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Andrew Sullivan, who argues endlessly against the politics of outrage, emotion, and resentment, demonstrates today why the politics of outrage, emotion, and resentment work so well. Sharron Angle, he admits, is a “nutcase.” But if he lived in Nevada, he still couldn’t vote for Harry Reid, even if that was the only way of keeping Angle out of the U.S. Senate:

He is everything I hate about Democrats: incapable of making an argument, a face so weak it changes depending on the way the wind is blowing, a voice so sad you think he’s a funeral director, a man whose appareance on television has never evinced any reaction from me but “where’s the remote?” I just couldn’t pull the lever for the guy. Sorry. So I won’t be surprised if the nutjob wins. And a tiny part of me will feel a pulse of intense pleasure to see him go down.

Harry Reid is an inside player, not a Sarah Palinesque bomb thrower. He’s no good on TV. But guess what? Against monumental odds, he played the inside game pretty decently this term, shepherding a stimulus bill, a healthcare reform bill, and a financial reform bill through the Senate. And to do it, he needed to figure out how to deal with prima donnas like Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Scott Brown, and Olympia Snowe without losing his sanity. These are some of the most infuriating, self-regarding people on the planet. Could you do it? I know I couldn’t. Hell, I probably would have taken a swing at Lieberman on the Senate floor around September of last year.

And then we would have lost his vote and healthcare reform wouldn’t have passed. But I’d look tough! Cable news would love me! Andrew would be thrilled! Dems are showing some backbone!

And all at the minor cost of passing nothing. But at least we’d have someone telegenic running the Senate, and God knows that’s what’s really important.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist 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 need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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