August 3, 2020

Trump’s Attack on Mail Voting Is Good for Democrats

Patrick Fallon/ZUMA

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This is so bugfuck nuts:

President Trump’s unfounded attacks on mail balloting are discouraging his own supporters from embracing the practice, according to polls and Republican leaders across the country, prompting growing alarm that one of the central strategies of his campaign is threatening GOP prospects in November.

Voting by mail has always been viewed as favorable to Republicans—or at worst a wash. Democrats embraced it this year because it makes sense in the middle of a pandemic, but Donald Trump simply refused to believe that anybody, let alone Democrats, could possibly be acting altruistically. The only thing that made sense to him was that mail voting must be some kind of Democratic trick and therefore he was opposed to it.

That’s what happens when you’re so transactional and so cynical that you don’t believe non-selfish behavior is even possible. This should have been a no-brainer bipartisan initiative, but Trump didn’t believe it and no one in the Republican Party had the guts to tell him the truth. Now they’re getting exactly what they deserve.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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