November 3, 2009

Election Prediction Thread

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So who’s going to win today?  Leave  your guesses in comments.  The warm glow of being right is your reward if, in fact, you turn out to be right.

I haven’t blogged much about any of this because none of it has seemed very interesting up until the last minute soap opera in the NY-23 race.  Even by the standards of off-year elections this is a pretty small one, and though the British press routinely projects the future course of the empire from the results of a single by-election in West Bromwich, we have a hard time pulling off quite the same level of breathless credulity here.  There’s just too much obviously local spin to all these races.  Still, I admit that I’ll be impressed if Jon Corzine manages to pull out a come-from-behind victory by insinuating that his opponent is fat.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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