August 21, 2008

Obama Goes on the Air With McCain’s Houses

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The Obama campaign has the quickest video team on these here internets. It already has an ad up on what is quickly becoming my new favorite story.

I know they had to keep it simple, but I would have tried to work in this point. Take a look at the spending habits of the McCains (“Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another”) and the fact that they have so many million-dollar homes that John McCain can’t even remember them all. And then consider the fact that wasteful spending is supposedly John McCain’s animating passion.

I view this as a more serious hypocrisy that John Edwards’ zip code-sized house. And we all know how long that story hung around.

Update: Another point Obama’s team could have made: how can someone oversee the housing crisis when he doesn’t have any day-to-day concerns about his own mortgage? Or mortgages, as the case may be? How can this person set tax rates for the middle class? All of that is implied, I suppose…

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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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