September 11, 2016

Hillary Clinton Has Pneumonia

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Hillary Clinton has contracted pneumonia and is taking antibiotics for it. I hope she gets better soon. In the meantime, though, the news is going to be grim. Expect all of the following:

  • Washington Post: This makes Clinton’s health a genuine issue.
  • Charles Krauthammer: She should have told us hours earlier than she did. Is there nothing the Clintons won’t lie about?
  • Vox: Here’s a pneumonia explainer.
  • Wall Street Journal: Can Hillary keep up the pace on campaign trail?
  • Fox News All-Stars: William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia after 32 days in office.
  • Don Lemon: Is it possible Clinton actually has Ebola?
  • Time: New focus on Kaine as Clinton struggles with health.
  • @realDonaldTrump: Hillary tried to hide sickness. But I’ve been warning about her health for months. Need more transparency!
  • @KatrinaPierson: Doctors say it might actually be cystic fibrosis or lung cancer. Public deserves full medical workup.
  • @RogerJStoneJr: Hillary has Legionnaires’ disease.
  • National Enquirer: Hillary Clinton given months to live by docs.
  • New York Times: Questions raised about Clinton diagnosis.
  • Facebook News: Trending topics: How long does Hillary have to live?
  • Politico: Will Clinton recover in time for debate?
  • Etc.

The real story, of course, is that she caught pneumonia. It’s a common illness, and antibiotics should get rid of it pretty quickly. Even during a presidential campaign it’s a fairly ordinary kind of story. But the talking heads need more than that to talk about. We need some kind of morality play. We need the “real questions this raises.” We need analysis. We need daily updates, accompanied by slo-mo analysis of Clinton’s latest walk to her car. So we’ll get them. Sigh.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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