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So what will be the basic Obama/Gibbs media takeaway from the healthcare summit? I figure there are three main possibilities:

  1. “I’m disappointed that Republicans just fell back on the same old talking points instead of having a serious discussion.”
  2. “Our differences turned out to be pretty fundamental after all: we want to tackle real problems and Republicans just want to tinker around the edges. But I’m convinced the American people prefer something to nothing.”
  3. “I’m grateful that Republicans had some good ideas, but they fell far short of addressing our real problems.”

If I were president, I’d choose #1. Luckily, I’m not, and I figure Obama will pretty much choose #3. The initial reaction of the press, however, appears to be “Jesus, what a waste of time.”

Which it pretty much was.1 As an aside, this is why I wasn’t very excited about the idea of holding regular versions of the “question time” that Obama held with congressional Republicans last month. They got taken by surprise then, but there was never any chance that would happen a second time. And it didn’t. They were armed with every talking point in the book this time, and some of those talking points resonate pretty well. What you saw today is about what any future question time would look like.

1Just to be clear, I mean a waste of time substantively. In terms of its impact on the politics and public opinion of healthcare reform, we’ll have to wait and see.

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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.

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