Boy, is this ever true.
The liberal activist group ActBlue just sent out a fund-raiser email that begins with this:
This election would make a novelist blush: the voices of ordinary folks are being drowned out by a flood of anonymous corporate cash, channeled into major races by Republican groups helmed by Karl Rove and other Bush-era figures. All the while, the largest news channel on television flaunts its "fair and balanced" credentials while cutting million dollar checks to Republican groups.
That about sums it up -- except that they left out the further factor that would make a novelist blush to have written, because it is so over the top:
The sheer nuttiness of some of the Republican candidates running neck and neck with seasoned lawmakers - and some of them will likely be elected. Hopefully not Christine O'Donnell, who is just a little too loopy for Delaware voters, I hope; and the guy who is making news by his hobby of dressing up in a Nazi uniform and performing re-enactments of German history. But there is Sharron Angle, tied in the polls with Harry Ried; and Rand Paul tied with Kentucky's highly qualified Attorney General Jack Conway.
ActBlue is also correct in saying that I feel helpless against this tide of anger that has genuine roots but is being multiplied and misdirected by the Republican misinformation machine. Of course, ActBlue has a solution -- send them money to help combat all this. But even that feels to me like it will be too little, too late.
How could we -- the Democrats -- have allowed the other side to control the narrative so that they were able to turn this populist anger against those trying to dig out from the mess and instead channel it to benefit those who caused the problem in the first place. That should have been the top priority in message strategy. It now appears that large segments of the voting public blame the Democrats for everything and are ready to give the car keys back to those that ran it into the ditch.
I have a sick feeling about it all.
Ralph
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This is the type of email the right wing whack jobs are sending around.
ReplyDeleteWE ARE COMING . . . NOVEMBER, 2010.
AND WE ARE STRONG!
Millions strong!
THE AGENDA
Borders . . . Closed !
Language . . .. English !
Culture . . . Constitution !
Bill of Rights, GOD and the BIBLE!
NOVEMBER 2010
"CHANGE" IS COMING!
WE...THE PEOPLE....are coming!
***
I tried to counter this with logic -
Psssst! I'll let you in on a secret.
The Constitution doesn't support your first two points, or rewriting the Bill of Rights the way you want to change it. It's also a 'political document' not a 'culture'.
Christine O'Donnell thinks there's "First Amendment rights of private decisions". Asked if she still believed evolution was a 'myth' she said, "That should be decided on the local community." Called Afghanistan Iraq. Couldn't name one Supreme Court decision. You can't invent a fictional character this idiotic. And she's funded by $4 million from anonymous donors. The same anonymous donors who own Sharon Angle - you should check out the Koch brothers if you want to really know who 'owns' the 'change is going to come' crowd, since those two BILLIONAIRES are the ones behind all the Tea Party talking points and ads.
I was met with
I'll let you in on a little secret Change is coming! Nancy, Obama and the Boys are in for a real big surprise.
So, Ralph, how do you even begin to have a conversation with people like that?
richard
Ralph,
ReplyDeleteI'm the communications director here at ActBlue and your post popped up on my radar. I just want to clarify something: we're not asking for money because we think it's an immediate, quick-fix solution to the problems confronting our country.
But the reality is this: almost $80M have gone through ActBlue since Obama was elected, to thousands of Democratic candidates and committees, with an average donation size of ~$100.00; every dollar of that comes from individuals.
That's change (pun intended) that we can believe in. It'll take time, but we'll get there by giving donors and candidates a different model for raising money than the Republican of raising millions from anonymous corporate donors.
Six years ago, ActBlue didn't exist. Today it is the largest single source of political money in the country, regardless of party. More than $160M raised, and all of it because we let donors choose who to support, and made it easy for them to do so.
Don't lose heart; it will get better.
(Also: thanks for reading our emails!)
Thanks for writing Adrian. Actually, I didn't mean to sound critical of ActBlue; I'm very aware of your effective fund-raising. It was my general discouragement that we seem to have lost the message war, and I'm not sure we can recover in this election cycle. We'll win some, lose some -- but it isn't going to be pretty. I'm cautiously optimistic that it won't be quite as bad as some are predicting.
ReplyDelete