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Jane Hamsher, as we all surely know, is passionately opposed to the current healthcare bill winding its way through Congress. But Matt Yglesias asks:

How Many Divisions Has Jane Hamsher?

That’s what Joseph Stalin supposedly asked about the pope when it came time to divvy up postwar Europe. Likewise, the suggestion here is that Jane Hamsher doesn’t really represent a very big or very dangerous faction of the left.

Maybe so. But if you asked Stalin’s successor, Mikhail Gorbachev, about the influence of the pope, he’d probably sneer a little less. In absolute terms, Jane may not represent a huge number of people or a vast amount of money, but she certainly seems like the linchpin of a disaffected left that could easily represent the difference between success and failure for a bill that’s likely to come down to one or two votes. Speaking for myself, I sure wish she could look past the disappointments — most of which were sadly inevitable — and instead focus all that energy on the big picture of what the Democratic healthcare bill means both for real people right now and for the likelihood of further reform in the future. This is our last crack at this for a good long time.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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