Money, Hey John and Marty

On Thursday, I wrote a post that mentioned the $8 million in John Kerry's warchest from his 2004 presidential bid, and now the Globe has a piece about it as well. I know that Sen. Kerry has indeed been there for many candidates, giving money, advice and other assistance. So, don't think I'm ungrateful for what Kerry's done for many Democatic candidates this cycle. He's been out there, pushing hard, and I'm appreciative of that. What I don't appreciate, however, is that our junior Senator is holding on to 8 million dollars that people gave him more than two years ago to spend on a national, general election.

Well, this is the next national, general election in some ways. And I want my money out there, being spent, not rotting away in an account that Kerry may use to defeat other Democrats in the 2008 primaries. This money was given as much to "the Democratic nominee" as it was to John Kerry. While I didn't support Kerry until the nomination process was over, I certainly rode the rails for him once he was the choice to represent the clear-headed, rational, Democratic position. Both authors of this blog spent election week 2004 in Ohio working hard to put John Kerry in the White House. And now, I want him to use everything in his power to put a Democratic House (and maybe Senate) in charge of the final two years of Bush's Administration. That money was given to him so that he could change the manner, method and substance of politics and policy in this country. Though he didn't succeed two years ago, he has the opportunity to do that now, and I adamantly believe that he should.

And as for the website to which I linked on Thursday, HeyJohn, I don't care who runs it. It doesn't matter. I can't understand why anyone would actually think that the DSCC was somehow behind an anonymous website, when they would be much more effective using either the mainstream media or the usual beltway backchannels, criticism from which drive Kerry insane. And even were they behind it, it wouldn't matter a lick to me because they'd be right. The content of that site is correct. John Kerry has the opportunity to inject more than $8 million into this race, with two weeks left, and dramatically shift the way politics are done in this country for at least two years. It's a huge amount of money that could generate a tremendous wave of advertising, GOTV and and other programs that might just swing the election, and thus make this country and the world a better place. Here, in terms of political capital: John Kerry can save the world!

There's another candidate close to home who's sitting on money that could be used to help his fellow Democrats over the next two weeks: Rep. Marty Meehan. I know he actually is running right now, but his seat isn't in danger and he really has no chance of losing --- and no prospect of spending all his $5 million. He's saving it up for a potential Senate bid when one of our lions steps down. That's his right, and I appreciate that, just as I appreciate Sen. Kerry's right to save his. But squirreling that money away for another day doesn't help folks like Diane Farrell (CT-4), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI-Sen) or Paul Hodes (NH-02), and those are just a few of the Dems in need in only neighboring states. Meehan could easily give $100K-500K to each of those races and still retain more than enough cash to set up a campaign for Senate. And if he does that, he'll probably have my support.

I'm adamant about spreading the money around right now because we're within striking difference of taking over at least one house of Congress, and we could potentially take both. But we can't do it without everyone going above and beyond. We're asking regular folks to donate every dime they can, all while they man phonebanks and canvass door-to-door; and many are stepping up and doing just that. All I'm asking John Kerry and Marty Meehan for is a level of dedication to other Democratic candidates that they've taken for granted from their own supporters.

And now I will take Deval Patrick's advice and "get off my high horse."

So, Oops

I was just looking around in the Settings for our little slice of the internet and found a bunch of comments that didn't make it onto the site because I didn't know I had anything to do with comments appearing. I'm terribly sorry if you've posted a comment here and it hasn't shown up. We weren't ignoring you or trying to silence your input. Instead, we never knew anyone was even trying to comment here. I've tried to go through and display most of the ones I could retrieve. I apologize to any of you who have left a comment and not seen it appear. It was completely unintentional and we look forward to hearing from you and discussing with you in the future.

And let us never speak of this again.

Polls and Money

Josh Marshall at TPM has been riding Democrats in safe seats and Democrats not up for re-relection to pony up some of their excess cash to help out those Democrats who are in tight races. It goes without saying, of course, that such folks should be doing their damnedest to help out, emptying their coffers to assist fellow Dems in need --- especially if not only are their seats safe but not even up for re-election this cycle.
While Marshall has gotten some e-mails that say John Kerry has been available and willing to fundraise for folks, he can certainly do a lot more, given that he's still holding on to a sizable warchest left over from his failed presidential run in 2004. With that in mind, I give you Hey, John:

In 2004, over 171,154 Americans donated $328,479,245 and countless hours of time to help John Kerry get elected President. Now, two years later, Democrats have a real opportunity to regain a majority in both chambers of Congress.

John Kerry? He’s still hanging on to $8,352,685 of our money, while Democratic candidates in competitive districts are short on funds, and the DNC, DCCC, and DSCC are out of money.

Tell John Kerry to “let our money go” and help take back Congress by sending an email to info@johnkerry.com.

I don't begrudge our junior Senator for wanting to have some scratch should he deem himself a viable candidate in a couple years, but I do think that he should feel obligated to dole some of that out to candidates who need it now. Should he garner the nomination in 2008 --- and now we're way into Hypothetical Land --- I'm sure those candidates he helped out will be more than willing to help him, and he can remind all of us that he did this in order to help secure a Democratic majority in 2006. So, please, send him a line and tell him to use our money wisely this time.

Before I get back to the paper I'm supposed to be writing, I want to point out the newest Zogby poll for our gubernatorial election, in which Kerry Healey's negative and insubstantial campaign comes back to bite her in the ... numbers. Whereas she seemed to be narrowing the gap between herself and Deval Patrick with the initial onslaught of attack ads, it now appears that she's carried on the attack too long. Patrick's re-opened his lead, now up to 22 points, with 56% of the vote headed his way. Healey's barely got a third of the state in her corner. With less than three weeks remaining before election day, Healey and Hillman are going to have to work awful hard to even make this one close. (I hope that doesn't jinx anyone.)

Now back to writing about the goodness of creation amidst the fallen nature of humanity, which is completely un-related to the above. Completely.

I Know That's Not What They Mean, But ...

I was just watching CNN and a new, and admittedly clever, AARP ad came on. It's got a shiny, sparkly candidate singing about how wonderful he is personally, but "don't ask me about Social Security." Obviously, Social Security is and should be a huge deal for the AARP --- and probably ought to be for more people at that. The ad was really well done, right up until the end, when they show the name of the website they've set up detailing which candidates support Social Security. The name of the website, believe it or not, is www.dontvote.com. Now, I know AARP isn't actually suggesting that one not vote at all, but rather "Don't vote until you know where the candidates stand on the issues." Still, "dontvote.com" doesn't exactly strike me as "le mot just", as it were.

In fact, the other spot seems even worse, although it's equally attention-grabbing and lays the foundation for the site/campaign name. That one should probably have been the first spot, although I don't particularly care for the idea of saying don't vote under any circumstances. Also, of course, after I watched the commercial I couldn't remember whether it was .org or .com. Check out the former.