because we're now focused on doing everything we can to win this November. We'll be fundraising every day of these final five weeks.
If you've already given, then congrats! You've done your part. If you can't afford to give, but can do other forms of GOTV? Then awesome! You're doing your part. If you can't afford to give, can't do traditional GOTV, but are harrassing your friends and family into registering to vote and voting in important elections, then congrats! You're doing your part.
The good news is that despite some of that kvetching, yesterday's fundraising appeals did awesome, with over 1,000 of you contributing over $63,000.
Mary Burke led the crowd with $7,360 raised—we all want to get rid of Scott Walker! Mark Schauer in the Michigan governor's race came in second with $5,879, and Mike Michaud in Maine's governor's race came in third with $5,450 raised. We have them and many more great candidates on our endorsement list. If you haven't already, pick one and give at least $3. And you don't have to give to one of ours! There are plenty of candidates in your backyard that could use help, and all across the nation, for that matter.
And if you get a bunch of annoying emails as a result, that's really not the worst that can happen. It's just the by-product of doing a really good thing.
