Obama’s Anger Problem?

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MoJo DC bureau boss-man David Corn has an interesting post over at AOL Politics Daily arguing that President Obama needs to get mad. Money quote:

In the debate over health care reform, Obama has tried to bring all the parties together: the medical profession, the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies. The plan is obvious: buy off the various special interests and prevent them from trying to kill an effort to remake a system by which they now profit greatly. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, has called insurance companies “villains”—a view that many Americans, according to the polls, are sympathetic toward. (I’ve always believed that an easy way to win an election in this country is to run against health insurance companies and cable companies. Don’t most people despise both groups?)

That’s right. I read somewhere (anyone remember where this is from?) that Sarah Palin learned during the campaign that mass politics is all about creating a drama with yourself at the center. Barack Obama did an excellent job of that during the campaign. But every drama needs a villain, and right now, the health care fight doesn’t have one. People hate their insurance companies, so insurance companies would be a great target. David’s right: if Obama’s mad, he needs to tell us who he’s mad at.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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