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OVERWHELMING….Byron York reports from the trenches:

Just talked to a very clued-in Republican on the Hill. This person wouldn’t predict a unanimous Republican vote against the Democratic stimulus package, but said there would be “minimal” GOP support of the bill. “I don’t know if it will be unanimous, but Democrats are not going to have the kind of bipartisan support the president was trying to get,” he told me. An “overwhelming” number of Republicans will vote no, he predicted.

That’s pretty much what I expect too. And hey — I don’t blame them, either. The job of the opposition is to oppose, and if this were some big Republican tax cut fest following a GOP victory I’d expect Democrats to oppose that overwhelmingly too.

I really don’t think the opposition party owes the president any votes just because he won the election. They owe him votes if he convinces them that, on balance, one of his initiatives is a good thing for the country, or if they get some concession they want, or if they think it’s political suicide to oppose him. In other words, the usual political reasons. Contrary to what our talking heads mindlessly recite after every election, honeymoons are for newlyweds, not presidents, and stuff needs to get done for four years out of four, not just for the first hundred days. It’s long past time for the media to get over its preoccupation with both of these romantic notions.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

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