Here's an email I received today - from the DCCC. It makes me angry. (Should be easier to read if you click on the picture.)
(Here's the same text written in text to help dumb search engine bots:)
from: FINAL-NOTICE@dccc.org
Subject: AUTO-CONFIRM: [Member Status (03/31/2017)]
We hate to bug you again, but this is the FINAL NOTICE OF YOUR DEMOCRATIC MEMBERSHIP before tonights End of Quarter Deadline
FINAL NOTICE
(my email address appeared here)
2017 Membership: Pending
This is our first End of Quarter deadline since President T---p took office . . .
and we're desperately behind our goal.
and we're desperately behind our goal.
That's why every top Democrat asked for your help:
Martin Sheen emailed you!
Carole King emailed you!
Donna Brazile emailed you!
Barney Frank emailed you!
James Carville emailed you THREE TIMES!
Keith Ellison emailed you!
Khizr Khan emailed you!
Nancy Pelosi emailed you SIX TIMES!
This is your FINAL NOTICE to answer their calls before the Triple Match expires.
Pitch in $1 before the deadline hits in 11 hours:
ALL GIFTS TRIPLE-MATCHED
Triple match your $1 >>
Triple match your $35 >>
Triple match your $50 >>
Triple match your $100 >>
Triple match your $250 >>
Or triple match another amount >>
Thanks,
DCCC
Let me just tick off some of the issues I have with this communication:
- "We're desperately behind"? Desperation is not a good image for America's second ranked political party. Quarterly fund-raising goals are made up things, nothing I can get excited about. This is fake news.
- "2017 Membership: pending"? My "membership" in what, exactly? I'm a Democrat only by virtue of my local voter registration. Giving money to your political action committee doesn't make me a Democrat (or a democrat) - even if that's what I wanted to be. (What I am call myself now is "progressive".)
- FINAL NOTICE? Believe me, this will not be the last email I get from the DCCC (even if I unsubscribed, which I probably should.) Threatening me with loss of my membership is just plain silly.
- My email? (I covered it with a red bar.) I never gave you my email, DCCC. I gave it to that guy Bernie Sanders - you may have heard of him. He talks about issues in his emails. After he lost the primaries, I started getting emails from someone named Hillary. I don't hear from her anymore. I suspect you party guys have been trading email lists. (Also: instead of inserting my email into your form letter, try inserting my name next time.)
- "Every top Democrat"? I believe Martin Sheen and Carole King are entertainers. James Carville and Donna Brazile are party hacks. I liked Barney Frank when he was in Congress and I have great hope that your latest runner-up, Keith Ellison, will not become yet another hack. I feel sorry for Khizr Khan - he lost his son in the fight for . . . what exactly? There may not be all that many "top Democrats" left - but can't you do better than this list?
- Nancy Pelosi Nancy, how are you still a Democratic leader, a top Democrat? Why weren't you replaced after the Democrats lost control of the House in 2010? Or after the elections in 2012, or 2014 or 2016? Didn't you hear me screaming at you in my car recently as I listened to you being interviewed about health care on NPR. "Mention single payer!" I shouted repeatedly at you. You couldn't say the words or even hint at the idea. Your goal was simply to defend the status quo, Obamacare (which, I like to point out, was originally a Republican idea to give corporate welfare to insurance companies.)
- "Pitch in $1"? Only one? Don't worry, you're not going to get even a buck from me. Leslie and I do give money to organizations that protect Americans from the shenanigans of other political party - including ACLU, SPLC, LDF, the Brady Campaign, Planned Parenthood. These are things we believe in. I suspect that if I gave my extra buck to a homeless person on the street it would do more to change society that it would if I gave it to you, the DCCC. If you're going to ask for our money - and you do that repeatedly in a continuing stream of emails - you need to articulate some goals I respect.
- "Triple match"? Really - matched by whom exactly? A special interest of some sort. Possibly a big Wall Street bank? Isn't this just a ploy to make me think my money somehow can become more valuable than it really is? If you need to show that Americans support the Democratic party by inflating the number of donors, the party needs to give us Americans things to believe in.
Hey DCCC, your emails make you look like losers. This one in particular does that and all the many others begging me for a spare buck have done the same thing. You're doing this to yourselves. You're branding yourselves as also rans. Meanwhile, the other "team" is busy trying to get its own act together. All you've done is to make yourselves look foolish and irrelevant.
Would it be too hard to mention a few issues the next time you write to me? For example, why can't you mention raising the minimum wage? Why don't you talk about Medicare For All? Just a hint that you want to help students afford college tuition would be great. I hope you support those things. Those are positive things that many Americans can get behind. There are many more.
Here's my advice - mention at least one of these major, positive issues in every single email. You send me a lot of emails and every one is a chance to address an issue. Also, you should find a way to mention these issues every single time you open your mouths in public. Do it in every interview on NPR or, for that matter, anywhere else.
Start talking about the issues and eventually I might start to think you're worth an extra buck.
Would it be too hard to mention a few issues the next time you write to me? For example, why can't you mention raising the minimum wage? Why don't you talk about Medicare For All? Just a hint that you want to help students afford college tuition would be great. I hope you support those things. Those are positive things that many Americans can get behind. There are many more.
Here's my advice - mention at least one of these major, positive issues in every single email. You send me a lot of emails and every one is a chance to address an issue. Also, you should find a way to mention these issues every single time you open your mouths in public. Do it in every interview on NPR or, for that matter, anywhere else.
Start talking about the issues and eventually I might start to think you're worth an extra buck.
Hey, DCCC - if you're really curious about what you, the Democratic Party, is doing wrong - I suggest you read Don't let establishment opportunists ruin the resistance movement, by Thomas Frank, in The Guardian. I'll quote some of it for you:
But opportunism never sleeps, and with the rage and the resistance of recent weeks some far less noble characters have seen a chance to develop a new con. They’re up on the resistance bandwagon right now, rending their garments, shaking their fists and praying that no one holds them responsible for the dead end into which they’ve steered us over the years. Inveighing loudly against Trump has become, for the people I am describing, a means of rescuing an ideology that has proven a disaster.
There is a possibility that the resistance to Trump will turn out the same way – that it will become a vehicle for our Enron Democrats to avoid accountability. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in December. Now is not the moment for infighting, others have insisted, but for unity and togetherness. Unity behind the existing leadership, that is. Changing the personnel in the C-Suites will only weaken us, they will say; hell, we can’t even afford to see our leaders criticized.
And so the thinkers of the “center left” proceed to hold their failed leaders above scrutiny and to redouble their commitment to the shabby ideology that allowed Trump to win.
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