July 9, 2015

This Year, Everyone Is In Disarray

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Democrats in disarray!

The ongoing debate over trade legislation within the Democratic Party between pro-business and pro-labor forces has put deep divisions in the party on public display….It is in this context that many in the labor movement, and on the left generally, view the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now in the final negotiating stages, as an unmitigated disaster. From this vantage point, Republicans who vote for trade agreements are working on behalf of their corporate supporters. Democrats who support the TPP are worse, however, seen by many as traitors to their constituents.

….While the left is ascendant, the likely scenario for a resolution of the intraparty disagreement over trade is as follows: Until she secures the nomination, Hillary Clinton will voice the level of criticism of the TPP necessary to prevent the issue from serving as a mobilization tool for her rivals. Then, if she actually wins the presidency, she will most likely follow the path of her predecessor….After winning the presidency as an adversary of free trade, Obama in office became an advocate.

Republicans in disarray!

The party is warring over funding for disease research, bickering over an education bill and deeply divided on the possible renewal of the Export-Import Bank, an object of scorn among the far right.

….The broad disagreement on so many fronts lately is striking. Congress is almost certain, again, to fail to come to a timely agreement on a long-term highway bill. Republican leaders had to abruptly pull the emergency brake on a sweeping reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, amid a tiff about privatizing air traffic controllers. As if all that wasn’t enough, a showdown over government funding is fast approaching.

….All of this acrimony has led some top Republican officials to wonder whether they’ll ever be able to get things in line.

So who’s in more disarray, Democrats or Republicans? Sounds to me like the answer is Republicans, though I suppose it depends on just how bitter the TPP fight gets. In any case, Congress is off for the entire month of August, so most of this stuff won’t blow up until September. Just in time for a government shutdown! Booyah!

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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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