Dear fellow MoveOn member,
A few days ago, I got an email from my friends at MoveOn about a problem—and an opportunity.
Polls show that Mitch McConnell is the least popular senator in the country, with an approval rating in the low 30s. More than 60% of Kentucky voters say "it's time for someone new," and multiple strong Democratic candidates are looking to get into the race.1
Clearly, this is an opportunity that we simply can't afford to pass up. But McConnell is up for re-election at the same time as Donald Trump, and Kentucky isn't going to be one of the key swing states that MoveOn and other progressive groups planned to focus on during the 2020 election.
So MoveOn asked me if I thought we could raise enough money to fund a whole additional campaign to take on McConnell, while ALSO fully funding MoveOn's plan to beat Trump in presidential battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida.
Without hesitation, I told them, "Let's go for it." And now I'm asking you to help us make it happen. Will you chip in $5 a month to help take on McConnell AND Trump at the same time?
Yes, I'll chip in monthly to help defeat Mitch McConnell AND Donald Trump.
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
When I was secretary of labor in the 1990s, McConnell was a young Republican senator from Kentucky.
Even then, it was clear that he was different from other Republicans.
He was more cunning and devious. He seemed to relish the role of the cynical Washington, D.C. insider, teaming up with lobbyists to shamelessly manipulate the rules of the Senate to push his agenda.
But what really made McConnell stand out was his single-minded thirst for power—and his willingness to do anything to get it.
When Senator John McCain built a bipartisan coalition in favor of campaign finance reform, McConnell gleefully led the opposition, calling himself the "Darth Vader" of campaign finance reform.2 Because to McConnell, money is power, and he will fight anything that cuts into his power.
Now, 25 years later, McConnell is majority leader of the Senate, using his power to rig the system more brazenly than ever before.
When in his final year in office President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia as a Supreme Court justice, McConnell said that there's a rule against that. Now he says that if there's an opening on the Supreme Court in Trump's last year, the rule no longer applies.
McConnell rammed through Trump's tax giveaway. He came within one vote of killing the Affordable Care Act and taking health care away from 20 million Americans.
And after Democrats took back the House of Representatives, he gave himself a new nickname. He used to be the Darth Vader of campaign finance reform—but now he calls himself the "Grim Reaper" of EVERY bill that passes the House.
The good news is that Kentuckians are as fed up with McConnell's cynical hypocrisy as most other Americans. Even McConnell knows he's in trouble: He's already started running TV ads, even though his election is a year and a half away.3
But MoveOn needs to know that it will have the resources it will take to beat Trump AND McConnell at the same time.
I'm on board to ditch Mitch. Are you with me? Will you chip in $5 a month to help out?
Yes, I'll chip in monthly to help defeat Mitch McConnell.
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
Thanks for all you do.
–Robert Reich
Sources:
1. "Poll: 33% of Kentucky voters approve of McConnell," The Hill, February 21, 2019
https://act.moveon.org/go/67108?t=6&akid=238241%2E40999114%2Edsxj08
2. "The Unabashed and Unalterable Foe of the Campaign Finance Bill," The New York Times, October 2, 1997
https://act.moveon.org/go/67403?t=8&akid=238241%2E40999114%2Edsxj08
3. "Kentucky Leads," Mitch McConnell For Senate, April 17, 2019
https://act.moveon.org/go/67404?t=10&akid=238241%2E40999114%2Edsxj08
Want to support MoveOn's work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it MoveOn needs your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?
No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.
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