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Jonathan Bernstein has a question for us left-leaning types:

Think back to what you were thinking in November 2008, and in January 2009. As the 111th Congress winds down, what’s your biggest disappointment of the things you expected to happen? Not your wish list, but the things you really expected to happen. What’s your biggest happy surprise?

This is fairly easy for me, since I wrote a blog post on November 3, 2008, saying that I’d consider Obama’s first term a success if he got three things done: (1) withdrawal from Iraq, (2) real healthcare reform, and (3) carbon pricing. “Get something serious done on those issues, and Obama’s administration will be a big success. Fail on them, and it’s not clear to me that any combination of other new programs will be enough to salvage it.”

This leaves me in a pickle. Withdrawal from Iraq appears to be proceeding apace, and healthcare reform did indeed get passed. Carbon pricing, obviously, didn’t. On the other hand, we can add a modest stimulus bill, a modest financial reform bill, and repeal of DADT to Obama’s list of accomplishments. Does that make up for the failure of the carbon bill? Two years ago I said I didn’t think any combination of other new programs would be enough to make up for failure on one of the big three, and that’s a tough statement to walk back. So I guess I’d say I consider Obama’s first term a success, but not a big success. How’s that for weaseling?

As for happy surprises, I’m not sure I have any. I didn’t expect miracles, but I did expect more from Obama, and I can’t think of anything significant he passed that I wasn’t expecting. Partly this was due to epic levels of Republican obstructionism, and partly it was due to Obama’s native economic conservatism. On the other hand, I can think of two big disappointments that I didn’t fully expect: the size of the buildup in Afghanistan and Obama’s failure to rein in some of the civil liberties excesses of the Bush era. Again, I didn’t expect miracles, but neither was I expecting 140,000 troops in Afghanistan or almost complete acquiescence to the national security posture of the Bush/Cheney administration.

So there you have it: on net, I’d call Obama a successful president, but not a hugely successful president. But he’s still got six years left. There’s still time to surprise us.

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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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