Ten-Word Messages

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Ezra Klein makes a good point, writing on the topic of the Democratic Party’s much-lamented lack of an easily “digestible” platform: “Can someone please explain to me why a major political party in the world’s most powerful country should be able to define its message in ten words?” Right, exactly. Also, why should anyone be forced to explain the meaning of liberalism in an “elevator talk”? Politics and policy, especially good policy, is complicated, and if Democrats can’t explain what they stand for or plan to do to fix this country in two monosyllabic sentences, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Or at least it shouldn’t be a bad thing.

A related “concern” I find baffling is the idea that Democrats should, for some unknown reason, be totally unified on each and every issue. Media types in particular like to harp on this. But why should they be unified? As a general matter of principle, democracy presumably works better when there’s lots of disagreement, and competing ideas are actually aired, rather than suppressed. Many people point out that the Republican Party has gained so much power because it stays on message and never succumbs to any sort of infighting or internal squabbling. That’s not totally true, but even if it was, the Republican Party has also driven the country into the ground, so there’s reason to think that running a political party like the Soviet Politburo probably isn’t the ideal way to govern the country.

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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.

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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.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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