If you are a teabagger or a Republican, don't read below the fold. Just go away.
My close personal friend Al just sent me this and even though it's junk mail I thought you should read it.
Dear Greg,
Here are two thought experiments. Indulge me, won't you?
It's the morning after Election Day. 8 a.m. You stumble out of bed. Make some oatmeal. Turn on the TV to find out what happened in that Senate race, the one that was too close to call all night. But you gave $50 to the DSCC by clicking on this link. And, lo and behold, your favorite Democrat -- maybe Russ Feingold or Patty Murray -- pulled it out by a few votes. Oatmeal never tasted so sweet.
But there's another way it could go. 8 a.m. Oatmeal. TV. But in this example, you DIDN'T give to the DSCC. And, by a few hundred votes, some Tea Party extremist is now a U.S. Senator-elect -- and Republicans have captured the majority. How's that oatmeal taste now?
You still have time to decide which scenario will become reality. But when I say "time," I don't mean days. I mean minutes. Don't wait for tomorrow. Don't even wait to read the rest of this email. Click here right now and make a contribution of $5 or more -- it will be matched two to one, tripling its impact!
You've seen the polls -- we're neck and neck in race after race. Moving the numbers just a little bit could mean the difference between victory and defeat -- trust me, I've been there.
And nobody moves numbers like the DSCC. Thanks to people like you clicking on links like this one, we've pulled ahead in California and Connecticut and tied it up in Colorado and Pennsylvania.
But with just hours to go until the polls close, every minute counts. Your contribution won't be funding some far-off future plan -- it'll be the money that goes out the door first thing tomorrow. It could be your $5 that makes the difference for Barbara Boxer, keeps Sharron Angle or Rand Paul out of the Senate, or even saves our majority.
So make a contribution of $5 or more to the DSCC right now -- it'll be on the air in a battleground state or in the field as part of a get-out-the-vote program by tomorrow morning. And, even better, it will be matched two-to-one, tripling its impact.
If you want to know why I'm standing with the DSCC in the final days of this election, here's why: On November 3, I don't want my oatmeal to taste like regret. I want my oatmeal to taste like victory.
How about you?
Thanks,
Al Franken
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Does anyone else find it strange that money and votes are considered to be so tightly correlated (even positing a causative relationship)?
What's the slope of that regression - I want to know dollars per vote. I'd also like to know the significance and the correlation coefficient (Pearson's r or r^2, either is fine).
After all that we can discuss breakfast food flavour, I suppose.
It seems to me that as long as the two variables in play (the donation and the election result) cannot be causally linked, there is a missing set of possible outcomes that cannot be ignored.
I could give $10,000 right now to Harry Reid's campaign in an effort to keep Sharron Angle out of Nevada's US Senate seats, and the oh-so-extreme Angle could still win. Likewise, I could give nothing but my vote (which, as a Clark County voter, I already have) and that could be enough to secure Harry's win.
Simply put, we won't know for sure the results until the morning of November 3rd, no matter how much money we funnel in any given direction.
(Of course, everyone reading here probably already knows everything I said, but it can't hurt to put out the reminder. Elections matter. Local elections matter a lot. Candidates should court votes -- court intelligent voters -- and not 11th hour campaign cash.)
"Does anyone else find it strange that money and votes are considered to be so tightly correlated (even positing a causative relationship)?"
We've achieved economic democracy: one dollar, one vote. Well, OK, maybe a little more than a dollar.