October 22, 2018

Barack Obama Just Delivered the Greatest Imperative to Democrats Ahead of the November Elections

“The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference.”

At a Nevada rally on Monday, former President Barack Obama delivered one clear message to Democrats ahead of Election Day: Vote.

“This November’s elections are more important than any I can remember in my lifetime,” he said. “And that includes when I was a on the ballot.”

Nevada is a battleground state for Democrats this midterm election, with an open governor’s seat and Democrat Jacky Rosen running a tight race against incumbent Republican Sen. Dean Heller. And, as Obama pointed out on Monday, Nevada could be the first state to an elect an all-female legislature.

“This is not just about one person in the White House,” he said, pointedly avoiding naming President Trump in his speech. “This is about Congress and governor’s races and state legislative races…If all it took was being president, I would have solved everything.”

At one point in the speech, Obama specifically spoke to young voters: “You wouldn’t let your grandmother decide what you wear. You wouldn’t let your parents decide what’s on your playlist.”

“You can’t just give your power away,” he added.  

And while in Vegas, the former president—and dad joke aficionado—couldn’t resist the temptation of a betting joke, at one point saying, “I know you can bet on anything here in Vegas—but you don’t want to bet that the Republicans are actually going to protect your health care.”

In his concluding words, Obama warned that failing to vote in this election may have grave consequences. “The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference,” he said. “The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism that says ‘we’re just gonna stay home because my vote doesn’t matter.'”

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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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